Page 99 of Mixed Signals
Her hands freeze for half a second, hovering over the containers. I can’t see her face, curtained by her hair. But I can feel every single silent second like a thumbtack against my skin. Anticipation. The worst sort of it.
“I don’t know,” she says slowly. “We said we’d give it a month. And it’s been a month.”
“Can’t we add another month?” I drag my knuckles down her arm. I hate the note of pleading in my voice. I swallow around it. “I want to try this with you.”
She looks up at me with wide, hazel eyes. Her bottom lip trembles, and I almost rip the blanket clean in two. I don’t want to see her cry. I don’t want to see her cry because ofme. “I don’t know if I can,” she finally says.
“Why not?”
“Because—” She looks away, over my shoulder, her hands curling over her elbows and tugging her arms close. “Because this is turning into something we didn’t agree to. I’m not even evaluating you anymore, Caleb. It was supposed to be fun and easy and now it’s—”
She stops mid-sentence and clenches her jaw. The hands on her arms have a white-knuckled grip.
“What?” I ask. “Now it’s … what?”
I hover there on the edge of uncertainty, holding my breath. I feel like we’re back in that Escape Room and her elbow has made direct contact with my eye, my throat—the soft, squishy place inside my chest that feels like it’s being ripped apart. I can’t manage to say anything else, my throat clogged around a sinking feeling of unease.
I know I have a habit of projecting my feelings—imagining things that aren’t there. But this doesn’t feel like that. This feels like something else entirely.
Layla was upset when she thought I was calling off the arrangement. I thought it meant she might share some of my feelings. But maybe it was because she wanted to be the one to end things first? I don’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” I repeat, out loud this time.
She takes a deep breath. Releases it on a shaky sigh. Her eyes flit up to meet mine and then back down again to her fingers twisting in her lap. I have never seen Layla Dupree shrink herself down to size. It doesn’t suit her.
“Everything with you has felt too easy. I think I’m always going to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve wanted something like this forever and I’m not—I’m not sure I can trust myself,” she finishes on a whisper. “I’m just—” She looks up and blinks rapidly. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Layla.” Her name gusts out of me. “Of course you do. You’re already doing it.”
“I’m not so sure.” She runs a shaky hand under her nose and blows out a shuddering breath. “It’s easier for us to end it now, before we get any further. Before I—before I—” She stops with a high-pitched sound that is far too fucking close to a sob for me to handle. Something terribly dark and deeply possessive curls right in the center of my chest. My hands ache with the effort not to reach out to her.
“Before you what? Talk to me.”
It feels monumentally important that she finishes that sentence.
But she doesn’t answer. She just shakes her head and tucks her hands under her knees, bottom lip caught between her teeth.
“What are you afraid of?” I ask. It tumbles out of me, guided by frantic frustration.
Layla doesn’t hesitate. She finally angles her chin up, meets my gaze and whispers, “Myself.”
“Help me understand.”
She lifts herself onto her knees, back to collecting all the pieces of our picnic. A single tear glances down her cheek and my chest seizes.
“I’ve always had the worst taste in men. I know I joke about it, but my track record really is the worst. I—” She shakes her head, lips pinched like she’s trying to keep herself from crying. “I can’t trust myself when it comes to this kind of decision. And I won’t hurt you in the process, Caleb.”
I am hanging on to this blanket for dear life, trying not to touch her. She drops the neatly wrapped plastic silverware bundles back into the basket, the napkins tied with a red string. Another tear lands on top.
You’re hurting me right now,I want to say.
“Nothing has to change,” I say faintly. “Not really. Just what we call it. Everything we’ve been doing together—Layla. You can trust me.”
“I know I can.” She wipes under her eyes with the back of her hand and stands on unsteady legs. “It’s me that’s the problem. There are parts of me that are broken and I don’t—I don’t know how to fix them for you, Caleb.”
“You don’t have to fix anything for me,” I tell her. I’ll take all of her, exactly how she is. We’ll fit our pieces together until we’re something whole, together, our broken edges smoothed into something beautiful.
She smiles sadly at me, head tilted to the side, eyes soft. “I just don’t think we should go any further if I’m—if I’m figuring things out. You deserve someone who can give you everything, Caleb.”
