‘Um.’ I frowned down at my hands. ‘I don’t mind sitting here.’
‘Lucas?’ Kit waited until I’d fought off the urge to tell him the way he said my name was like no one else and looked up at him. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes.’ I slipped my hands under my legs to stop myself fiddling with the laces of my hoodie. ‘I just thought maybe you’d be more comfortable with me here?’
If I’d been right about what I’d observed at Bonnie and Joshua’s house, then this gave Kit an easy out. We wouldn’t have to actually talk about something that was probably hard for him, but he’d know I wouldn’t go stomping across his boundaries.
He scrunched his nose. ‘Why would I be more comfortable with you over there?’
Perhaps I was being more subtle in alluding to Kit’s issue than I realised, which didn’t seem likely since I’d been about as subtle as a brick through a window with him so far.
‘I wasn’t watching you or anything like that.’ I began as I meant to go on by making this as awkward as possible. ‘It’s just, I noticed last night that you moved away every time someonetouched you. I thought maybe you don’t like it when people are close, and I didn’t want to make you unhappy.’
Kit’s eyes widened as I spoke, then he dropped his face into his hands.
‘I’m sorry if you don’t like to talk about it,’ I went on when he didn’t do anything but breathe heavily, his slender shoulders rising and falling. ‘I just wanted you to know I’ll respect your boundaries. If you don’t want to be touched, I won’t touch you.’
Horror lashed through me when Kit’s back heaved with a sob. It wasn’t that he was crying, but that I had no idea how to comfort someone who didn’t want to be hugged. Mum always said a cuddle made everything a little better, and Aster would have climbed inside me on several occasions if that was possible.
‘I’m sorry I made you sad by talking about this.’ I moved to the edge of my chair. Still a good distance from Kit, but close enough that he would know I cared. ‘We don’t have to ever speak about it again.’
‘You’re wrong there.’ He straightened and pushed his hair back from his forehead, his fingers burrowing into the soft looking strands as he gazed up at the ceiling and laughed. Dimples popped on the smooth skin of his cheeks. ‘We need to talk about it more right now.’
‘You’re not crying.’ I struggled to compute that Kit was smiling, when I thought I’d pushed him into a deep sadness.
‘I’m not crying.’ He dropped his hands onto the puzzle board on his lap and lowered his gaze to meet mine. ‘And I don’t dislike it when people touch me.’
‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘Why did you move away when people touched you last night then?’
Kit bit his lip, and I rewound what I’d said.
‘Shit. Sorry.’ I dug my fingers into the undersides of my legs. ‘You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. I knowwe said we want to be friends and I really do want that, but it doesn’t mean you have to share everything with me.’
‘I don’t mind talking about it,’ Kit said after I’d babbled myself into silence. His high cheekbones coloured a deep rose. ‘It’s kind of embarrassing.’
That shocked a laugh out of me. ‘You’re worried about embarrassing yourself in front of me?’
Kit smiled, his dimples popping again, but then worried his lip with perfectly straight teeth. ‘You had nothing to be embarrassed about. This is something most people would find weird.’
‘I won’t find it weird,’ I promised, then revised, ‘Or, if I do, I promise to be as nice to you about it as you have been about my mouth malfunctions.’
Kit pressed his lips together, but it looked more like he was holding in a smile than any sadness.
‘Fine.’ He spread his hands on the puzzle board. ‘It’s not that I don’t want my friends to touch me. It’s actually the opposite.’
‘You want them to touch you,’ I said slowly. ‘Then why do you always move away?’
The blush tinting Kit’s cheeks burned bright. ‘Because I want it way more than they do.’
I blinked at him. Before I could find the words to unpick what he’d said, he forged on.
‘I wasn’t very well as a baby, which meant I had to spend a lot of time in an incubator,’ he said in a rush, his eyes flicking between me and his spread hands. ‘I don’t know if that changed something in me or whether I would have been like this anyway, but I always want to touch the people I care about way more than they want to touch me.’ His shoulders hunched, his gaze fixed on the puzzle board. ‘Even my mum had to tell me to back off sometimes. I’ve been told by partners that it’s not normal to be so needy, that I have to give people space.’
I marvelled at the sudden urge to push whoever had made Kit feel bad about needing touch over Doughnut’s seawall.
‘Kit?’ I waited for him to look at me. ‘Can I join you on the sofa?’
His eyes wary, he nodded.
