She hummed. “And what about you?”
It was sad, the prospect of telling her he’d spent the whole week in his underwear killing bad guys on a screen. But as he shrugged and started to relate it anyway, she encouraged him. Asked him questions, getting him to ramble about his family and his parents’ house and this swamp of a town where they lived.
“I can’t believe we never talked about any of this. Before,” he said.
“Guess we were busy with other things. But I was always interested, you know.”
He hadn’t doubted it. Still, it was nice to have her ask these questions. Show an interest in his life.
Being just friends sucked, but maybe…
Maybe it was a gateway to being a hell of a lot more than they had been before.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“What’s got you smiling so much?”
Adam looked up from his phone, squinting against the sunlight at the face in silhouette above him. His grin shifted, becoming less the soft, private one he reserved for conversations with Jo and more the public one that everybody else got to see. Including his ex-girlfriend.
Funny how much could change in a couple of months.
“Nothing much,” he lied. Looking down again, he finished typing out his reply and blanked the screen of his phone before tucking it in his pocket.
Dropping her bag, Shannon plunked herself beside him. He was camped out on a bench, killing time until his next class and soaking up the sunshine while it lasted. The sky shone a crisp, clear blue, the leaves barely starting to hint at changing colors. Autumn would be descending for real, soon. He shook his head at himself. At the time, he’d never thought he’d miss Puerto Rico’s heat, and now here he was, longing for it. Among other things.
Shannon nudged his foot with hers. “Was wondering when I’d run into you.”
He’d only been back for a week and a half, and most of that had been spent settling into his apartment and getting ready for classes to start. Still, any normal semester, he would’ve seen her by now. He hadn’t exactly been avoiding her, but he hadn’t been seeking her out, either. Not the way he would’ve in the past.
He shrugged. “Been busy, I guess.”
“Busy with that girl you’re texting?”
He stretched his legs out in front of him and rested his arms on the back of the bench. “Who says it’s a girl?”
“Please.”
“What?”
“I know that look.” She stopped, and there was a sudden heaviness to the air.
She knew that look because he used to wear it around her. Because of her.
He cleared his throat. “Maybe it’s a girl,” he conceded.
The girl.
He’d thought that was true over the summer, when Jo had woken his body and heart, but now he was even more sure. Ever since she’d made that first overture and picked up the phone, they’d fallen into a routine of exchanging messages a few times a day and talking every couple of nights. They caught up on all the stuff they hadn’t gotten around to learning about each other in their time together. Sometimes they just talked. Normal stuff about their days and her research and his apartment mates. Stuff about life. Nothing felt real anymore until he’d viewed it through the lens of her perception, the sharp filter of her wit.
Shannon’s mouth went soft around the edges. “The same girl from this summer?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Luck didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Adam raised his brows at that. “Excuse you?”
With a sad smile, she said, “You don’t exactly give up easy, you know.”
Right. Of course he didn’t.
He shook his head and shifted his gaze, a low grunt of a laugh scorching his throat. “So I hear.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Not a very happy one.”
“Tell it to me anyway?”
For a long minute, Adam stared off into the distance, across the quad.
Then he turned to Shannon. He shrugged, sadness like a weight on his shoulders. “I fell for her. We only had this handful of weeks, and I knew that, right? Stupid.” He bit off the word. He brought his hand to his face and worried the edge of his thumbnail with his teeth. “She was just…”
Amazing. As brilliant as the stars they studied, only—
Only she’d been a comet. Flaring into his life one minute and gone the next, never to return. Not in his lifetime.
He shook his head. “This is weird, right?”
“No weirder than it was this summer.”
Well, she had a point there. Only… “It gets weirder.” He dropped his gaze and his hand, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his spread knees. Jiggling his foot up and down. “Because she… she saw how things were. When you and I were drifting apart.” He glanced to Shannon and then back to the ground. “And she saw the same damn thing you did. I don’t let go. She said I—” This might be cruel. But Shannon had asked. “I was settling. With you. Waiting for you to call instead of moving on. Worst part is, she wasn’t wrong.”
He had to give Shannon some credit. She didn’t interrupt to apologize or make this about her. Because it wasn’t.
Sighing, he let his shoulders fall. “At the end of the summer, I told her I wanted more. She said she didn’t.”
“She’s an idiot.”
“Says the last girl who broke my heart.”
She cast her gaze skyward. “I didn’t break your heart. Not the way this girl did.” Her smile went strained. “I didn’t have as much of it to break.”
“Shannon—”
She waved him off. This still wasn’t about them. “Is that really what she told you? That she didn’t want more?”
“Not in so many words. It’s all circumstances, you know? We even said, maybe someday, if the stars aligned, you know?” He made vague hand gestures toward the sky before giving up. “But long distance sucks, and she just…” He worked his jaw fruitlessly. “She didn’t trust me.”
“Not to cheat?”
“What? No.” The closest he’d ever come to giving in to that temptation had been with Jo herself, and if he’d been able to resist her, he could resist anything.
“Okay. Because that’s totally not you.”
“It’s not.”
She’d known him better than that.
He took a deep breath, and said, “She didn’t trust me not to do the same thing to her I did to you.” His throat ached. “Hanging on too long. Settling.”
“And so now you’re settling again?”
He twitched his head up, twisting his neck to the side. “Wait. What?”
“You just said. She’s afraid you’re going to settle for her. But instead you’re sitting here, alone, looking at your phone like it’s the most precious thing in the world, settling for not her.”
“I—” Whatever protest he’d been about to make died in his lungs.
Jo wasn’t feeding him scraps of affection to string him along. If anything, she was withholding them to keep him at bay.
Never, not once, had she said she didn’t want him. Only that she thought she couldn’t keep him.
“Oh my God.” He scrubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Sitting up straighter, he dragged his palms down his face. “Oh shit.”
He’d let her push him away. Let them become just friends, not even daring to fight for fear of losing what little he had.
He was settling.
“Lightbulb,” Shannon said, opening her hand above his head, fingers starbursting out.
He batted at her, moving to perch at the edge of the bench. “What am I going to do?”
“I don’t know.” With a knowing, fond expression, she darted in past his defenses and ruffled his hair. When he gave her an unimpressed look, she drew away. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she stood. “But I’m guessing you’ll figure it out.”