Page 131 of Falling Backwards
But I miss her voice.Miss making her laugh, making her smile.So I move on to my next question.“What’s a place you’d like to travel to?”
She lets out a hum of longing.“Wherever the big trees are.”
“What big trees?”
“The really old ones.I think they’re in California.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, and she’s appalled to learn that, so I dig my phone out of my pocket and look these trees up—with my free hand, of course.
Because whether it’s nostalgia, fresh addiction, or our fake-dating plan that’s behind it, the plain truth is I don’t want to let go of her.
M A G G I E
“What?”I ask, nearly folding over where I’ve been stirring a fruit salad, dropping the spoon into the bowl.As I turn to look at Emma, I can feel the worry spiking up to my face from my tightening chest.
She leans one hip against the counter and nods, her brown eyes serious—and seriously displeased.“He sat there the entire time.”
I stare at her for a few more long moments, then look back to my fruit.Don’t really see it, though.My brain is too busy forming images to go with what she has just said.
She went to Merritt’s with Paxton tonight for the margarita special they have on Wednesday nights.On my break at work, I checked my phone and saw a text from her that said not to randomly come to the bar myself because Kyle had shown up and was sitting alone at a table facing them.But just now, she has said that although she and Paxton were mostly interested in each other, she noticed more than once over those couple hours that if Kyle wasn’t seemingly checking on them, he was keeping a close eye on the door.And one time, someone called out for a woman named Maggie, so Emma looked over with worry that I’d dropped by against her advice for some reason, and she saw Kyle looking around, too, with purpose.
Withpurpose,she said.
“You think he was waiting to see if I’d be there?”I whisper.“You think he was hoping to see me?”
I feel her brush at some of my hair with her fingers.“Signs point to it.He knows you like the bar.He recognized me and Paxton as people you know and who you very likely might’ve planned to meet up with.He wasn’t watching us quite like he watched you those other times, though—it’s like he just kept hoping you’d appear at our table, yeah.”She pauses before her voice drops lower, carrying even more displeasure.“And there was something else.”
There’s more?
I’m growing cold, like I haven’t been wearing warm pajamas since Luke dropped me off after that shift we worked once our day together wrapped up.
Coiling my arms around myself, I lower my gaze to the floor.“What was it?”I ask, though I don’t really want to know.
“Harleigh Merritt came to our table after a while.She pointed Kyle out to us and told us he spoke to her.”Emma gives a single humorless laugh.“Still can’t fucking believe this….He said he heard she’s neighbors with you, so he hoped she would give him your address.He wants to be able to send you flowers.”
I lift and turn my head to finally stare at her again.“What?”
Her eyes are sharp now.“Obviously, Harleigh didn’t tell him shit, but yeah.He asked someone for your address.”
What thehell?
“How would he have evenheardthat about her?”I ask.
“More eavesdropping?I don’t know.”
After a reeling moment, I restate what Emma said before: “And he sat there the whole time you and Paxon did.”
“Correct.”
“Was he there when you left?Like, he didn’t give up and go home before you did?”
“Also correct.”
I suck in a nervous breath, but she continues.
“But he didn’t follow us—not from the bar to Paxton’s place and not from there to here.I promise I watched out for anything odd.And Harleigh knows to watch out for that for herself and Huck, in case Kyle thinks to followthem.”
