Page 63 of Dropping the Ball

“It was the best of years, it was the worst of years.”

I tilt my head. “Are you going to quote every book we read or song we heard in high school?”

“No, because that would let you wiggle out of this conversation.” His smile fades and his watchful expression returns. “Tell me what just happened.”

But he’s opened the door, as we say in cross-examinations, and I’m not walking away. “I will if you tell me why it didn’t happen in high school.”

He rubs his lips together, and my pulse ticks up because now I know how they feel.

“Deal,” he says. “But you first.”

I should have an answer for this given how many talks I’ve given myself about why I can’t get distracted right now. But I’d never planned for a conversation about it, and I don’t have the words neatly organized.

“We kissed,” I start. Then I falter because I don’t know how to explain why I stopped the kiss. I take a deep breath. “I feel like every answer I give here makes a lot of assumptions.”

“I won’t hold it against you.”

I rub my hands over my face. “It wasn’t the kiss, because that was . . .”

“Fire,” he supplies.

“Fire,” I agree. “It’s what’s after the kiss. Here come the assumptions. I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I’m not saying you are. Or that if you were, it would be with me. But the way I’m wired, I don’t do casual. And I don’t do complicated. I’ve had one long-term relationship, and it made sense.”

Something flickers through his eyes. Something that says he doesn’t love this answer, but I don’t know how to decode it.

“You think we don’t make sense?” he asks.

“We’d be complicated,” I say. “My last relationship was in law school. Similar schedules, similar goals. Same workload. We didn’t have a problem making time when we could, didn’t have issues when we couldn’t.”

“Sounds hot.”

“Micah . . .”

He shrugs. “I’ve got a relationship in my past too. College. It was opposite of yours. It was intense and made no sense at all.”

Another burst of hot prickles surges in my chest, but it has an acidic edge. Note to self: Google emotional acid reflux.

“It’s a strange feeling to be hungry for someone all the time,” he continues, his tone almost distracted, like he’s gone inside a memory. “To lose sleep or an entire day because you’re so wrapped up in them.”

I hate her. I give him my politely interested face. “Why aren’t you with her?”

He blinks and focuses on me. “Figured some stuff out. Story for another time. Maybe you and I both got it wrong, but if I had to pick, I’d still take wild over ‘making sense.’”

Me too, and that’s the problem. That is what the energy feels like between Micah and me. Despite his gentle teasing and low-key invitations to dance or trick-or-treat, despite his ability to read and meet a need with breakfast burritos and gift shop sweats, the truth came roaring out in that kiss.

“Fire,” I say aloud. “It shouldn’t mean good when it’s almost always a bad thing. I don’t have time to burn my life down right now. I’m barely holding it together”—failing utterly—“getting this gala delivered for Madison. And when I’m not there, I’m in my study, falling asleep on that sofa every night. And as soon as I pass the Texas bar, I have to study for the California bar because we do so much business out there.”

Micah rubs his hand over his hair, mussing it as he studies me. I feel see-through again, like the day his friend shouted at me from the soccer pitch about how I liked Micah. Except this time, I told on myself.

I shift on the sofa cushion, trying to get more comfortable. “I’m not saying you want a—”

“Don’t.” He says it quietly. “You assumed right about what I want. But you’re wrong that we don’t make sense.”

“We don’t.”

“Kaitlyn.” He looks me dead in the eye. “I can prove you’re wrong.”

I have never felt such an equal and opposite internal reaction. Roller coaster covers it, only it’s the giddy stomach drop feeling of the plunge and the terrified head feeling of the climbat the same time. I spent my entire senior year fighting this feeling.

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