Page 20 of We Can't Be Friends

I’m sensitive, but when I try to feel anything, I can’t.

I’m empty.

Have been for years.

“You can tell me, Chloe.”

Chloe, not Henry.

His coaxing isn’t demanding. His presence is warming me from the inside out.

I chew on my cheek, teetering on opening up or not. No one knows about the change in my relationship. No one knows that Seth isn’t who I thought he could be.

Except Cal.

He saw. He’s already tried to step in for me.

Protect me.

“Seth is upset that I’m going to Emerson’s,” I confess. “He believes that I should be spending time with him. Which he isn’t wrong about, I know he flew here to be with me.”

“After not booking flights when he was supposed to?”

“You heard that?”

“Thin walls.”

“Yeah.” I take a sip of coffee. “Seth isn’t comprehending that she’s my best friend, and I need to make sure she’s okay after last night. Plus he made a few accusations about you.”

“Me?”

“Mhm.”

Cal doesn’t ask about what Seth said about him. He brushes it off quickly. “He’s a prick.”

“He’s been different lately. When we first started dating—it doesn’t matter. I’m handling it.”

“Chloe.” My name, again. Cal stops walking, reaching out for my forearm. Missing, his fingers graze me lightly, igniting my skin. “Stop.”

I stop walking.

“Look at me,” he demands carefully.

Turning around, my eyes flutter open. My lips drawn into a line.

When we are facing each other, I look at him. Really look at him.

Has he been shirtless this entire time?

Probably. It’s almost August, and despite it being early and partly cloudy, the air is muggy and humid.

Sweat is dripping down my back in a line. But the sweat on his body? It’s traveling down the curves and dips of his muscles, an eight-pack, like a waterslide into the band of his shorts. A dusting of blond hair is in the center of the V carved into his stomach, and a tattoo is wrapped around his torso, going from mid-back and stopping at his ribcage.

I follow a bead of sweat trailing into his shorts, and I swallow at what I see peeking out from the bottom of his shorts.

Thigh tattoos. Kill me now and take me to heaven.

If I have any weakness, it’s that. I’m no foe of tattoos, I have several myself. Both of my arms are decorative art pieces, several knuckles, one above my knee, and a drunk college mistake.

---