She looked away for a second. “I did when I thought they were from you.”
Her words were so sincere, my heart softened. “What’d you do with them?”
“Threw them in the trash.” She spooned some rice into her mouth.
“Should’ve brought ’em here so we could set them on fire,” I muttered under my breath.
“Next time.”
Sofia gave me a teasing glance, trying to make me smile, but all it did was drive me half crazy. The thought of that douchebag sending her flowers again didn’t go over well.
“There won’t be a next time,” I snapped back.
She reached across the table and touched my arm. “I was only joking.”
I sucked in a calming breath. “I know. Sorry. What are your favorite flowers?”
Smiling at my attempt to change the subject, she said, “Why do girls have to have a favorite? Why can’t we just love them all?”
“You can. Do you?”
“Kind of. I mean, look at them.” She pointed at the pink roses near us with a smile. “They’re so beautiful.”
“So you love roses the most?”
“I love them, yes. The most? I don’t know.” Her nose crinkled as she stared at the ceiling, pondering my question seriously. “I’ve always loved sunflowers. They make me happy whenever I see them. And wildflowers in general.” Her eyes practically sparkled as she spoke, and I took mental notes.
“What about them?”
“They’re a little messy and wild, kind of all over the place. I like that about them. The fact that they’re not perfect.”
Her response was unexpected, and I loved it. Sofia seemed to have it all together, so it touched me that something messy and wild drew her, like something forbidden she couldn’t risk being as a single mom.
“Back to Derek,” I said, and her smile dropped at the mention of his name. “So I guess he knows where you work.”
She shrugged, not seeming surprised at all. Not that she hadn’t already come to that conclusion on her own, but I expected a more visceral reaction from her. Instead, all I got was a tight-lipped nod.
“Why aren’t you surprised?”
“That he knows where I work?”
“Yeah. Weren’t you shocked or caught off guard?” I put my fork down and wiped my mouth with a napkin.
“Not really. Derek’s family has a lot of money. His dad owns a large law firm in downtown LA that his grandfather started. Every male in the Huntington family has a job with the company. It’s expected for them to join it; they don’t have a choice. For as long as I’ve known him, it was set in stone that he’d take over the firm one day for his father. Actually, it was one of the first things he ever said to me before we started dating.”
“You guys met in high school, right?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. It seemed insane to me that someone’s life could be that planned out for them. But then I thought about my little brother, Nick, and I understood exactly how that kind of shit happened.
“Yeah. He told me that the firm was his future, and I had to be okay with being second to it. If I had a problem with that, then I needed to walk away and pretend we’d never met.”
I gave her a searching look. “And you never thought that was weird?”
“I was fifteen, Ryan. I thought it was ambitious. I’d never met anyone who talked like that about their future, or even knew at that age what they wanted to be when they grew up. He was different, and I was intrigued.”
Putting myself in her shoes for a second, I could see how she might have felt that way. It made sense.
There was more to their history, and I found myself wanting to know it all—the way her mind worked, the way she saw and thought about things. Even though the topic wasn’t ideal for a first date, or comfortable at all for me, I loved getting to know her better.
“When did you stop seeing him that way?”