Oh.
There’s an unsettling swell within me, and my swallow only barely pushes it back.
“The constellation? Like, inSerendipity?” I nod, flustered. “That’s a good one.”
“What can I say?” he jokes, like the allusion is anything but romantic, and I clutch the edge of the plaid quilt, tugging it close and bringing the wine to my lips.
They tremble when the glass presses against my mouth, but it eases when the blood red liquid washes down my throat. It’s not courage that it gives me, but clarity.
This thing between us, that has somehow only ever managed to fall on one side, mine or his, at any given time, only works because we’ve been nothing to each other. We’ve been friends—wearefriends. Andrew can’t know that I’m unreliable and turbulent, that I have a tendency to be disappointing. That I’m hanging on by the thinnest of threads. He can’t understand that I have no desire to be someone’s anything after thinking I was Elliot’s all. He cannot truly, ever understand what it’s like to lose all sense of self because of a man and his mistake, and the silence that comes after.
If he understood, he wouldn’t look at me like I was something he could hold or keep. Really, he wouldn’t look at me at all.
“I need to apologize.”
He stills. “For?”
“For what I said to you outside of the hospital,” I tell him, trying so hard not to be the girl that runs from her problems like Grant said. “I was just havin’ a hard night, and my mom’s doctor wasn’t bein’ positive about things…and I took it out on you.”
“You don’t need to?—”
“And I need to apologize for the kiss,” I add in aflurry, letting the words and that moment fall into the space between us.
He scoffs, shaking his head like I’m foolish for wanting to rewind our clock at all. “Sloane?—”
“I shouldn’t have let that happen. I put us in an…unfortunate situation. It confused things.” I focus on the edge of the blanket, pressing the knitted corners into the pads of my fingers.
“I wasn’t confused. I wanted to kiss you. Ilikedkissing you,” he says, matter of factly, like I already know this—because I do. Of course, I do.
“No, I know,” I shrug, unable to cope with the things he’s shoving my way. Maybe if I was less fucked up, less of a mess, I’d just gingerly take them from him. Cherish the words, the sentiments, return them.
“Did you not want to kiss me?” he pushes, trying to catch my gaze as I continue to avert it. “Because?—”
“Of course I wanted to,” I whisper because my nerves feel like a tiny, overloaded boat, careening toward the edge of a waterfall, and because I’m hoping reigning in everything else about myself will pull him back, too. “But I shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I stutter, unable to tell him the truth. “Because we’re friends and because?—”
“Because it freaked you out,” he says, unapologetically. “You felt?—”
“I didn’tfeelanything,” I tell him, gaze narrowed as I remember the overwhelming bliss that was his lips against mine.
His tongue slowly rakes over his bottom lip as he lets my words sink in, and where I expect them to be the death knell, he only reaffirms his gaze on me.
“Would that be so bad? To feelsomething?”
The urge to be honest, to tell him I’m tired of feelings that just sharpen into disappointment, sits right at the tip of my tongue, but it would be harder than the lie. Than pretending.
“I feel a rainbow of things, Spellman. Just nothin’, specifically, for you.” My lips roll, shielding each other from the cold.
“Because we’re…just friends?” Disbelief hangs heavy in his gaze and he is relentless. It makes my blood run hot, my jaw clench, my molars grind, my skin flush.
“Exactly,” I tell him through gritted teeth, watching the slyness of his gaze build, all of his reticence suddenly gone.
“And friends, who don’t feel anything for each other, typically run away like that after a kiss?” The dark gold locks of his hair dusted with snow, the arrogant cut of jaw, the bitter lift of the corner of his mouth—they turn the cool expansive night into an oppressive taunt I can’t help but wriggle under.
“Oh my god,” I groan, moving to just leave but Andrew’s hand nimbly wraps around my wrist, tugs me toward him, and it’s electric, his callused fingers against me like that.
