Page 119 of Tell Me When It's Over

My throat bobs. “What does what feel like?”

The tip of her tongue pokes out the seam of her lips before trailing across her bottom one slowly, leaving my chest caving and vice gripping my fucking heart while something else twitches to life. Suddenly, I’m glad there’s a blanket bunched up under her head. “Love. It sounds like you’ve been in it before.”

One choppy exhale later, I look up at no particular object across the room and murmur a croaked, “Maybe I just want you to know that there’s a guy out there for you like that.”

For the longest time, there’s not a word spoken between us. The silence penetrating the air becomes a peaceful filler as our even breathing takes over. Our hands are folded together, resting on her stomach again, her cheek using my thigh as a pillow, and my thumb absentmindedly stroking the back of her smooth hand. “You going to be okay?”

Turning on her side again, she rests a palm flat on my thigh and uses it as a mini pillow. I know she’ll be fine because she’s resilient enough to get past this. Anyone would be upset in her shoes, but she’s taking it better than most considering this her first real boyfriend, not counting that fucker Beckham.

Refusing to think about it, I wait for her to answer. She’s worrying her bottom lip like she’s trying to figure out the answer, even though I already know she’ll be fine. Eventually, she nods and says, “Yes.” It’s the only thing she tells me before staring off again, eyes glazed, and I wonder what’s on her mind.

I’m watching the movie and trying not to focus on the squirming teenager on my lap when she murmurs, “Kyler?”

“Hmm?”

“Can you change the channel?” I’m fighting a smile when she adds, “I really hate this movie.”

Snickering, I grab the remote and do as she asks, flicking her ear until she swats my palm away and grumbles for me to be nice. Rolling my eyes, I channel surf until I find something we both relatively like.

Sometime later, I hear, “Kyler” again, causing me to peel my gaze from the TV screen and down at the girl who’s paying no attention to David Bowie’s character in tights that leaves little to the imagination. She used to beg me to watch this with her once upon a time, so I know whatever is clouding her eyes right now is distracting her from singing along to the movie that still confuses the fuck out of me.

At some point during the film, my arm raised up to rest above her chest in a gentle embrace. Her cheek is pressed against my forearm, eyelids heavy, and one of her arms is holding onto mine. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

Her question shouldn’t throw me, and it definitely shouldn’t cause that tick in my heart to increase a beat or two faster, but it does both. Usually, she’ll slip into the right side of the bed, a spot I’ve deemed hers over the course of the weeks she’s claimed it, without asking. I’ll listen to the door creak open, her soft footsteps, and pretend I don’t hear the sheets flitter up, the mattress sink down under her body’s weight, and the level breathing as she settles in until her breaths slow in peaceful slumber.

But I do. I become hyperaware every single time she sneaks into my room, curls into my sheets, my blankets, and buries the scent of her floral shampoo into my pillow. The thing is, I could ask her to stop, tell her it isn’t appropriate, but I never do. We’ll sleep like that, rarely ever touching, never talking, or acknowledging each other’s company, and when the morning comes and it’s time to get up, one of us is usually out of bed before the other.

Not once do we talk about it. It’s as if it never happens, like we can’t enjoy each other’s company when the night blankets the house in darkness. I suppose it’s better than admitting the truth. That, sometimes, it’s easiest to love the people we know we shouldn’t when nobody can see us.

The night is ours.

The darkness is our ally.

And when the sun comes up…

Throat thickening as I swallow past my confliction, I exhale a small breath and let it flow from my parted lips. She rarely asks. I prefer it that way, because then there isn’t pressure for me to tell her no, to be the person that needs to set those boundaries when it’s the last thing I want to do with her.

But it’s impossible to turn down a girl like Lenny, who’s heart has always been in the right place, worried about everyone else rather than herself. If she asked, it’s because she needs the validation. I won’t deny her that.

I could tell her that it’s a bad idea, that we should consider staying downstairs where falling asleep together seems more plausible, more justifiable, than walking upstairs together, but I do neither. Instead, I bend down and press my lips against her hairline and whisper, “Yes.”

And that’s the moment when everything changes.

Lenny fidgets beside me as we enter the small diner, people already turning and murmuring when my hand falls to the small of her back to guide us inward from the whipping wind outside. I don’t know if she means to step into me when a few people call out my name, but she does, probably wanting to duck and hide like old times whenever this happens.

Leaning down, I whisper, “Relax,” close to her ear and tip my head with smile at the group of people staring. It’s all they’ll get from me today.

“Are you sure you—”

“Positive,” I tell her for the fifth time since we’ve left the house. Forgoing my morning run for breakfast out with Lenny might not have been the smartest thing to do since I know her comfort level is minimal when attention is drawn to me, but I wanted to take her out. To feed her in public, to make jokes and watch her laugh and not give a damn who saw.

Her breakup with Chase shouldn’t have opened a door, yet it did, and I wedged something in it to keep it from closing. I have every intention of utilizing her newfound freedom for my own selfishness. I don’t let myself analyze anything other than what I know as fact—that every single person I tried having something more with was never Leighton Grier.

Our circumstances are in the past, even if people won’t let them stay there, and I refuse to think about them. They don’t matter now. Not to me, and I have a feeling, after the move she made in my bed that night, it doesn’t to her either.

“Find any place you’d like,” the older woman tells us, not even looking up from the cash register where she’s working. I tip my chin toward the back corner, where a small two-person table is available.

Lenny silently follows me, t

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