Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,187

now I have to pass that stupid test.”

That sent her backward just a bit. “Yeah, but you’re going to pass it. I mean, we’ve been studying and everything.”

“Yeah, but this is me we’re talking about, not you or Nelson.”

“Me and Nelson? What do we have to do with anything?”

Greg never took his gaze off the screen as he tapped through whatever he was doing. “Nothing. It’s just…” He shrugged but said no more.

For a long second Taylor puzzled about that before some of the positive psychology training started to trickle back in. Learned helplessness. She knew it just looking at him. Not knowing how he might take it, she gently put her hand on his back. “Hey, just so you know, you don’t have to be us, just be you.”

He let out a soft breath, but she saw what he didn’t say stream across his face. Worry and sadness for him brushed her heart. “Come on, Greg.” She laced her arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder. “You are like the best guy I’ve ever known. You’re smart and fun. You work stupidly-hard, harder than any of us, that’s for sure. You go for what you want, and you don’t take no for an answer. Why do you always sell yourself so short?”

This conversation was doing nothing good for Greg’s heart. He kept his head down as he worked, hoping he wasn’t going to mess up her computer before she even got to use it.

“You’re going to be great at this job,” she continued, and the softness of her voice coupled with her gentle touch drove through him like a freight train. “You’ll see.”

“Uh, hey,” Nelson said suddenly coming in the door, but he stopped like he’d slammed into a brick wall when he saw them sitting together like that.

Taylor jumped and jerked upright. She glanced at Greg before looking back at Nelson.

“I…” Nelson stumbled, and he pointed behind him as if that would help. “I was going to tell you, there’s food if you’re hungry.”

Again, Taylor glanced at Greg who looked like he’d just been shot. She got her head to nod as she dragged her gaze over to Nelson. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

He looked at one of them and then the other. “Sure… sure thing.”

Greg wanted to scream at the world that kept dumping him off of it. That wasn’t how it looked. That wasn’t how it was. But he knew what Nelson now thought. “Do you want Office stuff on here or are you just going to use the programs online?”

Taylor didn’t know exactly what had just happened, but she knew it was bad. “Whatever’s easiest is fine.”

“K.”

The rest of the evening was quiet and awkward. Greg had gotten her laptop running, so she transferred her paper to it, said she had a lot of homework, and took her small plate of Hamburger Helper to Greg’s room to eat. She knew she should have told him she was moving, but it was like a wall had gone up between them and she had no idea how to get over it.

In his room with the door shut, she turned on the listen list she’d made of Hauser and Benetta. He played the cello, she sang like an angel. But what Taylor liked most was how he looked at her, like she was fascinating and wonderful and his everything all rolled into one. The two of them had come across her feed on FriendsLink earlier, and she’d spent thirty minutes downloading every intimate performance they had made together.

Sitting there, with her new laptop, she watched another of their videos. Benetta always sat on his knee while he played the cello with his arm wrapped around her. What it must be like to be so in love with someone, to be so safe like that. But once again, that was a fairytale, and fairytales didn’t happen for girls like her.

On Tuesday, Greg found that it was easy to not be with her if he just didn’t try. It was better for both of them that way. Besides, he had a new job to think and worry about, and by five, he was keenly aware that this job was going to be far more taxing than his previous one. Of course, there wasn’t as much physical effort to it, but there was a lot more to mentally keep up with. He’d absorbed so many instructions from Izzy by the time he got to his break time, that he thought