Page 37 of Wild Fixation
“I’m safe if you’re here with me.”
His throat works. I don’t back down, holding his gaze. Slowly, he settles down on the bench.
“There’s no one else coming, is there?” he says.
“What?”
“You told me you wanted to go get ice cream,” he says. “That you needed me here. I assumed there was someone else joining you.”
“I did want to get ice cream,” I say. “And I do need you here.”
“For your safety.”
“For … my safety.”
His lips flatten into a hard line. He takes an almost defiant scoop of ice cream, and for a while, we simply sit there eating, the silence bubbling with unspoken conversation.
Then the second person arrives to shyly ask me for an autograph.
There’s no stopping or stalling Seth after that. He’s up, his ice cream forgotten. I want to call him back, but when I look up from my ice cream, I spot the same thing he does: a crowd clustering on the edges of the ice cream place.
One of them has a camera.
“Shit,” Seth hisses.
He sweeps the whole place with a sharp, appraising gaze. The crowd, the camera, me, my ice cream. In seconds, he’s picked it apart and reached the conclusion turning my guts into a nauseous mixture of mush.
“Time to go,” he says.
I can’t argue, not with that camera there. It’s already snapping away, and God knows which nosy paparazzo it belongs to. Seth grabs our unfinished ice cream and throws it out before I can protest, then ushers me off the bench and away from our secluded little booth. Someone shouts at me. Papers and pens poke through the crowd like thorns on a bush. Seth puts an arm around my shoulders and shuffles me through the sudden press, ignoring the entreaties that I stop and sign things. I smile and wave, trying to at least be nice to the fans, but I barely get a glimpse of them before Seth stuffs me in his car. He has to honk at the lone paparazzo before he can pull away from the curb and onto the road.
I watch the ice cream place disappear in the rearview mirror.
“So much for ice cream,” I grumble.
“What were you thinking?” Seth’s voice is a quick snap, like a slap across the face.
“I just wanted—”
“That could have gone far worse. Jesus, why did I say yes? I should have stopped this before it ever started.”
Worry cuts through his harsh tone, raw, blunt fear. Fear for me, I realize. Fear that he screwed up, that he might not be enough, that something could have happened.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Nothing bad happened. I signed a couple autographs. That’s all. Everything is fine.”
“I’m supposed to…”
Frustration cuts him off and sends a spear of guilt through my chest. I keep pushing him, and it keeps resulting in situations that make him feel like he’s failing. Nothing could be less true. If it weren’t for Seth, I couldn’t get out of my apartment.
We pull into the garage at the apartment building and wait to see if anyone followed us from the ice cream place. When it seems like it’s clear, Seth sighs.
I take a chance and set a hand on his arm. He flinches but doesn’t pull away.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal. I just…”
He doesn’t chastise me, doesn’t push. He waits for the end of that sentence, and I dive toward it, terrifying though it is.
“I wanted to go out with you,” I say.
