Page 83 of Over the Edge

“When have you been going to sleep recently?” Garrett asks as he walks toward the right side of the bed. I look up from where I’m lying and rotate on top of the covers as he picks up the pillow and pats it into what I assume is his preferred position.

We’ve each taken turns in the en suite bathroom, changing and showering. I had to stare very hard at my phone when he came out in sweatpants and a pale blue shirt clinging to his damp skin. He might as well be naked.

Okay not really, but close.

“Ha.” The sound escapes from me in a gust of air. “Sometime between one and four in the morning. You know, that type of sleep where you close your eyes and everything is just hazy.”

“You wake up and never know if you actually slept.” He follows my train of thought.

“Reminds me of seltzer water.”

“Or those lime tortilla chips.”

“Yes. Exactly that.” I almost cheer as I sit up and point. I’m so close that my finger lands on his chest. I pull it away faster than if I had touched a hot stove.

His eyes follow my hand and his brows pull tight. I used to think that the expression indicated he was judging me, but now I’m not so sure. With how familiar I am with that expression, how often I’ve earned it in response to stupid jokes, that would mean he’s spent a lot of time thinking about me. The possibility makes my mouth go dry.

Him thinking about me is one thing. Him thinking about me the way I’ve been thinking about him? That's entirely different.

“So, I guess we have a few hours to kill, unless we want to stare at the ceiling and pretend we’re sleeping, but I get anxious breathing around people when it’s super quiet,” I say, unable to stop the already mounting anxiety to turn into a ramble.

“That seems wildly inconvenient.”

“Okay, that’s not what I mean,” I stutter, then force myself to breathe. “I used to wear headphones and listen to music while I was walking around and then I just felt like I was breathing too loud in public so I would just, like, hold my breath.”

“Oh,” he mutters, but I’m looking away so he can’t see the pink flush I know is on my face.

“Yeah, I know, it’s embarrassing. I literally would stop myself from breathing if I thought it would bother someone,” I say as I start to turn to the night stand in search of my laptop. “Let’s just watch a movie or something.”

Garrett reaches, crossing the gap between us and holds my hand, drawing me back to him. I risk looking at him and am met with tender caramel eyes. “It’s not embarrassing. I mean, I hope you are comfortable breathing around me. You care about people so much. Sometimes I’m around you and it feels like you are on this earth to balance out all the people who don’t care enough.”

“I can breathe around you.” Most of the time at least. The exceptions are always moments like this when he steals the air from my lungs. I swallow hard as I work around the words caught in my throat. “So, a movie?”

“Yeah. You pick.”

I pull my laptop from the nightstand and position it between us. I’m navigating to Netflix from my browser’s bookmarked websites when lighting strobes through the sky. The lights flicker, fighting to stay on before the room goes dark. The only light left comes from the screen. I optimistically click my profile and the server shows an error.

“I guess we’re not watching a movie then,” I say and start to feel panicked. I need some sort of distraction if he’s going to lay next to me all night.

“Wait.” The bed dips as he turns away. “I have something downloaded on my phone.”

“Wizard of Oz?” I ask, teasing.

“When Harry Met Sally.”

“I thought you said you never watched it, because if you have you could have spared us my very long explanations,” I say.

“I haven’t. That’s why I have it downloaded. If you keep making references, I want to understand them,” he says. “I was planning to watch it this weekend.”

His words sound startlingly similar toI want to understand you. I need to find a way of stopping this line of thinking if it’s what I fall into when I’m around him. He doesn’t see me that way. He doesn’t do relationships. Hell, based on so much of what we’ve talked about, I don’t know if he even believes in love that way for himself. And I struggle to stay casual with things. If something happens I’ll keep wanting more.

“Oh,” I say. “It’s going to drain your battery.”

“It’s your favorite, right?”

My eyes are still adjusting to the darkness, but I know his every outline. I could close my eyes and it wouldn’t matter. If I was an artist I could draw him from memory.

“Yeah.”

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