Page 95 of Falling Backwards
Not as confusing and embarrassing as how close I was to fantasizing about him just now.
He starts saying something that gets overrun by my second, “I’m sorry.”
He pauses, then says, “It’s…it’s fine.”His voice doesn’t sound quite normal either.Kind of dry, too, and kind of low.
Ugh, I’ve probably made him uncomfortable with my ogling.
“Did you get scared out there?”He drops his hand from his chin and waves along himself.“I heard you make a noise and start running in here, so I hurried to….”
I hug my new leggings, lift my shoulders, and keep my voice low too.“Yeah.I mean, a-a little scared.Kind of.”
He takes a measured breath, then looks behind me again.
“But it might’ve been nothing,” I admit.“Was a guy that I thought….I panicked, but I might’ve been wrong.”
“Well, guess what, Goody Two-Shoes?You’re done following the‘unspoken rule.’” He looks at me and nods to his room.“You’re going in with me.”
This time, I’m aware of my mouth falling open.
A lot of things hit me at once: shyness, intrigue, gratitude, more heat, uncertainty.
I eke out a, “Huh?”
“Yeah.New plan, so get in.You can sit on that little bench while I finish trying on clothes.”
Surprised into a near-whisper, I suggest, “Or I—I could wait here.That would still be a step up from where I was before, right?”
“Sure it would,” he agrees, his voice dropping further as well, “but I don’t want this door standing in my way again.It already felt like I was about to yank it off its hinges.”
Is there such a thing as blushing too many times?Like, health-wise?
“Plus,” he adds, “the view will be much better in there.”
A jab at my staring from a minute ago.I scramble for something to say, then try to joke, “Cocky much?”
He tilts his head.“If I were only referring to myself.”
Another surprised somersault of my insides.
Maybe I should be more concerned about him causing my stomach to flip out of my body.It’s like I keep getting hit with the feeling of falling through open air.
We don’t break eye contact.He’s serious, and I don’t knowwhatI am.
Then multiple light laughs reach us from somewhere else in the store.They sound female and non-threatening, but they’re an interruption all the same.
I get back to having a working brain.
Being in that room with him sounds impossible—the rule-breaking, theintimacy—but the thought of it does also offer a sense of security I didn’t have before, when I was at the entrance alone.While that particular proximity to him may not be the most relaxed place I’ve ever found myself, it can’t wrap me in the kind of tension I was feeling a couple minutes ago.
Between that and us not having all the time in the world to go back and forth on this, I freshly fix my new leggings against my chest, then concede softly, “Okay.”
He keeps looking at me—at my face, my clutching hold on the leggings.Then he puffs out a breath and waves for me to step into the room.
In a blur of moments and movement, I get seated on the bench and he gets us shut into the small space and has to come close in order to unclip some gray sweatpants from a hanger on the wall right by me.I swear I can feel his body heat emanating from all that bare skin.
But wait, wait—he’s trying on the sweatpants next?
My eyes go quickly around this little area, and yes, it looks like three pairs of the pants are all he has left.Next to me on the bench, there seems to already be a tried-on pile of a couple pullovers and their hangers.
