Chapter 60 Chapter 30 (ii)
FAE
"Thinking about it now, Lola didn’t give me a hard time when I asked to leave after learning you were not coming. I think she knew."
I looked at my hands, clasped together on the table, feeling a deep sense of regret. "I told you, I used to be so overwhelmed by you. I couldn’t even dare to think I could be crushing on you. I was already lucky being accepted by all of you. But being with you, the golden boy Spencer Myrick, felt too ambitious."
"What nonsense. You're my wife now," he cajoled.
I stared at him. And we smiled at each other across the table as if sharing a private joke.
"I know," I said in a small voice. "The night I asked you to have sex with me, I was running on the same principle. Although by that time, I had matured and wasn't afraid of you anymore, I still believed it was impossible for us to be together, so you were the perfect rebound. I never thought you'd react the way you did. Or that you would be…" I had to take another sigh. “That you’d be perfect!” I finished wistfully.
He relaxed, leaning back in his chair, his arm resting on the table—and so handsome it hurt. "That night for me was the chance I'd been waiting for. I was hoping you would finally see me. But then you didn’t go because Carl wasn’t coming… I thought it was the reason and I felt really upset because that meant he’s the only one you really wanted, " he said, lifting his hand to massage his temple. “And I should have seen it. It was so obvious. Lola had been matchmaking us all along. This would have gone easier and smoothly if I had just worked with her.”
I shook my head. "I'm sorry but that isn’t a guarantee I would have seen you the way you’d wanted me to more than if you have actually approached me and told me you like me.” I wa smiling teasingly at him. “On hindsight, I’m wondering now if I could have resisted you even if I was all about Carl. I told you. I was secretly thrilled when you focused on me during the cotillion.”
"I loved that cotillion dance," he said, smiling at the memory, looking at the ceiling as if he could see the party in his mind. "I remember not wanting to let you go after our dance, but afterward, you ignored me. It was like you only tolerated the dance with me because I was assigned to you."
"No! I panicked! I enjoyed the dance, too. In fact, I was thinking about it last night at the club while we were dancing. It confirmed what I remembered feeling when you held me at the cotillion. That I was right, we had chemistry. I didn't just imagine it."
He nodded. "The watch, babe," he said in a softer voice. "It's a tradition in my grandmother's line. When a granddaughter reaches the age of twelve, her grandmother gives her a lady's watch to mark her coming of age. It started in the 18th century in her family. By thirteen, daughters in her line start training in etiquette and good manners for their cotillion and debut. That's why she gave you that watch. She had no granddaughters at that time because Bernice wasn’t born yet." Bernice is his half-sister on his father's side, and she's only three years old now. "Even then, when we didn't know we could be together, she gave us her blessing by making you a proxy granddaughter."
I stared at him, then quietly covered my mouth with my hand. "It's not Carl who connects me to you," I said in an awed voice when I recovered. "It's Lola Leah."
He nodded. "I thought the same thing as soon as you mentioned the watch." He shook his head again, the smile fading. "She's going to kill me and then fillet me in a thousand cuts once she finds out we married in secret."
I held back a smile. "You knew she liked me even then, but you were so laid back. Then when we got married, it was in secret. You're such a tease."
He frowned. "Carl is the tease. If you'd been crushing on me like that—"
"But that's it! Again, if you had been friendlier to me, I would have fallen in love with you a long time ago!"
"Babe, do you know how hard it is to watch someone you like want somebody else who wouldn’t give her the time of..." He dropped his hand on the table. "What? What did you say?" He stared at me, and I was struggling to keep a straight face, so I took a deep breath.
"I said, if you hadn't been so aloof... if you had been friendlier, I would have fallen in love with you a long time ago."
"Babe..." he said, stunned. “You’ve had a crush on Carl for a long time.”
"Crush-crush!" I repeated, frowning. "Carl... he was a crush. He is handsome in a cute kind of way. Soft-spoken. Neat. Polite. But you, didn’t my Daddy say you were trouble? You're too handsome and too sexy for your own good. You're too much! It would be really falling. Falling in love. Going crazy over you. I knew it then and I know it now. That's why I was scared of you then. I somehow knew that if you just paid attention to me, I'd be done for. I'd fall in love with you so fast, and I can't... you're not—"
There was a loud noise from the chair scraping the floor as he pushed it back to stand up. He was beside me before I could finish speaking, almost lifting me from my chair to sit me on the edge of the table.