Page 97 of Mixed Signals
It doesn’t give me much hope.
“What the hell is going on with you two?”
They stop abruptly. Alex meets my gaze, but Charlie looks up at the ceiling, his lips in a thin line.
“Talk to Layla.”
I almost lose my nerve.
She comes skipping down her front steps Sunday afternoon in a cotton candy pink dress, sleeves slipping off her shoulders and sunlight dancing down her skin. Bright red ribbon in her hair. Picnic basket on her arm. She looks like one of those candy hearts you get in a box on Valentine’s Day and sift through until you find your favorite message. SWEETER THAN PIE, hers would say. BE MINE.
A laugh trips out of her when she opens the front door of the Jeep and sees my failed attempt at a strawberry shortcake on the passenger seat. I wanted to sweeten her up, maybe, for this conversation. I thought baked goods might do that.
I just underestimated my ability to bake a cake.
“What the hell is this?”
I frown at it. “It's a strawberry shortcake.”
“It’s a strawberry something,” she says with a sly smile I want to bite the edge of. Still, she’s careful as she slips it from the seat and places it in the backseat next to her picnic basket, hopping in and planting a smacking kiss against my cheek. I told myself on the drive over here that I wasn’t going to kiss her until we had our conversation. I wasn’t going to touch her until I know where we stand. No use in making things more difficult for myself.
But my candy heart probably reads CRAZY 4 YOU. I tilt my face down to hers and catch her lips with mine, my hand sifting under her hair to toy with the edge of her cherry red bow. I curl it around my palm and tug, smiling when I hear the catch in her breath.
We’re ending the arrangement today. We don’t have to end anything else. Charlie and Alex were right, even if their approach was less than subtle. If I want a real shot of something lasting with Layla, we need to have an honest conversation.
But it’s hard for me to voice those thoughts when it feels like everything is going exactly right between us. The closer we get to Lovelight, the higher my anxiety spins. By the time we make it to the fields and she’s towing me across to the pond at the very edge of the property, my lungs are tight and my heart is doing double-time. I watch her pink skirt flutter around her thighs, the bounce in her step as she hops around the neat rows of produce Beckett planted earlier in the season. I squeeze the handle of the basket and try to remember myself.
She knows who I am. She likes who I am, I repeat like a mantra.Our pieces belong together. This isn’t going to be like every other time.
“Layla,” I start, and let the wind carry away the rest of my thought. She looks at me over her shoulder and I almost lose my breath. Slowly sinking sunlight and gold catching in the necklace looped around her neck. An easy breeze that meanders through the tall grass and lifts the edges of her hair. Fireflies that blink to life in the field around us, rising from the willows like tiny, fallen stars.
“What is it?” she asks.
I shake my head and swallow the words. I just need a couple more minutes. “Nothing.” I clear my throat. “You want to set up here?”
“Here is good.” She spins in a circle, skirt flaring, head tilted back to look at the sky. She’s so beautiful my heart gives a single painful thud right in the center of my chest.
I look down at the ground and toss out the blanket. “You gonna make fun of my cake some more?”
“Depends on what it tastes like.” She drops right next to where I’m kneeling, her elbow balanced on my shoulder and her mouth at my ear. She smells like summer nights and warm pastries. A smile quirks the edges of her lips. “Sometimes the best tasting things aren’t the prettiest.”
I’m pretty sure she’s full of it, but I appreciate the concession nonetheless. I gather her arm from my shoulder and press a quick, unthinking kiss to the inside of her wrist. My lips linger and then I flinch away like she’s burned me.
She stares at me, her face collapsed in confusion. She cradles her arm close to her chest, fingertips rubbing over the place my mouth brushed.
I’m doing all of this wrong. I can’t figure out what I want to say or how I want to say it. Maybe I should have made notecards and slipped them into the back of the basket.
“Hey.” Layla’s fingers are hesitant as she reaches for me and traces an aimless design against my forearm. “What’s going on with you? You’re being weird.”
“I know I am,” I mumble. I drag my palm down my face and keep it cupped over my jaw, eyes tired as I gaze over at her. She holds steady, her hazel eyes searching. I drop my hand and reach for honesty. “I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.” I watch her brace herself, settling back on the blanket with a neat pocket of space between us. She curls her hands around her elbows, body folding in. “What is it?”
“I—”
I don’t want it to be an arrangement anymore. I want to be everything to you, my mind supplies.Just like you’re everything to me.
“I want to end our arrangement.”
