Because I'm in love with him, and I have to break up with him, and?—
He deserves someone who can give him everything. Someone who isn't about to?—
"Doc!"
No. No, no, no.
I turn, and there he is. Jogging toward me across the quad. In grey sweatpants.
Grey. Sweatpants.
The kind that hang low on his hips and cling to his thighs and leave absolutely nothing to the imagination regarding what's happening in the general crotch region.
"Nnnngh."
The sound escapes me before I can stop it. Loud. Mortifyingly loud.
Gavin's face does a complicated shuffle, concern shifting to confusion shifting to something that might be pleased if I wasn't too busy dying of embarrassment to analyze it properly.
"Did you just?—"
"No." My face is on fire. "I didn't. That wasn't… I have allergies."
"To my sweatpants?"
"To… to the evening air. Pollen. It's pollen season."
"It's early for that, isn't it?"
"California pollen is different!"
He's close now. Too close. I can smell him, clean sweat and that body wash he uses, and something underneath that's just Gavin. My brain shorts out for a second.
Focus. You're here to break up with him.
"We need to talk," I blurt out.
His expression shifts, and I watch caution creep into those warm brown eyes. The change is subtle but unmistakable, the easy openness from seconds before shuttering behind a look I've come to recognize.
Oh shit! He's reading me right now.
The way he does when he thinks I'm not paying attention. Like he can see straight through skin and bone to watch my neurons firing in real time.
His head tilts slightly, and I know he's cataloging every micro-expression, every tell I don't even realize I'm broadcasting. The way his eyes move across my face feels almost clinical, except there's nothing cold about it.
It's the kind of attention you get from someone who really wants to understand, who's learned to read the world bywatching carefully because people don't always say what they mean.
And right now, he's seeing too much.
"Okay," he says slowly. "Talk."
"It's just… I've been thinking, and—" The words tangle in my throat. "You're great. You're really great. But maybe this isn't, I mean, we're very different, and your family just… and I don't want you to feel like you have to?—"
"Doc."
"—because you deserve someone who can actually be there for you, someone who isn't?—"
"Seb."
