She giggles. “I know. You ask me a question next.”
I smile and clink my glass with hers. “I’ll start thinking of one now.” I narrow my eyes, as if concentrating.
“Well?” she prompts me. “Answer my question first.”
How do I say this . . . I’m fucked up, and something is wrong with me?
That I’ve been searching for something for years, but I have no idea what it actually is?
Just tell her the easy version.
“I don’t know, to be honest. The girls I went out with were all beautiful—perfect, actually.” She watches me intently. “But when push came to shove, I didn’t want to fight for it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well, as history repeats, I seem to have a time limit for relationships.” I smile at her fascination. “Like a use-by date.”
“A use-by date,” she scoffs. “What does that mean? How many times you have sex with them?”
I laugh at the double meaning. “No, not that . . . for God’s sake.”
She puts her hand on my thigh.
“I seem to meet someone, and then we fall into a routine and . . .” I pause.
“What?”
“She falls in love with me and wants to move in and have marriage and babies, and I, for some reason, find something wrong with her and begin to back off.”
She listens intently.
“I don’t know what it is.” I sip my drink. “I don’t know why I’m like this. The second girlfriend I had was probably the one. I adored her. Was sad for years when we broke up.”
“But you didn’t love her?”
“I don’t know.” I put my hand on top of hers on my leg.
“So she left you?”
“No. I left her.”
“But if you were sad for years about it, why didn’t you just go back to her?”
“I didn’t want to.”
She frowns as she watches me.
“I mean, what is love?” I bite my bottom lip as I think; how did we get onto this deep subject? “I mean, define being in love with someone, Anderson. Because I can’t; for the life of me I can’t.”
“Well.” She thinks for a moment. “I think it’s just like having a best friend who you want to fuck.”
I smirk. “That sounds pervy.”
“It is a bit.” She giggles.
I watch her for a moment. “What was your husband like?”
Her shoulders instantly slump. “He was . . .” Her demeanor becomes sad. “He was a great man. Proud.” Her focus shifts from me to a spot over the bar. “I miss him every day.”