“Nope. My friends are guys.”
That made me laugh without meaning to, and now it was my turn to accidentally spray Camden with pink liquid.
“I’m sorry!” I said, still giggling.
“Just don’t try to grope me and we’ll call it even,” he said with a wink. “It’s good to see you laughing, though. For a bit there you were looking like the before picture for Prozac.”
“Clubs aren’t as much fun when you’re not drinking.” Maybe Camden wasn’t as fluent in body language as he thought. I wasn’t depressed. I felt . . . unmoored. Like I was drifting through a situation I had no clue how to handle and I didn’t enjoy that feeling. I was used to things going my way and I liked being in charge of my life.
Now Camden was upending all of that and I didn’t know what to do about it. The first issue was that all of this was happening solely because he wanted to get information from me. Which definitely put a huge damper on things, but only when I remembered. And he made it oh so easy to forget.
The main issue was my rule: no dating men at work. I couldn’t go against a rule that I had set.
You made the rule, you can unmake it. You’re the boss, my mom’s voice said.
Yes, so I have to be the example.
From Camden’s questioning expression I realized that I’d said the words out loud. Arguing with my inner-mother voice as if she were here in the room with us.
Pretty humiliating.
I tried to direct him a different way. “You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. You didn’t want to ask me what city I was born in or the name of my childhood pet?”
“I’m not allowed to ask you any questions. It was what you said you wanted for your birthday.”
That was seriously the sweetest thing ever. He was being not annoying as a present for me. I could feel my heart doing little happy flips in my chest.
Before I could respond he added, “But I’m not really sure how to have a conversation without asking questions.”
“It is difficult,” I said, staying quiet to make it a bit harder.
“You could ask me questions,” he offered.
“I could. But I don’t think I will.”
“That’s not fair.”
I took another sip of my drink as I shrugged. “I’m not trying to be.”
Camden took that challenge with a little half smile. “Okay. So, you should tell me what sort of things you do in your free time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, being deliberately obtuse.
“A hobby, perhaps.” He was choosing his words so carefully, trying to skirt around the “no questions” situation.
“I do have hobbies. There are things I do in my free time that I definitely enjoy.”
“It would be helpful if you could be maybe seventy-four percent less vague.”
“It would also be helpful if you could be like, seventy-four percent more honest,” I told him.
“What am I not being honest about?” He finally caved and asked a question, either forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to be doing that or he was truly perplexed by my statement.
I reminded myself that this was not the time to confront him about his misplaced suspicions. This was about Sadie and her wedding. It wasn’t my chance to pretend like I was on one of those daytime talk shows where I’d strap him to a lie detector to prove “that was a lie!”
“You know,” I told him, “I said I didn’t want you to interrogate me. I didn’t say anything about not asking me questions. Those two things are different. I know a conversation is supposed to be give-and-take.”
His hand drifted up, like he meant to touch my face, and my cheek tingled in anticipation. Then there was the sinking disappointment when I realized he wasn’t going to follow through.
But he made up for it when he said in a low, rough voice, “I think I’d like giving and taking with you.”
That had me swallowing hard, made my breathing shallow. My body apparently didn’t care that none of this was real. I cleared my throat, trying to relieve the tightness. “I know that asking questions about another person is important. The last man I went on a date with didn’t ask me any questions at all. Well, that’s not strictly true. He did say, ‘What else do you want to know about me?’”
He studied me for a moment, like I was a mystery he didn’t understand. “I find it hard to believe that anyone lucky enough to date you wouldn’t want to know everything about you.”