I feel his frustration like a summer squall, a low rumble of thunder and torrential rain pelting my window on a dark summer night. His disappointment is palpable.
So is his longing. It’s an arc of electricity between our bodies, lightning bursting across the sky.
No one has ever looked at me this way before. Or have they? Has he?
His words from that night at the beach echo in my brain.You really don’t see yourself the way other people do, do you?
What if I just didn’t notice before?
I’m this close to flying across the console, to crawling into his lap and asking him to hold me and tell me how to fix everything. How to have him and Myles both, and how to not break Kat’s heart.
But I can’t, so I won’t.
It’s impossible, so I don’t.
I swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Yes.” My voice is a scratch of rough gravel.Lies. “That’s what I think.” Then, just for good measure, I add, “And you’releaving. So it doesn’t even matter anyway.”
He looks at me for another moment, and when he shifts hisgaze away, I feel the loss immediately, like the sun disappearing behind the moon during an eclipse. He presses his lips together and nods, slowly. “Well. I guess you’re right, then. I don’t care.”
And then, in a clear signal that I should get out, he puts the car back into drive. I don’t know what to do, or what else to say. I should thank him for everything he did for me tonight, but the words won’t come. So I just grab my purse and get out, and the second I slam the door, he’s gone.
Like he can’t get away from me fast enough.
29PLAYLIST:TL;DR: we’re all broken
I SLEEP LIKE CRAP.My head is too full of the faces of everyone I’ve already let down and everyone I’m about to, and I drift off and wake up again over and over. Somehow I finally pass out around four, and I wake up at nine to several text messages from Kat. I shoot up in bed and unlock my phone.
The first two are from early this morning:
Kat: Oh my God, just talked to my mom. Thank you so much for what you did for Luke
Kat: I know you’re still sleeping, text me when you wake up
Then, one from a half hour ago:
Kat: What the hell is this?
It’s accompanied by a grainy photo. It’s of Myles and me, from last night, taken from across the bonfire. He and I are turned toward each other, one of his arms around my back like an embrace,the fingers of his other hand buried in my hair. It’s affectionate and it’s intimate, like we’re about to kiss and we’ve done it a thousand times before.
My stomach rolls as my shoulders crumble and my head falls forward.Oh God.
I call her.
She doesn’t answer.
I call again.
It goes straight to voicemail.
Me: Please answer
Me: I know it looks bad, but nothing happened, I swear.
Me: Please let me explain.
The photo I assigned to her contact pops onto my screen with an incoming call. I don’t even have a chance to greet her before she says, “You have two seconds before I hang up.”
