makes me want to run out of here like my head is on fire.
I don’t understand this wanting to be with her like this. I really don’t understand wanting to do it, because if something bad happens, it’ll ruin this friendship we’ve struck up out of nowhere—a friendship that keeps surprising me daily. Each day I want to see her. Spend time with her. Fight with her.
It’s a weird dynamic. It works in a way I haven’t experienced before. This is uncharted territory and I don’t know what to do.
“Trevor,” she says. She stops moving in a circle and faces me. “Let me be polite at first and tell you that I’m honored you’d take me around your family. That means a lot.”
“But . . .” My heart sinks.
“But this is ridiculous.”
“Why?”
She laughs an almost angry kind of chuckle. “We’ve done an amazing job at not messing up this . . . camaraderie? . . . that we have with one another. We’ve been adults. We’ve acknowledged how messy this could get, and we’ve avoided it, partly in thanks to my guidelines that you hate.”
“I do hate them.”
I want to touch you.
“But you want me to go away for the weekend with you?”
I want to kiss you.
“Around your family? Your friends?”
I want to claim you as mine.
“Where would we stay? How will you explain . . . us? Being together but not together? Wouldn’t that be super weird?”
I don’t give a fuck.
I shake my head to free myself from the irritation. Her questions are relevant. They’re smart. And I’ll have to answer, but I’m not sure how.
“Okay, in order . . .” I pause, trying to get my mind way out of the gutter. “Yes, I want you to go, and yes, my family will be there. We’d stay at a hotel, and I’d make sure you have your own room. And I’ll tell people to fuck off if they demand to put some kind of label on us.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It would be easy. Isn’t it always easy when we’re together?”
“Yes,” she says. “But I put a lot of energy into keeping it that way. Into not letting you get too close. Into reminding myself our little dinner events aren’t dates. I tell myself constantly that you and I are friends, because you don’t want a girl like me and I don’t want a guy like you.”
My jaw locks in place. To hell with the fact that she’s right. I don’t want her to be right. I want her to want me the same way I’m wanting her, even though I know it’s fucking stupid. And unfair. And illogical.
But she doesn’t. And I shouldn’t.
“There’s one to make me feel good,” I grumble.
She sighs, defeated. “You know what I mean. When I decide to take a risk on a guy again, I want it to be someone emotionally available and someone who can support me. Someone who wants me and maybe could even love me someday.” She swallows hard. “That guy, by your own admission, isn’t you.”
“Well, by your own admission,” I fire back, “you aren’t the girl who can go to dinner, fuck all night, and then leave the next morning and not care if I call or not.”
By her sudden flinch, I realize that came across a lot harsher than intended.
“I’m sorry, Haley. I—”
“No. You’re right. I’m not her. And I wouldn’t want to be her if I could.”
And I wouldn’t want you to be.
She crosses her arms over her chest and steels herself my way. She gives back bravado, but I can see that my jab hurt. Yet she fires back with passion and grit, and motherfucker if it doesn’t make me want her more.
I feel like my skin is too small for my body and I’m crammed into this little space so tight I can’t breathe. Stretching my neck, wincing from the pressure across the backs of my shoulders, I try to relax.
The fact this is hard makes me pissy because hard isn’t what we are, and what we are is something I haven’t had with a woman before. If asking her to go with me is going to change that, then I shouldn’t have done it.
I have to fix this.
I turn around and she’s right in front of me, her dark eyes swirling with an emotion she tries to hide on her face.
“Fine,” she says.
“Fine what?”
“Fine, I’ll go. But make damn sure I have my own room because the guidelines are still intact.”