Oh, how she got that, and she relaxed a bit too. Aided by the cherry pie, which really was fantastic.
“So.” He fixed himself another bite, very carefully not mixing any of the foods together this time. “You never go home?”
And . . . so much for relaxing. She shook her head.
“You’re not close to your family?”
She took another bite of pie and gave him a vague shrug, but he simply waited her out with that endless patience of his.
“We’re close,” she finally admitted and met his warm, curious eyes. “But it’s not that easy to get to Atlanta.”
“No? They don’t make planes that fly there several times a day?”
She snorted. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything, and damn if she didn’t fill the silence for him like a rookie. “I don’t like to go back there,” she admitted.
“Why?” Simple question, no judgment.
“Bad memories,” she admitted. “And I guess sometimes it’s hard to remember the good memories over those bad and very loud memories, you know?”
Looking at her with those warm, dark eyes, he gave her a slow nod. He knew.
Unbearably touched for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom, she got very busy separating out the piece of cranberry that had gotten lodged in the gravy, like it was her job.
“Charlotte.”
Oh, look, there was some gravy touching her stuffing, so that took another minute—
He put his hand over hers and she stilled, lifting her gaze to his.
“You don’t have to talk about something you don’t want to.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“But in my experience,” he went on quietly, “when the memories get loud, it’s because they need to be heard.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and then another. She played with her fork with suddenly clammy palms as her stomach turned. Same symptoms that assaulted her every time she thought about that night. “Something happened to me. A long time ago. And sometimes . . . sometimes I let it affect me now.”
“Time’s a bitch, isn’t it?” He got up, went to the front counter, bought two water bottles, and brought them back, sitting right next to her again. “Sometimes, long-ago memories can feel like just yesterday.” He opened one of the water bottles and handed it to her. “Or right now.”
She took a long drink. Stalling. Not sure whether she wanted to run out of the cafeteria or keep going. But when she made herself look into Mateo’s eyes, she saw compassion and understanding. “I know you’re supposed to talk about this stuff,” she said slowly. “That I should let it out and trust that people will understand. But they don’t. Not really.”
“Try me.”
She took another drink, then set the water down and began to play with the condensation on the bottle. “It’s a long, clichéd story about a small-town girl going off to college in the big city, and as a freshman who went out to celebrate her birthday, let herself get taken advantage of.” She shook her head. “She was young and naive and stupid. So stupid.”
“There’s nothing wrong with young and naive, and I have a hard time believing you were ever stupid.”
Her laugh held no humor. “I let myself get charmed by a southern accent similar to mine. He played me like a fiddle, bought me a drink, told me how out of his league I was, and took me dancing.”
She scraped at the water bottle label with her nail, shredding it. Horrified at the tell, she clasped her hands together, wondering why her mouth kept flapping. “I got drunk.”