I’ve only taken three bites of my burger, but I push the plate away from me and lean back. “I can’t finish this,” I mutter, letting my head fall back against the booth. “I’m sorry.”
Jake laughs. “You jumped out of an airplane for the first time ever and then drove a car in circles for an hour straight. I’m surprised you’re able to eat anything at all.”
He says this with an empty plate sitting in front of him while scarfing down a milkshake. I guess when you’re used to jumping out of planes and driving fast cars, the adrenaline doesn’t jack with your equilibrium to the point that you feel like the world is spinning inside your stomach.
“It was fun, though,” I say with a smile. “It’s not every day I cross two things off my bucket list.”
He scoots both of our plates to the edge of the table and leans forward. “What else is on your bucket list?”
“Vegas. The Northern Lights. Paris. The usual.” I fail to tell him that he’s who I hope will be number eight on my list. We’ve had so much fun tonight, I want to do it again. But I also don’t, simply because we had so much fun tonight. I’ve spent the entirety of my adulthood in a relationship. I don’t want that again. Even if he is too good to be true. “Why are you single?” I ask him. He rolls his eyes like the question embarrasses him. He pulls his glass of water in front of him, sipping from it in order to avoid answering it for a few seconds longer. When he lets the straw fall away from his lips, he shrugs.
“I’m usually not.”
I laugh. That’s expected, I suppose. A sky-diving, Tesla-driving, good- looking cardiologist doesn’t sit home every Friday night. “Are you a serial dater?”
He shakes his head. “The opposite, actually. I just got out of a relationship. A really long relationship.”
I didn’t expect that answer. “How long did you date her?” “Twelve years.”
I sputter a cough. “Twelve years? How old are you?” “Twenty-nine. Started dating her in high school.”
“Can I ask what ended it? Or do you want to change the subject?”
Jake shakes his head. “I don’t mind talking about it. I moved out about six months ago. We were engaged, actually. I proposed four years ago. We never got around to planning the wedding because we were waiting until we finished our residencies.”
“She’s a doctor, too?” “Oncologist.”
Jeez. I suddenly feel so…young. I just barely finished my thesis, and here he is with an ex-fiancée who went through medical school with him and saves lives. I pull my drink to my lips and take a sip, attempting to wash down all my insecurities.
“Was it a mutual breakup?” I ask him.
He looks down at his hands briefly. A flash of guilt takes over his expression before he responds. “Not really. I realized about twelve years too late that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her. I know that sounds bad after being with her for so long. But for some reason, choosing to spend the rest of my life with her was a lot easier than breaking up with her.”
Why am I feeling everything he’s saying? I find myself wanting to raise my arm and say, “Amen,” like I’m in church. “I can absolutely relate to what a hard decision that must have been.”
Jake leans forward, folding his arms on the table. He tilts his head in thought for a moment, then says, “I had a moment before I ended it. I remember asking myself what I would regret more. Ending something that was good so I didn’t end up with regrets? Or spending the rest of my life regretting that I didn’t have the courage to end something simply because I was afraid of regret? Either choice would have left me with some form of regret, so I chose to end it. And it was hard. But I’d rather regret ending something good than be what prevents her from finding something great.”
I stare at him a moment, but I have to break my stare because I’m starting to have that feeling again. That I want him to be more than a one-night stand.
“How long were you and your boyfriend together?” he asks. “Almost six years.”
“Were you the one who ended it?”
I think about his question for a moment. From the outside looking in, I’d say I was. But being in it…I’m not so sure. “I don’t know,” I admit. “He fell in love with another girl. And it wasn’t like it was some torrid, scandalous affair. He’s a good person and he would have chosen me in the end. But he would have chosen me for the wrong reasons.”
Jake looks surprised. “He cheated on you?”
I hate that word. I find myself shaking my head, even though he did. Ridge cheated on me. It makes him sound malicious, which he is not. “Cheating is such an ugly term to describe what happened.” I think about it
for a moment as I stir my straw around in my glass. Then I look up at Jake and say, “He…connected with someone else on a deeper level, I think. To call him a cheater feels like an insult he doesn’t deserve. He crossed a line with someone he connected with. We’ll just leave it at that.”
Jake watches me for a moment, reading my expression. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just find it fascinating that you don’t sound like you hate him.”
I smile. “He’s one of my best friends. And he tried to do the right thing.
But sometimes the wrong thing is the right thing.”
Jake fights a smile, like he’s impressed with this conversation, but he doesn’t want to show it. I like that. I like how interesting he is. And I like that he seems to find me interesting.
He’s still staring, like he wants to hear more, so I continue. “Ridge writes lyrics for a band. About two years ago, the band released a new song, and I’ll never forget the first time I heard it. Ridge always sent me the songs ahead of their release, but for some reason, he never sent me this particular song. After I downloaded it and listened to it, I immediately knew why he never sent it. It’s because he wrote it about us.”
