“Very wise kid,” I say.

“She’s amazing. And she was right. So I put the house up for sale the next day, and one week later we had an offer on the table.” He stops playing with the sand and stares out across the lake. “I feel so much relief, Tiffy. It scares me. I should feel like a failure. I should feel like I let my granddad down by putting this house up for sale. But I don’t. I just feel relief. Like I’ve finally admitted I was on the wrong path and just accepting that fact is enough to make it right.”

“I’m glad.” I have so much more to say, but I’m just not sure how to start. So we sit there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the waves and watching jet skis off in the distance.

“I’m going to LA tonight.”

My heart wrenches in my chest. But what did I expect?

“How much do you really know about me?” He fills in the silence left hanging.

“Enough to know you weren’t who I thought you were.”

“Hmmm,” he grunts. “I was so pissed about that, you have no idea.”

I have nothing to say. So I say nothing.

“You never tried to know me, Tiffy. You never once tried to know me. You didn’t make any effort.”

“That’s not true,” I say, feeling a little defensive. “I looked you up on Wikipedia.”

It was a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. “You saw Fletcher the stripper. Fletcher the player. Fletcher the fuckup.”

“To be fair, Fletcher”—my anger gets the best of me—“those were the only parts you showed me.”

“Really? You sure about that?”

“You were a man-whore.”

“I told you you were special the first night we met.”

“That was after you propositioned me at the show.”

“You came there to fire me based on rumors.”

“Rumors that were partially true! And you outed yourself as the matchmaker, remember? I didn’t come up with that idea myself.”

He shrugs. “I was trying to help you. And I did help you.” He looks over at me, the anger in his heated stare apparent now. “You just never saw it.”

“You hurt me too, Fletcher. You set Cole up with Katie and never told me why. You let me find out on my own. You took me to a restaurant to practice—”

“You wanted all that, Tiffy. And I didn’t tell you about Cole because I didn’t have the evidence until after you broke into my hotel room and went through my private papers.”

I don’t reply. I’m angry again and I don’t want things to end like this.

“I saw you, ya know.”

“Saw me where?”

He shakes his head. “Not where, Tiffy. You’re so preoccupied with where and when. The only thing that matters is the how and the why.”

I sigh. We’re going in circles. “You lied to me, Fletcher. And sure, I was no one to you, so I guess you had that right. But you don’t get to judge me. Not when our whole relationship was based on the idea that you could change me.”

“Is that what you think?” he asks, laughing. “Well, try on this perspective for a minute, Miss Preston. I fell for you the minute I saw you out in the audience. I never wanted to change you, you wanted me to change you. I liked the clothes you wore. I liked the sexy you had back then. I liked everything about you, which is why I went out of my way to help you. It was Cole who needed the new and improved version, not me.”

I huff out a breath of air though my nose, the anger building inside me. “You don’t even know me, Fletcher.”

“Ditto, babe,” he snarls. “Ditto.”

I stand up and wipe the sand off my ass. “Well, I’m glad you’re good, Fletcher. And maybe one day we’ll be friends again. But I’m not going to sit here and let you tell me who I am. Not when you haven’t even asked one goddamned question about me. Not one, Fletcher. You were never interested.”

He stands too, grabbing me by the wrist. “So tell me, then. What makes you tick, Tiffy Preston? You figured me out. I had a debt I needed to pay, a family I dropped everything to take care of, a woman and a child who weren’t even my responsibility. I left college for them, you know. I put my whole life on hold to take care of my brother’s mistake. Scraping by doing this and that. Trying to pay the taxes on this monstrous house and put food on the table. Pay the babysitter while Samantha went to nursing school. And I did my best. Any way I could. I came up with dozens of ideas to get something rolling and that matchmaking business was all I had for years. And I was good at it. I helped those girls, Tiffy, Every single one of them. I changed the way they saw themselves.”

“So? What’s that got to do with me?” I regret those words and quickly amend them. “Us, I mean. Because even though what you’re doing to me right now isn’t fair, I’m still here. I’m still trying. But all you seem to want to do is blame me for this fucked-up position you’re in. Do you want the money to keep your house, Fletcher? I can give it to you if that’s what you need in order to understand I like you.”

“Fuck you,” he growls. “I was never interested in your money, Tiffy. You’re mixing me up with your dream man, Cole.”

I look away and shake my head. We are both silent again, perhaps choosing our next words carefully as we try to navigate a minefield of hurt and disappointment.

“Back when I first started the matchmaking thing it was sort of a joke. I had just quit school in my senior year to help Samantha with Shelly after she gave birth. She had some depression and I was a psych major. So I figured if I couldn’t finish my degree, I could at least help her out. And it became so clear that Samantha’s self-worth was tied up in Walker’s opinion of her that I started coaching her on how to feel sexy. Not how to be sexy, Tiffy. How to feel sexy. There’s a very big difference.”

I look him in the eye now, seeing a way forward, even if it is by way of a very crooked path.

“And after she started getting better, I began to notice more and more how people perceived me, and how that perception wove its way into my own opinion of myself. Sexy, to ninety-nine percent of the population, is only on the outside. So why not take advantage of that? Why not sell my brand of sexy and buy myself some time?”

“So you became a stripper. Don’t you think that’s a little self-defeating, Fletcher? On the one hand you’re lecturing Samantha and these other girls about valuing themselves for who they are on the inside, but at the same time you’re using your looks to make money.”

“It was an experiment, that’s it.”

I can tell he’s pissed off about my accusation, but screw it. He brought it all up. “So you wrote a screenplay about what it feels like to be an objectified man taking his clothes off to survive and you sold your story to a network. I’m happy for you, Fletcher. And I think you’re going places. Selling this house is probably going to set you on a path to success. And I wish you all the best. But I was raised by a prostitute, Fletcher. So excuse me if I didn’t have the highest regard for your path to redemption.”

His mouth gapes open for a second.

“Yeah, my mother sold herself to save me. And she got what she thought she wanted too. But she never loved my father. And once I came to terms with that, I started to doubt her love for me as well. It’s a shitty thing to be lied to under the pretense that it’s for your own good. And you did that to me too. Did you even like me? Or was I just another project? Was I just another girl you needed to fix to make yourself feel important and in control of your own destiny?”

“That’s not what it was,” he sneers.

“That’s because you and I see it from opposite sides, Fletcher. And you’re so goddamned sure that you walk on water, you can’t even be bothered to wonder if my point of view is even worthy of your consideration.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

 

I don’t stop her when she walks out.