For Better or Worse

Something flickered in his gaze, but then he smiled and it was gone. “Actually, I’m inviting myself into your apartment. My coffee stash is still in your place from this morning.”

“Even more impressive,” Heather said as she shoved her key into the lock. “You’ve managed to get yourself an invitation into my apartment.”

“Ah, but will it get me into your thong?”

She rolled her eyes and ignored him, stepping into her apartment and knowing he would follow.

“Speaking of this morning, are you still wearing a thong?” he asked, shutting her front door.

“Speaking of this morning, how about you hand over that spare key?” she shot back as she hoisted the bag onto the counter and began putting leftovers in her fridge.

“I see you’re helping yourself to my family’s leftovers,” he said.

“Okay, fine, keep the key in the short term,” she said, shoving aside a carton of milk to make room for a Tupperware of gravy. “We’ll have joint custody of the leftovers.”

Heather pulled down two plates for their pie as Josh went about the process of heating water and scooping coffee into her French press, trying to ignore the little sense of contentment she felt at how easily he fit into her apartment.

Almost as though he belonged there.

“Pecan or pumpkin?” she asked.

“Really?”

“Both it is,” she said, cutting two enormous slices of pie for him and two smaller ones for herself.

Heather waited patiently for the coffee to finish before taking a bite. Josh did not, and he was already on his second slice of pumpkin as they settled at her table with two steaming cups of coffee and plates of pie.

“Can I ask you something without you freaking out?” she said. His chewing slowed and his gaze went wary, and Heather lifted her fork in reassurance. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to answer.”

“Okay,” he said hesitantly.

She put a piece of creamy pumpkin pie in her mouth, slowly withdrawing the fork as she studied him, wondering at the wisdom in asking.

What the hell.

“I’m missing something, aren’t I?” she said.

“Huh?”

“About your past. You don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want to, and I promise never to ask specifics, but there’s a piece missing, right? Something I don’t know about you? Something you don’t like talking about? That’s why you got all mad at lunch the other day. It’s why your entire family will talk endlessly about your childhood and yesterday, but anything a few years back is off-limits.”

Josh stared at his coffee for a long moment, and for a second she thought—hoped—he might actually confide in her.

Instead he merely nodded. That was it. A nod.

Heather swallowed her disappointment.

“Okay!” she said with false brightness. “I won’t mention it again. Really. I know you don’t want to talk about it, I just sort of wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy, you know? And I—”

“4C. Heather. Stop.”

His voice was quiet. Steady.

She clamped her mouth shut. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize,” he said, starting to reach across the table, and then stopping, as though thinking better of it. “I’m sorry. It’s not you that I don’t want to talk to. I just don’t like talking about it with anyone. My family knows what went down because they were there, as do some of the friends who stuck around. But trust me when I say I sometimes wish I could erase their memories.”

“It was that bad?” she asked quietly.

“Not so much.” He fiddled with his fork. “It’s just that I don’t want to be defined by something that happened in the past. I want to be defined by who I am now, not something that happened a couple years ago.”

“But I wouldn’t—”

“Yes,” he interrupted kindly but firmly. “You would. You wouldn’t want to think of me differently, or act differently around me, but you would. And I don’t want that.”

She sighed into her coffee, knowing a lost cause when she saw one. “Okay.”

“I like us as we are,” he said. “I like the way you act around me now.”