Chapter 19: A Deal With The Devil: Chapter 19

The thing about a long-term relationship is that you persuade yourself, when you’re in it, that it’s good enough. All the little irritations and disappointments are brushed aside. No one’s perfect. Why nurture your tiny miseries like a delicate plant you want to see flourish?

Except I brushed aside disappointments with Matt having, essentially, no experience with anyone else. A kiss while playing spin-the-bottle in eighth grade and a sloppy, drunken one-night stand post-Matt are all I had to compare against him…and neither of them held up very well.

I’d believed, for instance, that Matt was an extraordinary kisser. But I could kiss a thousand men, and none of them would match Hayes.

My fingers trace over my lips on the way home, remembering. I try to look at the kiss scientifically: What was so much better? Was it his utter confidence, the way he increased the pressure so suddenly, like water reaching its boiling point? Was it just his feel and his smell, his urgency and his size and that sharp inhale of want and surprise I heard at the kiss’s end?

I don’t know. But he’s not an option, so I really pray that whatever it was, I find it again in someone else.

He appears at the counter Monday morning, all lean, unruffled beauty, that arrogant upper lip of his firmly in its arrogant place, smirking as always.

I slide the smoothie next to his coffee. “Don’t freak out on me,” I tell him. “I used more kale than normal.”

“You know, one of these days you could surprise me and make Eggs Benedict instead.”

I bite into a strawberry. “Eggs Benedict, hmmm? I’ve never pictured you eating breakfast.”

“What do you picture, Tali?” he asks, his tone and leering smile so ridiculously filthy I laugh.

“Jonathan coming home so I don’t have to get up at six anymore,” I reply, leaning my hip against the counter. “That’s what I picture.”

“You’ll miss me,” he argues. “My mother says I’m loveable once you get to know me. Well, it might have been the nanny. Someone said it. What’s on the schedule today?”

I hand it to him, amazed by how easily things have gone back to normal. They definitely didn’t seem like they would all weekend when I flopped around in bed, sheets tangling between my legs, having one dream after another about him: Hayes kissing me, my back pressed to the wall, his hands sliding up my outer thighs as he pushed my skirt to my waist.

You have the purest face I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Where have you gone, Tali?” he asks. My head jerks up as I blink the memory away. “You’re not still mooning over the idiot from the soldier movie, are you?”

I roll my eyes. “Not at all. In fact, I put up a profile on Tinder, you’ll be happy to hear.”

A muscle flickers along his temple, and his smirk is oddly…muted. “Very good. Let’s see it.”

I carry the blender to the sink. “I’m not showing you my profile. You’re just going to make fun of it.”

“Probably,” he replies. “You’ve undoubtedly bungled it. But you must acknowledge I have a lot more experience judging women than you do. And if you don’t show it to me, I’ll just create a profile for myself and find you.”

There’s not a doubt in my mind he’ll do it too. I reach for my phone and open the app, but when he takes it, he doesn’t burst into the peals of mocking laughter I’d anticipated.

Instead, his jaw tightens. “‘Not looking for a relationship’ is code for ‘mostly in this for sex’,” he says. “You’re not going to find Mr. Right that way.”

“Who says I’m looking for that?” I counter.

He runs a hand through his hair and it falls forward messily. “Have you ever even had a one-night stand?” he asks.

“That’s an extremely personal question,” I begin, but he simply raises a brow, as if to say and your point is? “Yes,” I admit with a sigh. “Matt had a costar, Brad Perez, who was constantly hitting on me. When we broke up, I…” I trail off with a shrug. It was not my finest moment. I thought I’d feel victorious afterward. Instead, I just felt empty and used.

“A revenge fuck?” he asks with a tight smile. “I didn’t know you had it in you. Literally had it in you. And you ghosted the poor chap, didn’t you?”

I snuck out in the middle of the night like a thief and blocked his calls afterward. Again, not my best moment.

“I was in a bad place at the time. Now I’m fine. I just want to be sure no one gets the wrong idea.”

He grabs his bag and his jacket and turns for the front door. “You sound like me now,” he says softly. He doesn’t seem happy about it.

Swiping on Tinder is addictive, like a harmless little game. I do it at stoplights, or as I stand with a contractor while he looks at a plumbing leak in Hayes’s powder room. I reject anyone whose first photo is shirtless, or who’s posing in a gym—I’m not looking for Mr. Right, but I would like someone with just a hint of self-respect. I also ditch all the men who say things like just here to fuck or must be D cup or larger.

There’s actually a very long list of things I don’t respect, as it turns out. In the end, as pretty as they are, I only say yes to a few guys, and when they write me, I’m mostly revolted.

Hey babe, says the first, which I find demeaning.

The second asks me if I’d rather have hands made of cabbage, or to spit up a full cabbage hourly, which makes me laugh but is also weird. I bet he’s got a YouTube channel where he pranks his parents, with whom he still lives. No thank you.

The third says Dam ur hot. Even if his text didn’t suck, I’d rule him out based on poor spelling.

The fourth says what r u doing 2night?

Which is when I give up. Who raised these men? How lazy must you be to refuse to type out one or two extra characters?

“Have you tried Tinder?” I ask Sam later on.

“Everyone under the age of thirty has tried Tinder.”

“Why is the spelling so terrible?” I demand, reaching under the bed for my running shoes. “And why do so many people abbreviate words? Like, is it really saving you that much time to use the number two instead of writing T-O?”

“Then I guess you’re dating again,” he says. His tone is…careful. Not excited, but not unexcited either.

I swallow. “Well, no. I was dipping my toe in the water and now I need to soak my toe in bleach.”

“Well, sort of on that topic…” he begins, and my stomach sinks. “I’m coming to LA week after next. Will your ogre of a boss give you a night off?”

My breath holds. It’s a crossroads. I either step up and tell him I’m not ready to date, or I decide to let things happen.

“My buddy John will be there too,” he adds. I’m not sure if that was always the plan or if my silence freaked him out.

“Sure,” I reply. “Just let me know when.”

I’m scared, and also, perhaps, a little excited.

Sam is cute and an excellent speller. We’d have plenty to discuss.

But he would not be casual. Of that I’m certain.