chairs around us.”
“That doesn’t answer why you lied, Claire.”
“No.”
Good.
At least she wasn’t trying to pretend that it did.
I leaned back in the chair.
“If Nora had never existed, would you have swiped right on me?”
Claire watched me silently for several seconds.
“I don’t know.”
That hurt more than a nicer answer would have.
She continued before I could respond.
“I probably wouldn’t have stopped on your profile long enough to find out.”
I turned my face away.
“But Nora got me to that coffee shop,” she admitted. “She didn’t make me order another coffee. Or stay until they stacked the chairs around us.”
I stood up.
“What happened after that doesn’t erase what happened before it.”
“I know.”
“There you go again.”
“Sorry.”
I picked up the photograph.
“You kept deciding what I was allowed to know.”
Claire didn’t try to defend herself.
After