“A love song?”
I shake my head. “No. It was kind of the opposite. Sort of a falling-out-of- love song, about a couple who needed to move on from each other but didn’t know how. It wasn’t until I heard that song that I realized he felt the same way I did. But neither of us were in a place to admit that to each other at the time.”
“Did you ever ask him about it?”
“No. I didn’t have to. I knew it was about me as soon as I heard the first line.”
“What was the line?”
“I keep on wondering why I can’t say bye to you.”
“Wow,” Jake says, leaning back. “That’s definitely telling.”
I nod. “I don’t know why we waited so long after that to end it. I guess it’s like you said. Things between us were good, but I knew he’d found something great in another girl. And he deserved better than just good.”
Jake’s expression is stoic as he watches me silently for a few seconds. But then he smiles with a shake of his head. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
He makes a face like he’s impressed. “You’re a little young to have life figured out so well.”
His compliment makes me smile. “Yeah, well, I have a shorter life span than everyone else. I have to cram a lot into a smaller timeframe.”
I almost regret making a joke about having a terminal illness, but it doesn’t dismay him at all. In fact, it makes him smile. God, I hate how much I
like him already.
“Is this your first date since Ridge?” he asks. I nod, and he says, “Mine, too.”
I think about that for a moment. If he hasn’t dated since his breakup, that means he hasn’t dated another girl since high school. And I probably shouldn’t open my mouth, but the sentence is already coming out. “If you dated your ex for twelve years, that means you’ve only been with—”
“Her,” he says, matter-of-fact. “That is correct.”
And here we are, somehow discussing sexual partners over dinner on a first date. And somehow, the conversation isn’t at all uncomfortable. Conversation with him has been great, actually. There hasn’t been a lull all night. Not even while I was driving his car 100 miles per hour in circles around a racetrack.
There also hasn’t been a lull in our chemistry. There were a couple of times tonight when I thought he might kiss me—and I absolutely would have let him—but he’d grin and step away from me like he enjoys the feeling of torture. I guess that would make sense. He’s an adrenaline junkie. Adrenaline and attraction feel very closely related.
He’s staring at me right now, and I’m staring at him, and I don’t know exactly what it is that’s taken over me at the moment. A little bit of adrenaline. Attraction. Maybe even infatuation. Whatever it is, I have a bad feeling about it. I don’t know Jake well enough, but I think the intense look on his face suggests he feels it too.
I break eye contact with him and clear my throat. “Jake…” I lift my eyes, meeting his stare again. “I don’t want a relationship. At all. Not even remotely.”
My words have no visible impact on him. He simply presses his lips together and then, a moment later, asks, “What do you want?”
I lift my shoulders in a slow, unsure shrug. “I don’t know,” I say, dropping my shoulders again. “I wanted to have fun with you on our date. And I did. I am. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea if we go out again.”
I wish I could explain to him all the reasons why I don’t want to go on another date with him. But there are way too many reasons not to go on another date, as opposed to only one reason why I should.
Jake squeezes the back of his neck and then leans forward, folding his arms over the table again. “Maggie,” he says. “I’ve been out of practice when it comes to this whole dating thing. But…I feel like you like me. Do you like me? Or am I just blinded to your disinterest because I’m insanely attracted to you?”
Ugh. I can’t help the smile that forces its way out. I can also feel myself blushing over the fact that he’s insanely attracted to me. “I do like you. And…” This is so hard for me to say. Flirting is so foreign to me. “I’m
insanely attracted to you, too. But I don’t want to date you after tonight. It’s nothing personal. I want to live in the moment, and right now, another serious relationship is not a part of my moment. I’ve been there, done that. I have other plans for my life.”
Jake looks both intrigued and disappointed in my answer, if that’s even possible to feel both things at once. He nods and says, “So this is it? I leave a tip on the table and then I drive you home and drop you off and we never see each other again?”
I bite my bottom lip, because knowing it’s now or never makes me nervous. I either use this moment to mark off another item on my bucket list or I wake up tomorrow regretting that I was too scared to ask him to come over.
I’m not scared. I can do this. I am Maggie fucking Carson. I am the girl who jumped out of an airplane and raced a sports car in the same day.
I swallow the last shred of shyness and look him in the eyes. “This date doesn’t have to end when we pull into my driveway.”
I can see the immediate change in his demeanor. I can see his intrigue and his attraction and his hope, all settled behind his eyes that are staring at my mouth. He lowers his voice a little and says, “When, exactly, does it have to end?”
Holy shit. This is actually happening. Bucket list item number eight is almost within reach.
“How about we just live in the moment?” I suggest. “Then, once that moment’s passed, you head home and I go to sleep.”
A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. He pulls out his wallet, places a tip on the table, and stands up, offering me his hand. I slip my fingers into his, and together we leave the restaurant, savoring the present without worrying about what comes next.
