I look up when I feel Blake’s eyes on me, roving across my face, but as soon as I catch his eye he looks away. Swaying with the movement of the carriage trundling along the tracks, I swallow back that familiar venomous sting of rejection, the one that lacerates across my heart.
It cuts deep, deeper than I’d like to admit out loud, and I know it’s because I care.
My mother always used to tell me how big my heart was. Made of gold, she’d say, and “Ye wear it upon yer sleeve, Calla. So, wear it proudly.”
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been told I’m too much, too loud, too wild, too caring, that I feel too much.
On a good day, the words typically bounce off me, ricocheting from my skin, created thick with age old wisdom and out of sheer necessary to survive in this sometimes extremely cruel world.
But not always.
Some days, they settle themselves beneath the surface of my skin, threatening to strike at me, to tear me down, until I can’t think straight.
Maybe I am all of those things…
I stay unusually quiet for the rest of the journey, my hand in Blake’s, but my thoughts elsewhere. I allow my mind tofloat to the image of my mother, picturing her at home in the Emerald Isles. Even though it’s a Saturday, she’s probably somewhere knees deep in the church that sits at the bottom of street, a mere walk from my childhood home.
She used to help out with the bi-weekly messy church sessions – a place for children to be play as freely as they wanted under the protection of Christ’s home – but I can’t recall the last time I asked her if the programme was still running.
Slackening my grip on Blake’s hand, I make a mental note to phone her more, to find out what’s going on in her life, even if only to hear the familiar comfort of her voice, the dulcet Irish tones I never hear anymore.
“Hey.” Blake relaces his fingers through mine, not allowing us to become separated. “Where’re you going? You alright?”
I glance up at him, cataloguing the green of his eyes, the long slope of his nose, the curve of his lips.
God, my mother would love him. She’d probably beg me to have his babies right this damn second.
But I’m not quite sure Blake would agree.
Especially seeing as how this thing between us… it’s confusing to say the least. Is it real? Is it fake?
Honestly, I don’t even know anymore.
And even scarier than that?
I’m not sure Blake does either.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying for a smile that falls flat within seconds.
“You sure?” He frowns, bringing his pretty face closer to mine. “Usually when a woman says she fine, it really means, she’s not fine at all.”
I resist, barely, the urge to ask him how he knows such a thing, instead squeezing his hand.
“Do you like me?”
Blake huffs out a quiet laugh. “Of course I like you, Calla.”
“Do you really?” I swallow dryly.
“You want the truth?”
I nod.
“I like you more than you can ever imagine, Calla,” he says. “More than I ever knew was possible. I’m all consumed by it, by you, by everything you do.”
“Blake—” I croak out.
“I didn’t plan on telling you all this while on the tube, mind. I wanted it to be—”
