Page 251 of Falling Backwards
He doesn’t let out a soft sob like I do, but I can see the tension in him and it makes me think he’s only barely refraining.
He looks at me with blue eyes suddenly getting ready to overflow before he hangs his head.
Silence sits between and all around us while the vulnerability in him wrenches at my heart.
‘I’m not very impressive, Maggie,’I remember him telling me not all that long ago.‘I never have been.’
His words right now aren’t only coming from him wanting to make things right with me.They’re also revelations from trauma he didn’t always understand.
I believe that, and I believe him, without a shred of doubt.
A few minutes ago, I was sitting solidly with the chaos in myself.Now I’m getting a mere glimpse of the kind of chaos a young person feels when one of their parents walks out of their life.And for that parent to not even walk far enough away that their child won’t see them being happy with another family?For that parent to cozily settle into new routines and father-child relationships and special time spent with people whoaren’tthe kid standing just outside the glow of the porch light?My God.
And maybe Luke is still working on understanding what that did to him.Maybe it’s why he said he was keeping this latest stuff with his dad, whatever it is, away from me—he said he hasn’t wanted to so much as think about it, and maybe that’s because it’s still overwhelming to him.
There’s so much more to think about regarding all of it, but it’ll have to wait.He’s lifting his head, sniffling, wiping beneath his eyes, clearing his throat; he’s ready to keep talking.
I knot my fingers together in my lap and listen.
“Why would a random girl give enough of a damn about me to be upset when things didn’t work out?”His voice is a little lower now, more coarse.“How could I wound someone if there was no chance I’d be important enough for them to connect with?I wasn’t consciously asking myself those questions, but I felt them somehow.They were in me somewhere.I can remember thinking I was nothing remotely special.So even having heard Jayden’s whole idea, I didn’t say no because I didn’t think for a second that whatever girl I ended up with might be damaged by it.And that’s on top of me being a flat-out stupid kid.”He shakes his head.“I thought I’d be lucky if I could get a girl to not kick me to the curb before prom.Thought that was the only risk there was.”
My stomach churns.My throat is sore as I swallow past the lump that has come up in it.
“So I agreed to the plan.It was simple in theory, you know?I wasn’t gonna attempt to bond with the girl, but I’d be nice and respectful to her until it was time to part ways, which would happen without issue because she’d see it as just some fling with me and high school flings don’t last and everyone knows it.Then the game would be over and I’d have kept my money out of Jayden’s pocket and my ass out of trouble.”
Luke holds my gaze.I hold his right back.
Moments tick by without him continuing.
It doesn’t take long for me to notice it looks like he’s struggling to do it.
He crosses and uncrosses his arms.Shifts his weight from one foot to the other.Crosses his arms again.Draws a thin breath.
“When I drew your name out of his hat, I was surprised.I wasrelieved.”
His voice is thinner too.
“Iknewyour name.I knew your face ’cause I’d been noticing how pretty you were since the ninth grade.I was just too nervous to ever talk to you, and I remembered how shy you seemed, too, every time we happened to look at each other and you smiled at me.There wasn’t a single thing about you that I found unattractive, so I didn’t understand Jayden’s opinion about you, but I knew if I told him, he’d make me pick someone else.”
Suddenly, the way he’s looking at me is a swift pull backwards through eight long years.
It’s reserved and reluctant andriveted—he looks at me in the most gently fucking riveted way, like we’re sixteen again and nothing has ever taken hold of him the way my attention has and itdoesmake him nervous, and it makes his heart skip beats the way having his attention makesmyheart skip beats, and it’s scary and amazing and significant.
We’re here, too, though, not just in the past.
We’re grown up, not sixteen.
We’re in this look as fiercely as we are because he still feels what fuels it, not only because it’s a vivid memory.
AndIstill feel it.
“He would’ve made me pick someone else,” he says again, even more faintly.“I didn’t want that.I didn’t wanna have to spend time with anyone else.If I was gonna take up space in someone’s life and hope she would deal with me long enough to fulfill my end of the bet, I—I wanted it to be you.”
Here, his voice falters.
Here, my heart climbs into my throat.
His handsome features crease with aching sincerity.“Magnolia…I didn’t think you would evercare about me.”
