I grab my gift bag from under the table and thrust it at Jared. “This is for you. Open it later.”
Then I leave before Jared can protest, before his face can do that thing where he pretends he wants me to stay when he’s probably relieved he doesn’t have to keep forcing himself to look at me.
The wait for my Uber takes forever.
And once it arrives and I get in, the car window reflects my scarred face, a greatest hits collection of why Jared finds me hard to look at. By the time I get to my apartment, I’m exhausted from trying not to cry in public.
Patches meows judgmentally at me when I walk in.
“Not now,” I tell her. “I’m having a crisis.”
She follows me to the couch anyway, where I collapse and finally let myself feel the full weight of it.
Jared finds me difficult to look at.
After everything—after our intimate sex, after him calling me beautiful, after making me dinner and kissing my cheek like we’re a real couple—he still struggles with my face.
And the worst part is, I understand.
I really do.
Chapter 12
The knock on my door is soft.
“It’s open,” I call out from the couch where I’ve been wallowing with Patches, who’s been surprisingly sympathetic for a creature who usually shows affection by biting my ankles.
Part of me has been waiting for him.
Jared enters slowly, like he’s approaching a spooked animal. Which is fair. I probably look about as stable as a house of cards in a wind tunnel right now. He’s carrying my gift bag, the one I abandoned at the café like a coward.
“Hey,” he says, hovering by the door.
“Hey.” I don’t look directly at him. I can’t look at him. Not when I know how difficult he finds looking at me.
“You left suddenly.”
“Patches needed her medication.” The lie tastes bitter. Patches stretches out on the couch next to me, perfectly healthy, practically calling me out with her casual yawn.
“Felix…” He moves closer, and I hate how my body responds to his proximity, like every cell is programmed to lean toward him. “Can we talk about what happened?”
“Nothing happened. I just had to go.” I pick at a thread on the couch cushion, unraveling it like my composure. “How was the rest of your birthday? How many slices of cake did Emmy eat?”
“At least seven. We actually lost count.”
Despite everything, I snort.
Jared sits down next to me, not touching but close enough that I can smell his cologne mixed with birthday cake frosting. He sets the gift bag on the coffee table. “I didn’t want to open your present without you being there.”
My stomach does a complicated flip. Even after I ran away, he waited for me.
“It’s probably stupid anyway,” I say.
“Can I open it now?”
I shrug, which he takes as permission. He pulls out the vintage paramedic training manual from the 1970s that I found at a secondhand bookstore, complete with illustrations of people with magnificent mustaches demonstrating CPR. I’d thought it was funny at the time. Now it just seems ridiculous.
He flips through it, a smile tugging at his lips. “This is incredible. Look at these hairstyles.”
