Page 201 of We Can't Be Friends

“Enough. How was shopping?”

“Fun.” She crawls out of my arms and across the bed, around the hill of clothes, grabbing a bag from Tom Ford. “I bought you a few pieces.”

“Oh.”

Chloe looks me up and down. “You aren’t allowed to complain, tell me I shouldn’t have, or return them. Say thank you and come give me a fashion show.”

The muscles in my face want to smile. The tug-of-war with my frown is brutal. Smiling doesn’t win, even how much I wish it could.

I spot her smile. She does that a lot more now. There’s still an edge to her, but it’s softer. A square with rounded edges.

“Can we talk?”

“Well, aren’t those words every girl's worst nightmare,” she jokes.

I take her hand, leading her away from the bed.

We sit on the couch in the suite’s sitting area. Chloe faces me, back pushed against the arm, drawing her knees up to her chest. Pulling her hair into a braid, a few strands fall into her face and it takes everything in me not to touch them. Not to touch her. Not to cling to her like a lifeboat from the ship that’s going down.

“Let me guess. You want to stay here, in London.” Her bottom lip is pushed between her teeth as she sucks in air through her nose.

“For right now, I need to.”

“Right now,” she repeats. “How long isright now?”

“I. . . I don’t know.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“No. You should take the plane and go back to Chicago as planned.”

“Did I do something?”

I can’t look at her. I can’t look into her eyes. So gray. So magnetizing.

If I tell her yes, a lie, at least she might hate herself instead of me. But I don’t want her to hate herself. If I tell her the truth, why would she choose me? Why would she still pick me?

“Is this over?”

My silence is gasoline. Chloe’s knee bounces before she bolts up and to the bed. Her head swivels, clocking the bathroom.

I jump from the couch, sprinting to her. What am I doing? Why am I allowing these negative thoughts to weasle in?

Her eyelids fall shut at the touch of my hand on her face, cupping her cheek.

“No,” I respond confidently.

A tear falls from her face. “Then what’s going on, Callum? What aren’t you telling me?” She covers my hand with hers.

“I-its. . .”

CHLOE

I can see it in his eyes. His touch is now cold, when it used to be warm.

It’s the same look in his eyes I saw all those months ago. The night of Emerson’s birthday.

Cal is broken, broken like me.

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