live on ramen noodles and cereal before she’d take any help.
“Oh, yeah.” Her hand reached into the box again. “You should meet this girl. Marisa. The one who’s been helping me. She’s completely cool. I think you’d like her.”
“Probably not,” Gabe responded, not wanting to state out loud that his attention was currently occupied but wondering why Tessa couldn’t figure this out on her own. In terms of life issues, maybe she was directionally challenged, but she wasn’t dense. At least not usually.
She folded up the bag of cereal, her mouth fixed in a solemn line. “I’ve been thinking.”
Never good, but Gabe wasn’t worried. Quickly he directed the conversation to the one he wanted. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot to think about. A career change, a roommate search. I’m glad you’re thinking.” There, positive affirmations. The perfect way to get women to do what you wanted them to.
But when she met his eyes, he saw sadness there. Oh, this really wasn’t going to be good.
“I don’t think I can sleep with you anymore,” she said.
Aha, maybe not so bad. So she’d come to see the error of the strange relationship they had? “Actually, I’m glad you think that way. I want to change things around, too.”
“You do?”
Honesty. He’d avoided talking because he knew it would scare her, but since she’d brought it up…“Yeah. I don’t like this, Tessa. I want us to go out. We don’t have to tell anybody. I don’t think that’d be a good idea—it’s too soon, and people will interfere and get in the way. But I want us to be normal. Don’t get me wrong here, I love having sex with you, but it bugs me because I feel like I’m taking advantage of you because of you living here and working at the bar, and I don’t like that. As a rule, I don’t handle guilt well.”
Tessa frowned. “I don’t think you understand.”
Of course he understood. Out of the entire universe of people, Gabe was the only one who was practicing common sense. However, not the time. It couldn’t be possible that Sean was right. Maybe Tessa just wanted him to try and understand her.
“Then help me understand. What do I need to understand?” Gabe asked.
“I can’t sleep with you at all. I can’t go out with you. It’s getting in the way.”
Gabe put down the paper, now giving her his undivided attention. This conversation wasn’t nearly as easy as he’d thought it would be. “Getting in the way? It doesn’t have to get in the way. You need time to study—I can respect that. In fact, I think I’ve been awesome at trying to not get in your way.”
“I can’t do this,” she told him quietly.
“Why?” Gabe asked, really starting to hate that word.
“I don’t know why.”
“There’s got to be a why, Tessa. This is me. Gabe. You can tell me anything.” Damn, his voice sounded desperate. Gabe didn’t like desperate.
Tessa pulled back. He saw her pull back physically and knew she had pulled back emotionally, as well. “There is no why. I just decided that it’s not smart. There. Not smart. That’s my why. It’s time that I started being smart, Gabe.”
“You are smart,” he spoke up automatically.
“Not smart enough. If I were smarter, I would know people. I would have a career plan. I wouldn’t have to depend on my friends for my living quarters.”
Gabe opened his mouth, then closed it. He couldn’t believe the nonsense that was coming out of her. It was as if she was turning into some completely new person, and Gabe didn’t like it. He wanted the old Tessa back.
“I’m more than your friend, Tessa.”
“No, Gabe. No, you’re not,” she said, the ultimate knife in the back.
He looked into her eyes, trying to read her mind, trying to see the things that he had always grasped so easily before. There was no freaking way that Gabe had misread this situation, and Tessa seemed ready to cry.
“You don’t mean that.”
She nodded, her lips pursed tightly together.
“You don’t want this?” Gabe asked, still waiting for her to tell him the truth. But they were good together. In fact, they were better than good together.
“I can’t want this,” she stated slowly, with a dignity that was usually lacking from her words.
Gabe rose up from the table, needing to stop looking at her. He wanted to hit out, yell, make her come to her senses, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything at all.
“Fine,” he answered and walked to his room, slamming the door.
Even if it hurt him.
He wanted to ignore her, pretend she didn’t exist, let the anger cool. But goddamn—
Tessa was his roommate.
Goddamn.
THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON was a milder form of hell for Tessa. She spent the afternoon locked in her room. Not that locks were necessary—Gabe wasn’t coming anywhere near her. Her feminine intuition told her that truth. Her feminine intuition, along with the raging chaos in Gabe’s eyes.
He left for the bar around two, slamming the door behind him, probably being polite and letting her know he was leaving.
Tessa immediately burst into tears.
And this from two people who weren’t, as a rule, emotional.
Okay, this hadn’t gone as she’d planned. Tessa had thought she could be mature and able to handle the ending of a relationship—using the term relationship loosely—without feeling as if the floor had been pulled out from underneath her.
Sadly Gabe was the foundation she’d built the last four years on, and now she knew that foundation was gone.
And where had that come from? For four years she’d worked her butt off to get her own place in New York. And now it was right within her grasp, but her priorities were getting all whacked. All because of sex with Gabe. Tessa wanted Gabe, but she wanted to have things the way they were—but she knew there was no going back. She’d known that from the first time he’d kissed her when that lightning bolt of awareness shot through her and made her open her eyes to feelings she had never wanted to admit. She depended on Gabe too much. He was her boss, her roommate and, most of all, her friend. But seeing a guy naked complicated things, and aching to have him inside you killed all that friendship stuff in a heartbeat.
Tessa sniffed away the last of her tears. Tears were for losers, and Tessa wasn’t a loser. She was a survivor and she could get through this, as well.
She showered and dressed for work, not thinking about the big hole in her chest. All she needed to do was pull on her big-girl panties because right now she had a job to do.
At the bar, the regulars were lined up in front of Gabe, exactly as if everything were normal.
Tessa pasted her usual smile on her face because, yes, this was normal. Completely normal. She didn’t need to feel as if she’d been doused over the head with a bucket of ice.
Gabe flashed her a smile, not really so normal, more like “mad as hell, but we’ll pretend,” and Tessa looked down, concentrating on cutting lemons.
Thankfully the weather outside was sunny and fabulous, and so the crowds started pouring in early, which didn’t give her much time to dwell on her own misery. In fact, after a few hours, things did start to seem normal. When the tap went dry, Gabe was there to tap the new one for her. When a very forward slut-puppy began hitting on Gabe, Tessa sent Lindy over to rescue him by pretending to be his girlfriend. When Sean took an extended break with some redhead, Tessa filled