notch. “Yeah.”
A pause. “With me?”
“Yeah.”
She frowned. “Really?”
He’d run at least a dozen possibilities through his head, and in none of them had this conversation unfolded like this. “Yes, really.” He fought his own impulse to frown back at her. Tried to keep his voice even and encouraging. “Why do you look like that’s so hard to believe?”
“Because it is.”
He sucked in a breath. “Leah–”
“It’s not that I’m – that I’m not interested,” she pressed on, stumbling over the words. “But, Carter…you got your nose broken for sleeping with someone else’s crush. You have a not-girlfriend.”
“Not anymore. I ended things with her.”
Her brows flew up again, voice getting high. “For me?”
“For me, because I’m not happy,” he said, sharper than intended.
Her expression softened – to one of sympathy. “I know you’re not. But I don’t think throwing yourself at a new relationship–”
He leaned back so hard and so fast the legs of his chair scraped loudly on the tile. “Is that what you think?”
She froze again.
“That I’m just experimenting? Shopping around until I’m less sad?”
She swallowed, and at first he couldn’t place the sheen in her eyes. Quietly, she said, “Yeah, that’s what I think. And I think I’m familiar, and safe. I’m easy. So. No, thanks, I don’t want a date.”
He realized what it was, then, that gleam of emotion: it was fear.
He gripped the edge of the table with white-knuckled force, and his sleeves felt too tight over flexed biceps. He was breathing hard. And when he glanced around, he saw that he’d gotten loud enough that customers were looking at him. Curious, alarmed. And, in Marshall Cook’s case, working toward furious.
“Sorry,” he muttered, stood, and bolted.
~*~
Leah sat very still for a few minutes – save waving her mom off with a murmured “everything’s fine.” Everything was not fine, and it was definitely her fault.
What did I do?
Ava warned her – well, more like told her – after the potluck that Carter was, in her words, interested.
In me?
Oh, yeah. Did you not pick up on the way he was staring at you? Those were some mutual stares, by the way, don’t try to hide it. I know chemistry when I see it.
And Leah knew it too, and had been feeling it…but it was one thing to share long looks, and wonder, and dance around, never really touching on what was happening. It was quite another to be asked out to dinner twenty feet away from her parents.
She’d panicked. Not in a stuttering, blushing, make-a-fool-of-herself way. A more controlled panic. She’d thought about Jason, about his assertions that they’d drifted apart, and that he needed to undergo some self-exploration. Thought about Carter’s nose dripping blood down onto his shirt in Maggie’s office, and Tenny’s sneer, and Maggie’s clucking. A guy didn’t go from fucking everything in sight to wanting to try a real, grown-up relationship in the span of a few weeks. That only happened in novels.
But the longer she sat there, staring at her long-cold bagel, the more she could acknowledge that she’d freaked out, plain and simple. And that, in the midst of it, despite knowing that her arguments had been good, she’d definitely insulted Carter, and probably hurt him, too. She’d seen the evidence of his unhappiness up close and personal, and then watched, over the past few weeks, as he began slowly to blossom again.
She’d handled it horribly, and there was no undoing it. She wanted to smack herself.
She sat, silently beating herself up for who knew how long; but when a fresh, steaming latte landed on the table in front of her, she glanced up to see that all but one lone patron had left, the closed sign had been turned in the window, and her mom was sitting down across from her and unlacing her apron. All her earlier exuberance had been replaced by a deep, motherly concern.
“What happened, sweetie?” she asked, softly.
Leah darted a glance to the counter, but her dad had gone in the back. Dustin was sweeping up beneath the machines.
“Carter left in an awful big hurry,” Marie pressed. “And you look miserable.”
Leah sighed and reached gratefully for the hot latte. “I’m an idiot.”
“Definitely not.”
“Carter asked me out.”
Marie’s brows went up. “Like on a date?”
“Like on a date.”
“And you said…”
“That I didn’t think he really wanted to go out with me. That his love life is so screwed up, and he’s depressed, and he was looking for a safe option.”
“Oh.” Marie’s eyes widened. “Well, that’s…”
“Bad, I know.”
“Terrible, I was going to