Out On a Limb(44)

“Massive nerd?” I interrupt.

“Okay, ouch,” he laughs out.

“Sarah snooped around your room. Caleb and I followed. I tried to get them out, but they were like kids in a toy store. I’m sorry.”

“I left my door open on purpose, Win. I knew you’d probably go in there. I hid all the shit I didn’t want you to see.”

“Such as?” I ask, my nosiness beating out any shred of politeness for time.

“Okay, fine, I only hid one thing.”

“Curious…”

“I’m allowed one secret,” he says, smiling into his mug.

Interesting. Whatever it is, it must be juicier than the rope, since he didn’t bother to hide that. Don’t say anything about rope, Win. Change the subject before you do. “You know, at first, I was surprised about your nerdom, but then once I started putting the pieces together? It all sort of made sense,” I say, crossing my legs under me, leaning against the back of the couch.

“I have to know what that means.”

“Well, you love math. You’re far too pretty to be as humble as you are, which means you were either not as hot as a teenager, or you just weren’t in with the cool crowd. I’m guessing you were like Caleb—a late bloomer with a bunch of geeky interests that kept the ladies from knocking down your door.”

“Well, it worked for him,” Bo says, one eyebrow raised as he takes a long, thoughtful sip. “Sarah’s great.”

“Well, am I right?”

“Annoyingly, yes. I was a band geek and a nerd in high school. A winning combination.” He shakes his head, smiling at his lap. “I have to admit, I thought it’d be a bit longer before you read me like a book. I believed I had an air of mystery about me.”

“You did. Until I saw the dork cave.”

“Dork cave… okay…” He chews his cheek, mischievousness in his eyes. “So you’re saying that if, on Halloween, we had come back here instead of Sarah’s guest room, and you’d seen the very few collectibles I own, things may have ended differently?”

“I didn’t say that.” I lean back, confidently crossing my arms.

“So what does that make you? A nerd-chaser?”

“Just horny, I guess.”

He laughs, his throat bobbing. “Well, I’m glad our plan of getting to know each other is already working.”

“I remain a mystery, however.” I wiggle my brows.

“We’ll work on that,” he says, his eyes flicking down to my sweater. “Starting with—did you seriously go to Harvard?”

I thrifted this sweater so long ago I forgot what it even said across the front. “No, heh, not Harvard. I went to Lakehead for Outdoor Recreation, Parks, and Tourism, with a concentration in nature-based therapeutic recreation. I have a bachelor’s degree in how to take people canoeing for their mental health, essentially.”

“Don’t do that,” Bo says sternly.

“What?” I blink at double speed.

“Dismiss yourself like that. That sounds really fucking cool and important to me. Don’t trivialise what you accomplished.”

“Oh, uh, well… thanks.”

“What did you want to do after your degree?”

“The dream was to open a summer camp for kids with disabilities. A place built to show them how to adapt the equipment, give them the time and patience to learn that they hadn’t gotten anywhere else. But obviously, that didn’t happen.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t that happen? It seems to make so much sense.”

“Oh,” I stutter, reaching for my water to take a sip. “I guess, uh, life just happened instead.”

Bo waits for me to go on, gently holding eye contact. I start to feel a tightness in my chest, spreading up my throat. But this is what we’re here to do, right? Get to know each other? I’ll give him the condensed version. He doesn’t need to know everything.

“There was this guy… Jack.”

“Hate him already,” Bo says, one corner of his mouth raising.

“Yeah, well, good instincts.” I laugh nervously. “We met in my second-year biology course. He was doing an undergrad in kinesiology. We seemed to have a lot in common, shared a lot of the same friend group, the usual stuff. Eventually, after a few too many beers around a campfire one night, we sort of fell into dating. We finished school together, but he decided to go for his master’s degree.”

I shuffle in my seat, looking everywhere except at Bo’s face. “He asked me to move in with him, and I said yes. Our relationship up until then was mostly fine. But there were definitely some red flags I was choosing to ignore. Anyway… he was going to be a student full time again, and someone had to pay the rent. So I got an office job to get us by and sort of wasted those two years after graduation paying his way. Stupidly, I thought we were a team and that it’d be my turn to go after what I wanted next but… well, you know. When things ended, I moved back here, pretty desperate to get away from it all. I had to start fresh and couldn’t really afford to dream bigger than the café and lifeguarding in the summers. Then time sort of moved on… but I didn’t, I guess.”