All of You Read Online Free PDF Page A

that would be highly irrational. It’s obvious the man has an insecurity issue he’s projecting onto me. His problem, not mine.”
    After a brief pause, Stella shrugged. She said , “Okay, if you say so,” but her tone said, “You are so full of shit and I will drag it out of you later.”
    Stella turned and tossed a tube of A & D ointment and a container of baby wipes into a basket on the changing table.
    “Ben asked me on a date last night,” Kat blurted quietly.
    The last thing she wanted to do was get into one of Stella’s hash-and-rehash sessions, but – for some reason, in that moment – it felt important to hear Stella’s opinion on the situation.
    Kat was feeling uncharacteristically adrift. Emotionally. And, if there was one thing Stella was good at, it was being emotional and sorting out other people’s emotions.
    Stella whipped around, eyes wide. “He did ?” She sank to the floor, folded her legs up Indian-style, and propped her chin on her hand. “Tell me everything. Right . Now .”
    “He suggested we go out to dinner…or to the opera next weekend. Maybe both.” Kat ran her fingers through Gia’s dark curls and lifted a shoulder. “At first I said, ‘no,’ and then I said, ‘fine.’”
    “You said, ‘no,’ and then you said, ‘fine?’” Stella shook her head, brows furrowed. “What the hell, Kat?” She waved her hands wildly into the air. “Okay, okay, start from the beginning. What did he say and what did you say?”
    “He asked me on a date and I said, ‘no.’ He started talking about how he understood me and, in a moment of great weakness, I agreed to hang out with him as friends,” Kat said. “The End.”
    Stella’s expression remained firmly in What the Hell . “I don’t understand. He asked you on a date and now you’re going out…but not on a date.” When Kat nodded, Stella reared back. “ Why ? And what do you mean, he said he understood you?”
    Kat huffed. “Why? Because I refused to go out romantically, so he proposed we go out as friends. As far as the understanding, he has no leg, mine doesn’t listen to what I tell it to do, so on and so forth. He reached for a commonality we share in an effort to get me to go out with him, I guess.” When Stella sat there, continuing to stare like a zombie, Kat rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what to tell you, Stell! I got put on the spot and I was sweating and I just went with it!”
    “Why don’t you want to date him? You aren’t attracted to him?”
    Kat shrugged again, eyes locked on the top of Gia’s head.
    Because there was no way she was falling down that emotional wormhole with Stella right now.
    “You said he was a good-looking guy…smart and nice.” Kat felt Stella’s eyes studying her profile. “Just not feeling that spark, huh?”
    “I highly doubt I’m capable of feeling that spark, which is why I think it’s unwise to start hanging out with this guy on any level. But, like I said, I panicked.” Kat shrugged. “And one interaction isn’t going to hurt anything.”
    Stella scoffed. “Oh, you’re capable, all right. You just haven’t met the right person yet.”
    “Okay, I’ll rephrase that – I don’t want to feel any spark. All it leads to is bad decisions, hurt feelings, and hideous endings. Why anyone would voluntarily subject him or herself to that is beyond me.”
    Especially when it involves me and all my crap.
    “The problem is you don’t volunteer. It hits you whether you want it to or not,” Stella replied. “And the ending isn’t always hideous, Kat. Look at Nathan and me. Yeah, there were bad decisions and hurt feelings, but it worked out for us in the end. It could happen for you, too.”
    Except you and Nathan aren’t slowly rotting away – dying – from the inside out.
    At her official limit of feeling for the moment, Kat stood up and planted Gia on her hip.
    “Uh, where are you going?” Stella asked.
    “I’m going to let this kid pull out every pot,