“You called me a liar,” she said. “That’s what you get.”
“Fine, you’re not lying. But you’re definitely thinking.”
In answer （in retaliation） she slid her hand down to the lip of his black jeans. He gave her a look of admonishment.
“We’re in the airport,” he said.
She tugged the zipper, just to prove a point, and he sighed gruffly.
“Okay, fine, don’t tell me,” he said, and she tilted her chin up, locking eyes with him.
“I didn’t tell my parents I wasn’t coming home for Christmas,” she said.
He lifted a brow.
“Didn’t tell them anything, actually,” she clarified.
He pulled her forward, advancing with the line.
“Because you don’t want them to know about me?” he asked.
“No, I don’t want them to know about me.”
“Okay.” He kissed her forehead swiftly. “Well, that’s your decision.”
Ha, as if she’d let it end there. “You disapprove, I take it?”
“I don’t pretend to understand your relationship with your parents.”
“Why not? You understand everything else.”
“One day,” he sighed, “you’ll discover that my understanding of math does not translate to a grasp of human behavior, and then it will occur to you that I am, in fact, an idiot.”
“Oh, I already know that,” she assured him, making his mouth quirk slightly. “You’re entirely useless but still, be honest. You disapprove.”
“I have no basis for approval or disapproval. I’m just, you know. Here for however long you want to keep me.”
She looked up, startled. “You don’t think I’m serious about you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You kind of did.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to ‘kind of do’ anything, I just meant to say it: I’m here for however long you want me.”
“But that implies that you don’t think it’ll last.”
“Does it?”
“Yes, of course, otherwise you wouldn’t say it.”
He said nothing.
She pushed him. “Do you think I’m not telling my parents about us because I’m not serious about you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The line inched forward.
“It’s not that,” she said quietly. “I just … I like us like this, I like us how we are. I don’t want them in it, around it. Near it, even.”
“You don’t want them to ruin it, you mean.”
“No, I just—”
“It’s okay. I’m trying to tell you, I don’t have expectations.”
“Well, why not?” The comment made her agitated, left her bristling. “What if I want you to have expectations?”
“Do you?”
“Do I want you to, or do I have them?”
“Both, I guess. Whichever you feel like answering.”
“Well—” She cleared her throat. “I want you to have them.”
“Which expectations should I have? Great ones?”
“Don’t be cute,” she growled, glaring at him. His uneven mouth meant he was laughing. “I just don’t want you to think I’m not serious, Aldo. I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
“Like, really serious.”
“Even if you weren’t, Regan, that would be fine.”
“Why?” she demanded, defensive again. “Because I can just flit in and out of your life and it wouldn’t make a difference?”
He was quiet for a second.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked her.
He was really asking, not like Marc. Not Marc, who’d “You up?”-ed her just the other night, making her feel dirty again, like a relapse. Aldo wasn’t Marc. He wasn’t like her friends, either, who would have asked her the same thing, only they would have been sarcastic when they said it. He wasn’t like anyone she’d known before, not like anyone who expected her to be a certain way. Not like all the people she’d been shielding him from, not for his sake but for hers, afraid he’d come to understand what she really was, what she’d been for years, what she’d always been. Afraid, always afraid, that this was still some splintered version of pretend, that she was only crafting a new version for him when she wanted to believe she was really herself. Afraid that now she was Aldo’s Regan, which meant that Aldo’s Regan could fade into obscurity; that her honesty with him was just another version of a lie.