He sighs and nods and follows me to Laura’s car. “Sorry about that. They’re...well, you know. You’ve been here. It’s weird seeing you all together.”
“It is weird. I’m still kind of processing it.”
“I don’t know that it’s ever been normal here. Or them. Or...” he glances at me, and then seems to think better of the wordus, but I feel it hanging there, unsaid.
We were never normal. We tried to be but just couldn’t hack it, I guess.
I stare at the car as Shawn rounds to the driver’s side. There’s something about the way he moves that makes me remember my dream from the other night. Maybe it’s the part where I’m continuously finding myself stuck with him, and I can’t escape.
I don’t usually buy into the dream interpretation stuff, but it’s the second time I’ve had that dream now.
But really, what is it going to tell me that I don’t already know? That I’m stressed out about work and my ex-husband being back in my life and now I’m afraid of my attraction to him putting my heart in a dangerous position again, and it’s manifesting itself in the image of a wolf chasing me to eat me out?
I feel like it’s all pretty clear. And obvious. There’s literally nothing else it could be.
Maybe I don’t want to look into it, because even if it gives me that kind of clarity, it doesn’t give me a solution. At least, a better one than moving out and starting over anywhere but here.
A few minutes go by in silence after we get in her car. Shawn takes forever adjusting every little thing in her car, from the seat to the rearview mirror, the AC vents. I suspect half of it is just to annoy Laura when she has to drive it next. I hold my Emotional Support Smoothie to my forehead, finding some solace in it after all.
This car has never felt so small, but I guess I’ve never had to compete with Shawn to lean on its center console before.
While my mind is still on that dream, I remember how the beast had smelled. It’s weird how those dreams are so intensely sensory. But Shawn is right next to me right now. I lean a little closer and think I can get away with sniffing him.
Nope, he turns right around and gives me a look. “What was that?”
I shrink back to the other side of my seat, practically pressed against the door. “I, um. Uh. Nothing.”
It’s a deeply guilty and still unsatisfactory answer. Still, Shawn doesn’t press it.
“So. Mystical tit-jobs,” he says, tilting his head and raising an eyebrow at me. “And you told Laura that, of all people.”
I can’t help but laugh a little as I cringe. “If you had a story like that, you’d tell it too.”
“I don’t know that I could admit to falling for a line like that.”
“I was twenty! I thought that was about as good as declarations of love got. And you have no room to judge me, you were the one who said it,” I bluster, but there’s no force or heat behind it.
I watch the smile tug at the corner of his mouth as he keeps his eyes on the road. “I have said every combination of dumb words there is.”
“Yeah, you have.”
A comfortable quiet falls on us, and I can feel the distance between my shoulder and his, buzzing, burning, itching against my mind and heart. I lean through it, taking the easy way out and just letting myself melt into an old habit.
Just one more time.
The warmth coming off him is worth it, and it feels better than sleeping in on a Saturday. I forgot how he was one of those guys whose body just runs hotter than most. Ithinkthat’s a thing.
I feel the way he holds the breath in his chest, his whole body tensing up for a moment as I settle my shoulder against his. And then how it all seeps away as he lets a slow breath out.
I think he missed this as much as I did.
“I didn’t mean what I said outside the bar. I can’t actually be mad at you for leaving. Sometimes I wish I could be, but that would be unfair to you. After all the times I...never gave you any answers,” he hedges on the tail end of his apology.
“That’s a weird euphemism for ‘snuck out’, but whatever.” I shrug, but there’s no malice in my words. It means a lot that he respects why I had to leave.
“No, not whatever,” Shawn grumbles, and scrubs a hand over his face. His grip on the steering wheel tightens. “I lied to you a lot, and I never told you—”
“I know you were out calling home.”
