Ready to Run (I Do, I Don't 1)

“Sure. I’ll just be all I’ll have a cruller, and by the way, are you gay?”

“If he knows what a cruller is, he’s definitely gay,” Simon pointed out.

Jordan sighed and rolled onto her back. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me in a tiny town all by myself.”

“I’m not even a little bit worried about you. These people already adore you. I know, because I asked.”

“I’ve barely even talked to them.”

“Yeah, but they can smell your small-town roots.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Yuck. And they’re just friendly. They like you, and you’re from San Francisco.”

“They like me because I’m irresistible. They like you because you’re one of them.”

“Um, hello?” Jordan said indignantly, lifting her leg to display the completely impractical red suede pump.

Simon shoved her leg down. “Even Jimmy Choo can’t disguise your roots.”

“You make it sound like I’ve gone around chewing hay.”

“Don’t get cranky. I just meant that you’re nice, that’s all. You’ve always been nicer than us New Yorkers.”

“Most New Yorkers are transplants from somewhere else. Like you.”

“Yes, but you’re a transplant from Krypton, Ohio.”

“Keaton, Kansas.”

He waved a hand. “Keaton, Kansas; Krypton, Ohio; Lucky Hollow, Montana—they’ve all got the same vibe; the people all speak the same language.”

“Hick?”

He turned his head, his expression growing a bit more serious. “You really hate your hometown that much?”

“What?” She glanced over at him in surprise, then turned away again to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t hate it at all, it’s just…as a teenager, I was so determined to leave it behind completely. And it’s weird looking back as an adult, all of a sudden realizing—”

“That you miss it?”

“I don’t know if I do,” she said.

Simon rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “I love you, Carpenter, but you’re being super weird about this.”

She let out a little laugh because he was right. So right. But how to explain that her panic wasn’t so much that she didn’t want to be here but that she felt oddly…comfortable.

From the moment she’d learned that she got the cross-country scholarship to Tufts, Jordan had started planning on how to lose herself in her future. First it had been college, then it had been applying to the best internships, then it had been job searching in New York.

Then she got to New York, and the chaos was exactly what she’d needed—the city’s constant energy meant that she was always on the go, always looking at the next thing.

She liked that.

Jordan was happy, successful….

And if something was missing, so what?

“Maybe I should take a lover when we get back to New York,” she mused.

Simon gave a surprised laugh. “I’m sorry, what? Take a lover? Are you a nineteenth-century widow? But, yes, hun, you are absolutely overdue to get laid.”