Page 28 of Until We're More
I lowered my phone and cocked my head—why was he being so difficult? Not that I usually asked for his assistance with this kind of thing, but still. “Oh, come on. You were totally overwhelmed by it at first. Probably thought I was bonkers.”
“Wrong. About that first thing anyway.”
“Ah!”I sat up and shoved his shoulder. Freaking brick wall that he was, he didn’t even wobble. “Jerk.”
His deep laugh danced across my nerve endings for a second or two before I forgot that I was working on not being affected by him in that way.
He seemed like maybe he was also affected.For a few seconds, he’d hardly breathed, and as he’d stared right back at me with those intense blue eyes, I’d forgotten how to breathe entirely. Still felt a tad light-headed, actually.
So much for shoving those types of thoughts away. As Liam had just pointed out, I overthought things, and I couldn’t do that with him. Our friendship was way too important.
“If you want the truth,” he said, and everything inside me screeched to a dead stop. He was going to divulge truth? Some emotion, maybe? “All my life, people told me to say something. To talk more. Like I was a dancing monkey or some shit.”
He draped his arm over the back of the couch and shook his hair out of his eyes. “You started talking, and I thought, here’s a girl who’ll never insist I talk. There was something oddly calming about that.”
I gave him a smile, sure he was being completely sincere but having trouble wrapping my mind around it. “You must have a few screws loose,” I said—he’d teased me about being bonkers, after all, and turnabout was fair play.
“Clearly.” He flicked my ponytail. “But why bother tightening them when I’m perfectly happy with things the way they are.”
The way they are.With him and me as we already were. Which was good. A good reminder, and good because I couldn’t lose him. The past six months had really driven home that point, a big Liam-shaped hole missing from my days and nights. His voice and steady presence so far away that it almost seemed like I’d made up how close we were.
That thought combined with his words scratched at an old insecurity, and while we were being open and honest, I wanted to know, even if it stung a little. “Did you ever feel obligated to take me along? Like, since I lived next door, you worried I might see you leave without me and that it would hurt my feelings, so youhadto ask me?”
His forehead scrunched up as he gave me an utterly baffled look. “No. If I don’t want to do something, I don’t.”
Several emotions hit me at once. The realization that was true. Affection. Happiness. A type of longing I couldn’t exactly pinpoint.
“Do I strike you as someone who thinks a lot about hurting feelings?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Didn’t you notice how excited I was when you came into the gym last week?”
I nodded. “But I was also so excited that I thought maybe my excitement was contagious.”
“Yes. I caught excitement from you,” he deadpanned. “Looked into treatments and everything. Of course, before I could get them, I told you that I missed you and asked you to stay with me.”
“Thank goodness those excitement vaccines are so hard to find.”
His smile sent a swirl through my gut, but it faded too quickly, concern taking its place. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I wanted to hang out with you back then? That I still do?”
My chest cracked right open, the raw spot over my heart completely exposed. I supposed part of it had to do with him being big and buff and handsome and cool, and me being the nerdy girl who had to earn her own family’s love. Admitting it aloud would hurt, so I simply shrugged.
Liam grabbed my hand and tucked it into his. “When you don’t talk, I know it’s because you have so much to say that you’re not sure where to even start. Then I get worried.”
Dammit. For all my talk about him not expressing his feelings, now I was the one getting blocked up. And the few times I’d cried in front of him, he’d looked so horrified and helpless, and I didn’t want to cry. I swallowed past the lump in my throat, pulled my hand from his, and reached for my phone. “I should text Kevin back.”
Liam snatched my phone away and set it on the other side of him, which might as well have been Antarctica as far as retrieving it was concerned. “Leave him hanging for a few.”
“Because he took days to text me?”
“Probably took him that long to work up the balls,” he said, his voice all grumbly. “Still won’t hurt for him to wait.”
I tapped my fingers on my thighs, antsy now. I was the person who replied quickly and felt bad not responding, to the point I often had these ridiculously long chains. Then, when people finally gave up having the last word—or last emoji, in most cases—I experienced a pang of sadness that they didn’t text me back. Which I fully realized made no sense.
“Uh-oh. You’re still quiet.”
I was going to tease him and ask if that meant he was tellingmeto say something, but when he’d shared about how people used to pressure him to talk more, it’d felt like a poignant moment, so I didn’t want to make light of it. Plus, he was right. My brain was spinning too fast, with so much I could hardly process it all.
