He took a deep breath as he thought about what he wanted to say.
“You weren’t sure …” I led on.
Was it about me? About the kiss? Oh gods, I never even considered if Ryan liked guys. He might not have been interested in me at all this entire time, and I’d been making it all up in order to convince myself of some odd fantasy.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Luella Pierce look panicked before.”
“It’s an occasional occurrence.” Particularly around frustrating ex-football players, apparently.
Tilting his head to the side as he studied me, he finally let out a deep sigh. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to mess everything up.”
“What do you mean? I was the one who kissed you that time.”
He blushed at the reminder. “Right.”
“So you did kiss me back in the library?” I clarified.
“Of course I did.”
“For a while there, I thought that I’d imagined it.”
“Imagined it?” Ryan asked. The idea of me being able to brush the event off sounded as if it pained him. “Lu, the last thing I ever want is for you to think of me kissing you as unimportant. But at this point, I guess …”
I watched his mouth form the words.
It was all a lie.
I was just having fun.
I don’t like you at all.
“I’m cursed.”
13
My eyebrows flattened. “Cursed?”
He hissed through his teeth. Bringing a hand up to the front of his forehead, he clenched the front few waves there, forcing them to stick up. With a glance ahead, the two of us watched the beginnings of some sort of argument happening on my computer screen. Then, I felt a small tap on my leg.
“We’re friends, right?”
Friends. For some reason, I didn’t know if that was the right word. But friends … that was what I’d called us a moment ago. So, I nodded.
“You think you’re cursed?”
“Maybe?” he confessed. “All I know is that I have never had much luck with all this.”
“All this?” I couldn’t help but repeat his words. I sounded like Vadika when she was trying to make a point.
“Relationships. Dating.”
The idea of us dating caught something in my chest.
“It never really goes well,” he finished.
“That makes no sense. You’ve had girlfriends in the past.” Or at least, I thought he had. “You have so many friends.”
He shrugged, like that made no difference. “Right. But when it comes down to it, nothing ever happens there. I’m good at making friends, but never—I never …”
