Perfect.“I know, Gretch. I swear, it’s fine. I was flirting, too.” She winces; the sight a shot of arsenic straight to my heart. “I’msorry,” I finish.
If she hears my apology, she doesn’t acknowledge it as she turns away to dig through the bag—for nothing, I’m sure. Every bit of the emotion she tries to hide hits me like a ton of bricks—the quiet sniffles, the shallow breaths, the quick swipe of her fingers over her cheeks she thinks I can’t see. The tears she won’t show me. All parts of her that I used to have but lost.
“I’m sorry,” I say once more, so quiet she doesn’t hear it, yet desperate for the moment she tells me she’s ready to.
Chapter Twenty-One
DON’T ASK ME WHY I STILL HAVE IT
Gretchen
I quickly tuckmy makeshift bookmark between the pages and close the book at the sound of Connor rustling awake beside me.
“How long did I sleep?” He pulls the hat off his eyes where he’d positioned it earlier to shield the sun.
“Only about half an hour,” I say, giving him my back to sneak the book in the bottom of the bag.
“Did you bring a book out here?” he asks. Not fast enough apparently.
I laugh nervously but stay focused on the task of getting the bag opened. “A true reader doesn’t go anywhere without their book, Connor.”
He swipes the book from my hands before I can stop him. His laughter fizzles out when realization hits. “Little Women.” A statement. A memory. One look at the well-loved copy of the classic, the binding that’s barely hanging on, and I know he remembers everything—the day he gave it to me, the conversation we had.
Head hung low, I avoid his eyes. Gently, I take it back from him before he unwittingly opens it and finds what’s inside. It’s one thing to admit that I reread it regularly. It’s another thing entirely for him to know I still have the same copy he gifted me on my tenth birthday. All this after I almost kissed him. I might as well have written my feelings in big bold letters on a sandwich board hanging across my body.
Once the book is buried in the bottom of the bag, I stand up and dust the red dirt off my pants. “You ready to start heading back?”
I hold the bag out for him and our gazes meet. He looks at me from his seat on the ground and I see it in the defeated look on his face—the things he’s not letting himself say, the questions he wants to ask. But I know he can read me, too.
Don’t ask me why I still have it or what it means.
After a few beats, he lets out a dejected breath and takes the bag from my hand. I’m five steps ahead of him on the path before he even gets to his feet.
The hike backto the car takes half as long as the hike up, but the silence between us makes it feel like an eternity. Not even Connor blaring Bon Iver from his phone twenty minutes into the descent could fill the quiet void.
The second I learned Connor was coming on this trip, I should have hidden that book in the deepest corner of my suitcase and left it there.
Not even twenty-four hours ago I was waiting for him at the airport, the extent of my complex feelings like a good poker hand I held close to my chest. I knew my cards, and I wasn’t going to reveal anything until he explained what happened after our kiss.
But things changed when we started feeling likeusagain. The flirting, the teasing, the playful banter, the way he held me on the bridge to snap that picture—all of it made a mess of my well-laid plans. My world turns on its axis when he’s around and, if it wasn’tobvious before, it certainly is now. Because now I look like a lovesick puppy who’s been pining for him since before I started shaving my legs. And, for well over an hour, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to the contrary.
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all.
Collapsing into the car, we fall back against our seats on exhausted sighs.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired,” he says.
“Oh my God, same.” Leaning into the cold air blasting from the air vents, my stomach rumbles in hunger. “I want the biggest, greasiest cheeseburger I can find.”
“God, yes! And fries,” he says with a groan.
“Obviously. And ice cream.”
“Oh my God. All the ice cream.” Connor puts the car in gear but keeps his foot on the brake. “On one condition.” The softness in his words pulls my eyes to his. “You have to talk to me.”
The car creeps forward as he turns his attention back to the road.
I swallow past the urge to clam up again. “Sorry, yeah. Um…I know, I’ve just been in my head about…stuff. Thinking, you know?”
