“Nah,” I grumbled. “Lead on.”
Bella grabbed my elbow to tug me inside, but she happened to hit me a little too high up under my arm. And I’m very ticklish. “Shit.” I laughed, twisting away from her.
“What the fuck?” She dug her fingers into my inner bicep again. “Who’s ticklish there?”
“Dios.” I grabbed her arm. “You are such a pain in the ass.”
“Uh-oh!” Bella sang. “Somebody looks jealous!”
I looked through the window to see Alison staring at us.
“Eh. I doubt it.” I let go of Bella, anyway.
Luckily, when we reached the table Alison had saved for our meeting, Dani was just arriving, too. So I didn’t have to make small talk. For the next fifteen minutes, I let Bella speak for both of us.
“Jeez, you guys are doing great,” Dani said. “That’s a lot of progress.”
Bella nudged me with her elbow. “I told you we started too early.”
“I like to get a jump on things,” I mumbled.
“He always does that,” Alison said, crossing her arms. “It’s a thing with him.”
Ack. I did not want to be a topic of discussion. “So what about the, uh, design part?”
Alison and Dani rambled on for a few minutes about their ideas, while I pretended to listen.
“I don’t know about that green roof idea,” Bella argued. “That sounds expensive.”
“It’s excellent for the environment,” Alison argued.
“As long as we can pay for it,” Bella said. “Are we done for now?”
I grabbed my book bag in the hopes of making a quick getaway.
“Wait,” Alison said. “Rafe, I really need to talk to you for a minute.”
Uh-oh. “Is it about the project?”
She shook her head. I opened my mouth to argue, but she held up a hand. “Please, it will just take a second. Please.” She beckoned to me, then walked outside, where I assumed she was waiting for me.
“Dios,” I muttered.
Bella picked up her backpack. “Do you want me to rescue you in a minute? I could tell her that we’re late to a thing.”
“A thing?”
“Work with me, here.”
“Okay. Yeah. Come and get me for the thing. In three minutes.” That should be plenty of time. Because what was there to say?
I marched myself outside, stopping in front of Alison.
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Peachy.” Let’s get to the point, here.
“Look, I owe you an apology.”
“You think?”
Alison gave me a bit of an eye roll. “Can you just let me do this? I wasn’t honest with you.”
“I got that.”
She threw her arms out to the sides. “Just give me a second, okay? This isn’t easy for me to tell you.” The crystalline blue eyes that I’d always loved filled.
That pretty much crushed my asshole ’tude, because I never could stand to see a girl cry. “Okay,” I said softly. “I’m listening.”
“Rafe, I’m…” She swallowed. “I’m asexual.”
I replayed those words in my mind and came up blank. “You’re… what?”
“Asexual. I can’t… I don’t experience sexual desire. Ever. Not for anyone.”
That was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. And I’d already spent a couple of months choking on the message that she didn’t want me like that. Why make a weird excuse? “Then why did you sleep with Mr. Rolex? And don’t try to tell me you didn’t. Something happened with him.”
She took a deep breath in through her perfect nose. “I slept with him because I wanted to know if I could do it. It was an experiment. If I could live through it with him, then I thought I could handle sex with you.”
At that moment, you could have pushed me over with a feather. “Dios. I always hoped you could tolerate sex with me. Do you even hear yourself?”
Her face got red. “I know, okay? It’s taken me a bunch of counseling sessions to even admit that it was a stupid idea. But I loved you, and I just wanted what so many other people have. A normal relationship.”
Again, the fact that she was getting upset checked my anger. “But I just don’t understand. Not at all. Because everybody wants someone.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “Not necessarily. Not me. I’d been wondering about myself for years, honestly. My boarding school roommates were always talking about how so and so has lickable abs. I’ve never wanted to lick anyone in my life.”