Page 7 of Only and Forever
“You met up with her in Seattle today,” Viggo says. “I heard. Glad you decided to come back with her.”
I arch an eyebrow up at him. “Are you?”
He smiles. “Why wouldn’t I be? You think I was going to hold against you that little cold shoulder you threw my way all those years ago?”
My stomach knots. My ego takes another hit. Of course he wasn’t. I didn’t matter to him. I brushed him off and he moved on. Literally. He left USC after that semester. A few of our classmates who ended up in our next lit class the following semester liked to joke that I’d scared Viggo away.
But I hadn’t. I was nobody to him. Just like he was nobody to me. That’s what I told myself:We’re no one to each other.That’s what I remind myself now.
“Just so you know,” he adds when I don’t respond, “my family won’t hold it against you, either. They don’t even know we were in class together.”
I blink at him, surprised. Everything Charlie says about her beloved Bergmans is how close they are, how well they communicate. “They don’t?”
“Nah.” He shrugs. “Never seemed worth mentioning.”
Relief lowers my shoulders. I was worried he’d have told all the Bergmans what a frigid bitch I was. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone said that about me.
“Our little secret,” he whispers, winking. “We can keep it that way.”
I nod.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asks. “Show you around the place? The family photos are comedy gold.”
I can’t take this. His kindness. His easy conversation. He’s too cute, and I feel too awkward, oddly ashamed of how cold I was so long ago, given how warm he’s being.
I need an escape.
I glance past Viggo to the back deck, where our sisters sit together, laughing. Ziggy lounges beside Charlie, who has her arm around Gigi. Charlie glances past her partner and smiles brightly, waving me her way with her free hand.
“I should probably just join Charlie out on the deck.”
He glances over his shoulder and spots my sister. “Good idea.” He smiles. “She looks real happy you came.” When he glances back my way, our gazes meet. His eyes dance between mine. His smile deepens.
It’s charming and friendly and just as aggravatingly attractive as it was back in college. Worse, I think it might be even more attractive now. Growing up suits Viggo. His skin is suntanned and a little weathered; there are already tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, like he smiles too much, laughs too much, spends too much time outside without putting on sunscreen.
Eyes on me still, he says, “You’re as quiet as I remember.”
“I’m not much of a talker.”
I have gotten more comfortable with talking. I’ve had to. After my debut unexpectedly took off and hit the bestseller list, there were interviews, podcasts, bookseller virtual events, where I could hide behind a turned-off camera but had to embrace my voice.
“My theory back in college,” he says, “was that you saved your words for all those overachieving papers.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Like you weren’t an overachiever in that class, too.”
Viggo shrugs. “I didn’t give that class mybesteffort.”
The hell he didn’t. I stare at him, biting back the retort. I won’t be baited by him. He can’t suck me into talking. I won’t let him charm me or flirt with me. It makes me wonder if that’s all he wanted in college—a reaction from the cold, quiet girl. Like others before and after him, did he just want what he couldn’t have? And like them, would he have dropped me the second I gave him a sliver of myself?
“I frankly didn’t pull out all the stops in that class,” I tell him offhandedly, picking lint from my shirt, where no lint really is. “It wasn’t particularly memorable.”
The corner of his left eye twitches. “You tried awfully hard in a literature class you don’t find memorable, Tallulah Clarke.”
I shrug. “Who says I was tryingthathard?”
“Did you conveniently forget we swapped papers for peer critique? Your writing was an exercise in perfectionism. Your footnotes had footnotes.”
Thank God I don’t blush easily. I’d be red, head to toe. I clear my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”