Page 40 of Burning Daylight
My eyes slide to his, locking onto his gaze. “Oh? And what could you possibly know?”
It’s quiet for a few seconds, like he’s trying to decide how much he wants to say, and then he’s staring back down at the paper, his pencil moving again. “I think you’re lonely.”
His words slap my chest, and my muscles tense.
The pencil keeps floating from one area of the page to another, his eyes flickering to me and then back again, focused and calm. “When something’s out of your comfort zone, you lash out with insults, cross your arms, and do that little squint with your eyes like you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t care.”
Another stroke of the pencil. Another quiet moment.
“You chew on your bottom lip when you’re overthinking, you twist your fingers together when you’re nervous, andevery singletime you’ve smiled…likeactuallysmiled in my presence, you look surprised, like you had forgotten what it felt like.”
My throat tightens, an unsteady feeling growing inside me, anddamnhim for paying attention. Forseeingme like that as if he has any right.
“Isn’t everyone?” I ask. “Lonely, I mean.”
“Fair enough.” He nods. “Tell me about you, then, Little Rose.”
My body shifts, but I try to keep as still as possible while he draws.
“I play the piano, although not very well, despite years of lessons. I can speak conversationally in four different languages, and I was the valedictorian of my high school.”
“No doubt the prom queen, too.” A small grin lights up his face. It’s cocky and effortless, and I hate the way it fits his features perfectly.
I roll my lips together. He’s right, but I’m not going to tell him that.
“I’m graduating this week,” I continue, my voice growing softer. “And then I’ll go back home to Rosebrook Falls. Well, I guess I’m going back before that, really.”
His pencil slows. “You’re not going to your own graduation?”
I try to smile, to…I don’t know…laugh it off or something, but it feels brittle. A slow burn builds in my throat, crawling up until it pools hot behind my eyes. I blink hard and fast.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry.
If I break in front of him, and he draws it into this sketch like it’s just another part of me, I’ll launch myself off the couch and out the nearest window.
From the corner of my eye, I see him zone in on mynonexistenttears. But he doesn’t call it out. Doesn’t make it worse.
He lets out a low hum and then drawls, “That’s fascinating, but I asked aboutyou. Not what you do, or don’t do, as it were.”
I frown. “I don’t… I guess I’m not sure how to answer you, then. Thatisme. It’s all I’ve ever known.”
He stops drawing completely now, his eyes steady and dark and burning a hole through me. “That’s a shame.”
My face heats. I swallow heavily, my mouth suddenly dry. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
His jaw clenches, and he nods, his pencil making broad strokes again.
The air shifts and changes, a different type of vulnerability laying in the space between us.
Minutes pass, and I spend the majority of them either watching him in a sick type of fascination or staring at the ceiling and trying not to regret that I asked him to do this in the first place.
“I love to write.”
It’s barely audible, but it feels like I screamed it into a silent room.
He pauses his ministrations, but then he continues drawing like he’s afraid if he reacts to my words, I’ll stop saying them.
“What do you write?” he asks.
