“Knox…” I squirm. My body resists what I want to say. His eyes are hanging on my lips. “That’s not a good idea.”
Instead of being hurt, he seems amused. “You were the one preaching to me about giving up the parties and scandals. Now I want to change and that’s not a good idea?”
“You should. For you. But not for me.”
“Why?”
I run a finger over a hole in the couch. “The two of us don’t function well.”
“The two of us function wonderfully.”
I look up. “How do you know that?”
“How do you know that wedon’t?”
“Stop turning my words around.”
He laughs. “What do you mean? Because you’d have to admit that you don’t actually have any reasons not to want this?”
“Ihavemy reasons.” I pause in order to look at his face, which at this moment is at least as hard to read asAnna Karenina. “I’m keeping them to myself.”
“I don’t believe you.” His glance is urgent, so urgent that I struggle to keep looking into his eyes. Instead, I turn back to my thumbnail, whose white spotsdefinitelysuggest a vitamin deficiency. Maybe stress, too. I risk a quick glance back at him. My heart is racing. Stress. Definitely stress and Knox and stress andKnox, Knox, Knox.
“It’s not as if I tell everyone my reasons for my decisions.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m not dumb, Paisley. Iknowyou want me as much as I want you. But I accept your decision.” He raises his hands and stands up.
Suddenly I panic. Even more than when we were kissing. “Where are you going?”
He laughs, looks around the store, and bows his head. He looks so alluring that I feel the need to pull him back onto the couch and to change my assertion. I want to tell him that I want him and that he shouldn’t accept my decision. Please, please, please.
But I don’t. Of course I don’t.
“If you want me to freeze to death in no time, I’ll go. Otherwise, I can simply move to another couch, and we can spend the next few hours pretending that nothing ever happened between us.” He shrugs. “Believe me, I’ve got a talent for that.”
Oh, I believe you. I believe that immediately.
As I don’t answer, Knox begins to hum while moving through the room to a shelf with books. I recognize the melody. It’s Disney’sFrozen.
“‘Let It Go?’ How melodramatic, Knox.”
He takes a book off the shelf, the edges of which are already slightly creased. His eyes dash across the blurb. “Hmm. I prefer ‘pathetic.’”
“Same thing.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Knox tucks the book under his arm, disappears from my field of vision, and reappears a moment later with a bag of popcorn. He sinks onto the couch, opens the book, and tosses a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“You’d be surprised at how many things turn out to be different than you think.”
I don’t respond. And neither does Knox. He leans back onto his couch—his, not mine—leafs through his book, and eats his popcorn. Every time his chewing breaks the quiet, I look at him, I don’t know why. Maybe I just want his attention. For sure. That tracks.
But Knox doesn’t notice. And if he does, he’s uninterested. Hischewing grows louder. Every now and then he laughs, it must be a good book, and I catch myself wanting to ask him if he could read me the passage out loud. If he could laugh again because I like the feeling it gives me. I like him. I like his laugh.
I don’t. Instead I attempt to ignore him.
