Tristen
This shouldn’t feel likea date.
Right?
I mean, it’s fucking not, and it shouldn’t be.
But if I ignore the faint beep from the other room and where we are, itfeelslike one.
Why am I suddenly so goddamn nervous?
Emmett sits across from me at the rickety table, those sweet honey eyes of his cast low enough to hide behind his hair.
I take a moment to expand my chest with a lungful and twirl some pasta around my fork. It’s plastic, and the plate is paper, but Emmett doesn’t seem to mind.
Yet I find myself peeking at him, hoping to see some kind of reaction when he finally gets a noodle wrapped around the tines and nibbles.
I’m four bites in when he finishes the one.
“Can I ask you something?” I say after a moment, my heart in my throat making it nearly impossible to keep eating.
He looks at me through his lashes, his sweet eyes kinda glassy looking. “What is it?”
I reach across the table and thumb some of the sauce from his bottom lip.
Popping it between my lips to lick it clean has his eyes flaring wide and gives me a moment to figure out what the hell I actually want to ask. There’s a million and one questions burning my tongue, yet none of them feel right to ask. Things likedid you ever like living hereandwhat did you want to be when you got older.
Or the deeper ones likewhat the fuck happened to youandwas it between these walls that it did.
“Do you believe in love?”
He blinks at me and,fuck, I feel like I’m blinking atmyselffor that one. That was not the vibe I was going for, definitely not one of the questions I meant to ask out loud, but damn. Here we are. With the air between us taking on some kind of edge.
“Yes,” he answers simply and dips to look at the way he’s pushing shit around on his plate.
Silence hangs long enough that my chest begins to ache, my appetite long gone.
It gets worse when he stands, collecting his plate as he goes, and makes his way to the trashcan.
Shit, shit, shit.
I don’t know what to do.
Staring at my plate and folding little creases into my shorts to run beneath my nails aren’t helping the impending panic, its strength building with each passing second. The pressure between my pecs is nearly unbearable.
Why did I open my big mouth?
Even if this was some kind of made-up date like I felt like it was, that isnotthe kind of shit you ask on the first one. That’s at least a third date kind of material. The philosophical kinda of shit. Maybe after a drink or two—
No.
No.
“Tristen.”
We’re not going to go there.
“Yeah?” I answer softly, my voice raspy enough to clear it.
