Page 162 of Falling Backwards
Then she shakes her head.“Nevermind.”
“What is it?You can say it.”
She slips her gaze in my direction, but it only goes to my legs.Then she looks away again.
“No,” she disagrees, “I…shouldn’t.”
She shouldn’t?
“We shouldn’t talk about it,” she murmurs.“Just forget I said anything.”
I can only think of one kind of thing she shouldn’t bring up to me—one topic we agreed not to discuss.Her choice of words plus her original half-formed question equals something that has to do with our past somehow.
Yeah, no, we shouldn’t talk about old stuff.
Except maybe we should,seems to emanate from my chest.Maybe it was smart to avoid it when we were more at odds than anything else, but now?Is avoiding it really the best thing to do now?Has nothing else become more important?
The questions are as full and real as the air entering my lungs.
And just like that, I find myself stopping walking, swinging my hand out, catching Maggie’s to stop her too.It works—with a breath of surprise, she goes still.
Continues evading my gaze, though.
It occurs to me that she might not have been thinking about past stuff at all.That’s possible.There are plenty of other things she might not want to talk to me about, right?Like our kiss?
But I don’t feel like that’s true, so rather than use it as an excuse to drop the whole matter, I gather the courage to keep pressing.
“What’s on your mind?”I ask.“I wanna know.”
“We’re not supposed to—”
“Does that mean it’s us?Younger us?Are we on your mind?”
I shuffle over and around so I can see her face.I find her eyes on the ground and her bottom lip folded into her mouth.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.
My free hand jumps up under her chin and my thumb does some sort of pleading half-drag over her mouth.Her bottom lip gets untucked thanks to a little gasp, but more words still fall out of me: “God, please don’t do that with your lip, Maggie.It drives me fucking crazy.”
The breeze moves her bangs and shows off the frown she aims at my shirt.“Well, excuse me.”
“No, I’m—” Now my thumb draws two stumbling swipes along her jawline.“It drives me crazy in a good way.”I pause.“In a way it’s‘not supposed to.’”
At that, her eyes come upwards a little bit.They land on my throat.
I wonder if she can see how hard I swallow.
For a few moments, nothing else happens.
Then that gaze is moving up more, more…
…hanging on my lips, triggering a swell of heat there…
…and finally finding my eyes.
“Yes,” she says.“Younger us.”
My heart seems to skip entire beats.
