Page 65 of Bad Boys Don’t Date Clumsy Girls

Dylan pays the bored-looking cashier, and we walk over to a small table next to the windows. The sun blazing through the glass takes the chill from my skin. The air conditioner is blasting in the waiting room even though the outside temperature also has a chill.

“Ava?” Dylan looks uncertain. “I know you’re going to be busy with your mom and stuff, but I was thinking, or hoping that we could maybe go to dinner or something together one day soon. Only when it’s convenient. I know this is a lot.” He waves a finger in the air to indicate the hospital.

The bad boy of Oak Grove High is rambling and it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. I’m so caught up in it, it takes me a second to hear that he just asked me out. For a second time. I feel my cheeks burn bright and bite my lip to keep from squealing. I didn’t even realize I wanted him to ask me out again until this very moment when suddenly, it’s what I want the most. “Um…”. I swallow my soda at the same time I try to speak and end up coughing out the sip I’d just sucked up. Some sprays on Dylan, and I’m mortified. I hack up a lung while I stumble over to the napkin dispenser and grab a handful. I turn and run into Dylan, who apparently followed me.

“Are you alright?” he asks. His hands hover in the vicinity of my shoulders. “Should I thump your back of something?”

I shake my head and start blotting the dampness from his shirt, but memories of blotting Rex rise to the front, and I leap away from Dylan like he has the plague. My foot catches the wheel of the utensil display table, which sends it careening into the wall, upsetting the containers, and sending forks, knives, and spoons clattering over the edge and onto the floor. The noise is deafening.

When the din dies away, I’m standing in utensil debris, my hands over my mouth, and Dylan is still in the exact same position I left him in, a look of shock on his face.

A hospital employee runs out from behind the counter. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. They always forget to set the brakes on those wheels. Oh my. Look at all of this. Are you alright, honey?”

Dylan is biting his bottom lip to keep from laughing. His eyes are filled with pure delight. And though I’m surrounded by the fork apocalypse, I’m not even embarrassed. I let my hands fall to my sides and laugh out loud.

The cafeteria employee looks up from where she’s scooping spoons into a tub. “Oh, aren’t you a sweet thing?”

For some reason, that makes me laugh even more. I squat down next to her and gather up the forks and knives that surround me, dumping them into the dirty dishes tub.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, dear,” the lady says. “I’m paid to take care of stuff like this.”

“You’re sure?” Dylan wades through the utensils. “She’s used to cleaning up after herself.”

I laugh again at Dylan repeating my own words to this lady. My heart is so full at that moment, and I waste a second on the guilt of feeling so good when my mom is on the operating table. But I immediately reject the thought. I have the capacity to be worried for her and happy for myself at the same.

“No problem at all. Go on, you two.” The woman shoos us away.

Dylan holds his hand out to me. Warmth spreads from my fingertips to my toes when his long fingers wrap around mine. He helps me to stand and leads me out of the fray and back to our table. “So, I’m not quite clear,” he says. “Is that a yes or a no?”

It takes me a beat to remember the question he asked before my spectacular display of clumsiness. I’m suddenly shy and unsure.

His face falls and I see the pain of rejection creep into his expression. “I’m sorry. I have such horrible timing.”

I shake my head and place a hand on the table in front of him, but my tongue is still frozen in my mouth. I can’t verbalize that it isn’t him at all. And it isn’t a rejection. It wasn’t the last time either. Well, that one was actually a rejection, but it’s because I’m so screwed up.

I pick up my hand and place it back on the table again. He’s watching me with his intense gaze, and it’s somehow comforting and empowering to know he is so interested in what I have to say. I swallow to get my voice back. A flush of heat blazes through my body as my anxiety spikes. But I steel my nerves and nod.

“Dylan, I don’t know how to make a new friend or how to date a guy.”

His smile is timid and encouraged. “It’s okay, I haven’t dated either. We can figure it out together.”

“No, that’s not it.” I stuff both of my hands into my lap. “Well, it is part of it, but I don’t make new friends or date because of my home life. I have been hiding it from everybody my entire life. My friends don’t even come over. They are the only ones I talk to about what happens there, but they’ve never seen it for themselves.”

I don’t know how to continue. Saying it out loud makes it sound so small and insignificant. Like maybe there are a few fights now and again and I should be able to get past it. But the shame I feel is so much a part of me that it isn’t letting me express the depth of pain living in my house has caused me.

Dylan stares at me, patiently waiting for me to continue. I feel no pressure of judgment from him. It gives me courage.

“I guess I’m saying that I’m pretty screwed up. I want to save you the investment of time it would take for you to figure it out. Let you off the hook, I guess.”

His eyes squint and his head cocks slightly. “Ava, when I first started volunteering at the shelter, the peaceful way you handle the animals drew me to you. You instinctively don’t make any sudden movements—unless you trip over a bucket.”

I snort.

“I get the impression you could walk into the middle of a herd of wild horses and gentle the dominant mustang.”

My brow knits as I wonder why that would attract him.

He looks down at his cup and turns it a quarter of a turn and then another quarter of a turn. “I haven’t had a great home life either. It certainly isn’t a place I would show off to a new date. Years of not trusting my father to provide for us, or to not gamble away the little we had left, or to not disappear for days on end, have left me gun shy about relationships as well. But watching your simple, quiet approach with the animals made me wonder if maybe there was another option or at least hope that I could find someone I could trust in you.”

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