Page 102 of It's Complicated

“I—I’m not following.” His forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“Are you breaking up with me?” I blurted.

“What?” His eyes rounded comically.

“Are you breaking up with me?” I paused. “Or ending things? Can you break up with someone you’re not technically dating?” I shook my head. “Never mind. But are you?”

“No.” Isaac strode toward me, closing the distance between us, and gripped my upper arms in his strong hands. “Breathe, Jamie.”

I exhaled and sucked in a deep breath, my body obeying him before I’d even realized I’d held my breath in the first place.

“No. I’m not ending things or breaking up with you or anything like that.” He squeezed my arms. “Where is this coming from?” His eyes widened again. “Do you want to break up with me?”

“No,” I said quickly. “But you’ve been so weird tonight. Something is wrong. I can tell. I didn’t want to push you because I know how much you hate that, but?—”

Isaac cut me off with a sweet kiss.

I felt marginally calmer when he pulled away.

“I’m sorry, Jamie.” He rubbed my arms.

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because I was trying to do something but failed epically and almost fucked everything up.”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times. “Huh?”

He dropped his hands from my arms, two spots of color painting his already flushed cheeks.

Was Isaac blushing? I couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed like that. Isaac was fearless, and the most confident person I’d ever met. What the hell was going on?

“So, I…uh, was trying to…um. This was…” he babbled.

“Z?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, then raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry.”

“Why do you keep apologizing?”

“Because I’m screwing everything up.”

“What are you screwing up?” I asked, trying to follow the conversation. “I’m gonna need some context here, Z.”

“Tonight was a date,” he blurted.

A weird sort of silence descended on me, like I’d gone temporarily deaf, then lifted a few seconds later.

“What?” I croaked.

He searched my face, his eyes bright with something I couldn’t read.

“A date?” I asked.

He nodded grimly. “I think it’s fair to say I suck at romance.”

“We’ll circle back to that in a second,” I said, still reeling from his announcement. “This was a date?”

“Yeah. Or at least it was supposed to be.” He shot me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry?—”

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