Page 39 of Fool Me Twice
“Because it’s not a big deal, and I want to put it in the past.”
“So you had a fling?”
“No.” I turned the swivel chair around so I was facing her. “It was nothing.”
Her face fell. “Georgia. You’re really not going to tell me?” A look of deep concern crossed her face.
I shook my head, throwing in my cards. “Do you remember Rodrigo?” I asked.
Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “No!”
“Yeah.” I held up a finger. “It’s not what you think. We didn’t get back together. We didn’t have a fling. We went out for dinner. That’s it. The little boy who saved me is his son.”
“Get out.” She pressed fingers to her mouth. “That’s insane. Did you slap him?”
“Did I…” I blinked. “What?”
“I would have slapped him. For what he did to you.”
“I’d be lying if I said that wouldn’t be at least semi-satisfying, but no. No one slapped anyone, thankfully.”
“You went to dinner with him,” she said slowly, eyes narrowing.
“And he apologized.” I studied Rodrigo’s and Sebastián’s signatures on my cast. Purely for the boy’s sake, I’d stopped to meet them at a coffee shop on my way to the airport the other day.
“As he should.”
“Turns out he was lying in college about his family. He’s not from some billionaire family. He just lied to make himself look good.” I snorted and shook my head. “According to him, he pushed me away because he was afraid of getting close… Or something like that.”
Maddie pressed a hand to her chest. “Georgia. That’s touching.”
I gave her a look.
“It is,” she insisted.
“It doesn’t take back the past.”
“He was so young then. You both were. Don’t act like you never made mistakes in college.”
“I didn’t lie,” I huffed. “Not like that. Not to someone that I claimed to love.”
My voice was getting higher with each word. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. “It really messed me up, Maddie.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I know it did.”
“I can’t trust him. How could I?”
“To be fair,” she said, “you haven’t really trusted anyone since then.”
“Exactly.” A well of pain exploded in my chest, and my chin quivered with the force of my attempting to not cry.
“Did he seem interested in you?”
I thought it over, even though I already knew the answer. It was just that I kept hoping that, upon further inspection, I would come to a different conclusion. That I would see that no, Rodrigo had no interest in me, and therefore I had no choice but to move on with my life.
That would be the simplest, cleanest version of events. This was life, though, and how often was life truly simple and clean?
“He sent red roses to my room right before picking me up for dinner,” I said. “And then at dinner he kept asking me to stay in town longer.”