“If anything, we’re love eagles.” He corrects Ray with a straight face, and that snaps me back.
“We’re love lions,” I tell him, knowing he’ll love that.
He does. Throws his head back with a loud bark of laughter and everything.
“Man, I’m hungry,” he complains as he takes the chair next to mine and scoots closer to the table.
Something in my stomach twists when he doesn’t pull closer to me, but I have to ignore that idiotic and senseless feeling.
“You just ate like half of my mom’s cheesecake,” I protest, and make the light tone of my voice convincing too.
During dinner, my eyes keep drifting over to him, to that beautiful smile as he chats and laughs with my friends, and I have to keep forcing myself to look away.
It’s not until the plates have been cleared and the music is turned up, that one of those times that I look away, my eyes clash with Soren’s.
On the other side of the gym, he’s staring holes into AJ, and that... is worse than me staring at AJ, than letting myself take him in while I can.
“Come on,” AJ tells me, loud enough to be heard over the music, and he must see on my face that I didn’t hear what he said before. “Let’s dance.”
He practically picks me up before I can utter a single word in protest and leads me to the middle of the dance floor, right under the disco ball.
I stand there, stiff and awkward, and can’t shake the feeling that something about this isn’t right, that I really shouldn’t have ignored all of AJ’s attempts to talk last night and this morning.
“Relax,” he huffs out, and I jump about a foot in the air when he reaches up to circle my neck and presses his body flush to mine. “Just put your arms around me, Cam.”
His grumpy tone actually makes me relax, so when I do wrap my arms around him, I do it with a smile on my face.
“Good, yeah. Keep smiling like that.” He smiles too, though to me it’s obviously forced. “He’s looking right at us,” he says without moving his lips at all. “No, relax.” This time he snaps at me, and yeah I guess I did tense up at the reminder that Soren still hasn’t gone the fuck away. “It’s no big deal, Cam. It’s just us, dancing.”
His eyes move to me then, and in those deep blue pools I see something that looks a hell of a lot like regret. It clashes horribly with his forced smile, and with his words.
“And the kiss also wasn’t a big deal. I get that you didn’t want it, and I won’t do it again.”
“I—” I stop to clear my throat and to buy time because hearing that hurts more than I thought it would.
It didn’t mean anything, it was no big deal.
Okay, Cameron, time to adjust, pivot, get with the program.
But I can’t, not so fast.
“I need... to go to the bathroom.” I settle on that excuse since it always works.
“All right.” AJ’s smile looks stupidly genuine now, and that hurts even more. We walk hand in hand back to the table and I leave him there, with that insanely soft blueshirt that fits him like it’s painted on, and turn quickly to go to the bathrooms.
Out of the gym, I walk down the long hallway until I find them, the small opening in the wall that has a water cooler and the doors to the bathrooms on each side. I spend a good five minutes splashing my face with water, steeling my resolve to justlet go.
I can’t keep holding on to so many things—to the past, to people who don’t want me to hold on to them.
All of it?—
My back slams against the wall as soon as I walk out, and Soren’s right there, his eyes darkened with a desperation that isn’t only unattractive but also a little bit scary.
“What do you want?” I ask him, hoping I’m not going to be in the position where I’ll have to push him away forcibly. I really don’t like him touching me, though.
“I want you, Cam. We were so good together, weren’t we?”
“What? No we weren’t.” I lean back as much as I can and take a deep breath. His words from years ago flit into my brain when I smell his cologne, woodsy and sweet. I used to love it, but now...
