I licked my lips, but couldn’t get the words out, so I went back to eating, as did she.
“Well, ah, Luke and Sofia are having a game night at their house on Sunday evening. They wanted me to invite you, but please don’t feel obligated to come,” she said, wiping her mouth.
“Oh. Mike and I were going surfing after church, but I could still make it if it’s after four.” That would give me time to prepare, I hoped.
“Bring him with you. I haven’t seen him since school. It’ll be fun to see him again,” she said excitedly.
I tried hard to keep from sneering at the thought. Mike would never try anything with her, knowing how I felt, but Leyla didn’t know that. What a disaster that would be if she met him and they bonded over their outgoing personalities. Disaster and pain.
Leyla hadn’t been like her old self since we started working together again, but maybe what she needed was someone like him to draw it out again.
As my mind worried over these thoughts, I didn’t realize I was not only ignoring her remark but also violently chewing on the inside of my cheek.
“Again, don’t feel obligated. If you two had plans, don’t change them. We can do it another time, maybe. I, ah, I thought maybe it could be a way for us to,you know, ease into our lessons.”
I bit my cheek so hard at her words, I tasted blood.
Alarms were going off in my head, and I felt dizzy. Maybe it was from the blood loss.
She must’ve seen my alarmed reaction. “Wait, no, I don’t mean go there as a date or act like it. I just meant it would be a way for me to see how you interact within a group. Data I can use for later on.”
“Later on,” I parroted.
Leyla nodded. “I mean, if you still want to.”
“Yes, yes, I want to. I want to.” Good grief, did I sound as breathless to her as I did in my head? Deepening my voice and straightening in the chair, I said, “I think that’s a great idea. We can gather data and go over it on our first…”
“Date,” she said.
“Date.”
“Pretenddate,” she clarified.
“Yes, pretend date.”
She took a deep breath and smiled, “Great. I’m not sure if you put my number in your phone on your first day or not, but my number has changed since college. If you give me your phone, I can add it, then you can text me, and I’ll send you the details.”
“I added it already.”
That seemed to please her because she smiled, gathered her container and water, and stood to leave. I stood as well, and her eyes scanned over me again, like she had earlier, making me look down. Was my shirt unbuttoned, or did I have pasta on it?
“Thanks for the few minutes of peace. See you later,” she said quickly as she left.
I looked closer at my clothes but couldn’t see anything amiss.
Not sure if I’d given her and Luke my number, I decided to message her, racking my brain to find something to say. Should I be witty? Straight to the point? I spent ten minutes going back and forth, the effort making my stomach churn.
Finally, I quickly sent one over and set my phone aside. How was I going to go on a pretend date with her when a text made me break out in hives?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Leyla
“This is me. Niko. Demir. Hi.”
His text made me giggle like a schoolgirl. Answering him with the details of game night, I went back to work. Or at least I tried to.
It had been two weeks, and I was still processing our conversation about him being neurodivergent. There was so much information that it was overwhelming. My heart went out to him and his family for navigating it all at such a challenging age. At fourteen, I had enough on my plate just dealing with school, boys, and teenage drama.
