cake tasted like.”
“I …” Paige hesitated. “I’m just gonna run with this. Okay, sure. Yes.”
Sitting up, I stared at the front of the gym, tried to imagine what he was doing since I’d walked out. “So the cake, suddenly, is right in front of you. You never, ever thought it would get taken out of the case. Display only, no touching, pretend the cake … isn’t yours because it’s not,” I said. “And then it’s just … there.”
Holy hell, I was confusing myself, but I’d committed to the analogy, and I was not dropping it now.
“Cake is there, excellent.” She cleared her throat carefully. “And have we taken a bite of the cake yet?”
“No!” I cried.
Paige breathed out a laugh. “Okay. That’s okay.”
“What if … what if the cake tastes like shit, you know? What if you’ve thought of it for so long, and never had it before, and your first bite is awful or just, isn’t what you expected?”
Silence dropped like a friggin bomb.
“Wait, you’ve never …?” Paige stopped. “Isabel, I cannot even believe I’m about to ask this, but are you a virgin?” she whispered.
My face flamed surface-of-fucking-Mars hot. “That’s not what this is about.”
“I know we’re not talking about dessert, Isabel Ward.”
“Yes, we are!” I shouted, the tingling edge of panic coloring my words. “I said we’re talking about cake, so we are talking about fucking cake, okay?” I covered my face even though she couldn’t see me. “It’s all I can handle, Paige. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” she soothed. “So, you’re worried he—it,” she corrected instantly, “will disappoint you?”
Oh, holy shit, I was going to cry. This was awful.
“Or worse,” I whispered.
“Oh, Iz,” she said gently. “How can it be worse?”
Through the windows, I saw Aiden turning off the lights. With each one, he disappeared from view. For a moment, I thought I saw his silhouette by the front desk looking out at my car, but I closed my eyes so that I’d stop trying to see him.
He’d lost something—someone—incredibly precious to him. And I was the fumbling girl with a vivid crush and a temper, a decade younger than him. There were so many reasons I could think of why he might not be seeing that the same way I was.
That was always my problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t even really clear what he wanted from me, but there I was, prying open an impossibly big barrier because that was what he was already doing to me.
Aiden was opening me up, and he had no idea.
“What if …” I swallowed “What if it’s the most perfect, delicious, amazing thing I’ve ever experienced, and the … cake … doesn’t want what I want in return? How would you ever get over that?”
Paige exhaled heavily. “Well, I think that if someone shows interest in you—and why wouldn’t they because you are a fucking treasure, Isabel—then you should trust that. And trust that you know when it feels right.”
Finally, I smiled. “Why does it sound so easy when you say it like that?”
“It’s not easy, my dear girl. Relationships are never, ever easy.”
“It’s not a relationship, Paige.” I shook my head. “It’s a crush come to life. I feel like a child when he’s around, and I hate it. Or I did until tonight,” I amended.
“You would,” she said, voice full of love. “None of this surprises me about you, Iz.”
I sighed.
“Look at it like this, having big feelings for someone doesn’t mean you’re weak or asking to be hurt. But if you don’t want to do any biting right now, then don’t.” Paige’s voice took on a soft quality. “You’ve been hurt, kid. That makes opening yourself hard. But for the right person, you will want to.”
“I don’t know how anyone measures up to him,” I admitted in a quiet voice. The words hurt coming out. “After getting to know him. I don’t see it, Paige.”
Paige answered carefully. “I don’t think we need to borrow trouble just yet, okay? One day at a time.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
For a moment, we were both content to stay quiet, even if my reasons were different than hers. Paige, no doubt, was processing all the horrible baked good analogies I’d just tossed in her lap like a grenade. And I was quiet because I could no longer ignore how far down this rabbit hole I’d gone.
Protecting myself from possible pain came at a steep cost.
Besides my sisters and Logan, Paige was the only person in my life who I trusted with anything. The only