Problematic Summer Romance

“It’s the way you take over the space around you. You remind me constantly, loudly, indecently, of all the little things that make you you. It’s impossible to escape, and it makes me very angry.”

“Because that’s how relationships work. If it’s a good one, you let loose. You show all sides of yourself.”

I nod, reassuring. Pull her in for a hug, and don’t bother telling her the truth: That everything Minami had to fight and scrape and beg to learn, every little detail about Conor’s family, I knew already. He told me when we first met in Scotland. He told me over countless late-night phone calls over the past three years. He told me when I asked, and he told me when I didn’t.

Because one day, Conor Harkness decided that he wanted someone to know him. And he chose me.

And”—he cuts me off—“by the next time we cross paths, I expect you to have come down from whatever this is and to stop acting like the childish brat you so love to remind me you aren’t.”

“I would put a baby in you.”

Honestly, he’s not my type. Too overworked. Too incapable of letting go. Too single-minded. Too much of a dickhead.