Page 83 of Down Beat

He makes a face as though impressed at my service. “Because if you’d said me smoking was a problem, it would have given me reason to quit.”

“Then yes, it’s a problem.” I smile.

He smirks, taking another pull. “No take backs.”

“Asshole.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He waggles his eyebrows before sucking in another deep drag.

“You know.” I fidget with my jacket to save from stepping into his space and suffocating myself. “I don’t see you as anything other than you. You aren’t a label to me, Rey. None of them.”

He stares off across the road. He doesn’t believe me; it’s as clear as day.

“I get you think that I’m just saying what you want to hear, but maybe after we spend some time together you’ll see that I mean it.”

He ducks his chin, staring down at the ground as he smokes the last of the cigarette. “I want to believe you, kitty.”

“But your heart won’t let you?”

“My head won’t let me.” He matches my gaze with his own, the frustration at himself clear in the darkness of his irises. “I get I asked you to come back with me to help, but that doesn’t mean we have to talk about how much of a fuckup I am every second of the goddamn day, okay?”

He takes an abrupt step past me to head home, punching his hands against his sides as he hugs his arms to himself. “Coming?”

“Yeah.”

Although the more he fights against me, the more I wonder if he was telling me the truth about why he needs me, or if Rey Thomas was simply telling a naive girl with modest dreams what she wanted to hear so that he could get what he was after: company.

Do I even want to know?