Jake decides to keep the past in the past

Jake smiled. "Don't take this the wrong way, but there's something very appealing about the mystery."

"There is?"

"Sure." Jake stopped to think on it for a moment. "I mean, I know I could ask you anything, and you'd be happy to tell me about it. I'm happy to tell you about myself too. But isn't there something kind of fantastical about you and I just kinda, poof, appearing one day in each other's lives with no ties to anything?"

Abbie looked at him for a while. "I never thought about it that way. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about you, though."

"You are?" Jake was surprised.

"Of course. It doesn't mean I have to know stuff. But you obviously didn't just, poof, appear out of nowhere. You obviously have a family, we're here for your cousin's wedding." She laughed for a minute. "I mean, are your parents going to be here?"

Jake nearly ran off the road. "Holy fuck, I hope not." He regained his composure. "I mean, no. They won't. They have even less of a connection with Staci and her family than I do."

Abbie laughed.

Jake looked at her. "My god, if my parents show up this weekend, I will absolutely die. Right on the spot. Dead. I will cease to exist."

"You're tempting me to make it happen, Jake!"

"Stop! Stop it now, Abbie. Don't even think of it."

Abbie laughed again, and hit Jake on the arm playfully. "Oh, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that to you. I'd rather just tease you about it. If they actually showed up, I'd have to meet them, and after that, there'd be questions and talking and you know how I get around questions and talking!"

"I know. You say yes and you agree to stuff. Somehow, having casual sex with strangers seems less dangerous than meeting my parents."

"Then it's agreed," said Abbie. "No parents."

Jake caught his breath and sighed.

"You haven't even asked if I have parents, Jake."

He looked at her again. "It's not that I don't want to know. Just like you, I'm curious. I'm fucking fascinated by you, Abbie. I have to imagine I'm a hundred times more curious than you are -- about you, that is. More than you are about me. Maybe it's because you're clearly a lot more interesting than I am. Or maybe it's just because I know how dull my past is -- and how exciting you are right now."

"But you don't want to ask?"

"Not today." Jake shook his head. "Someday I want to know. But I think I want to know when it's because you want to tell me, not because I asked."

"But if you asked ... I would want to tell you."

Jake nodded. "I know that. But maybe there'll be a day when the inspiration comes from you. A day when you'll want to initiate that connection, that specific connection, the one about where you come from and what the first 23 years of your life were like before I met you."

Abbie smiled. She really did want to tell Jake all kinds of things, but she also found it incredibly romantic the way he was separating her willingness to do anything for him from her personal interest in doing something for herself. "Okay, Jake. I get it. I'm looking forward to that day now. That'll be really wonderful."

"I agree, it will." Jake reached his hand out, and Abbie clasped hers around his. They held hands this way, just hands, and somehow it was a stronger connection than either of them had felt in quite a while.