Page 116 of The Incredible Ordinary

“There’s a certain sense of déjà vu here.”

He waits.

“As in, I’ve dated my best friend before,” I say. “It didn’t end that well, and…”

He looks calm, but there’s caution in his body language now.

I drag my hand through my hair. “Not that we’re dating. I’m not jumping the gun here. We’re just… whatever. I don’t want to hurt you. Or myself. And I don’t want you to think I’m moving too fast. It’s not that. For crying out loud, we haven’t decided anything. Or discussed anything. Believe me, I’m not making plans that neither of us is ready for or signed up for or?—”

I press my lips together to stop myself from going even more off the rails. “It’s not uncharted territory for me, is what I’m saying. It’s like… I want to be here. I’m into you. But there’s also this feeling that I’ve…” I shrug. “I’ve been here before, I know the ending and didn’t like it, and it makes me nervous.”

He studies me for a long moment. Long enough for the waitress to bring us a carafe of water and for Milán to smile at her and tell her we need another minute.

“Would you rather put an end to whatever this is right now?” he asks. “Be just two friends grabbing a bite to eat? Go on as we used to?”

I shake my head, slowly but firmly.

“No.” I give a helpless shrug and an even more helpless smile. “It’s too late for that. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to pretend that well.”

He nods. “Okay. Then here’s the plan. We’ll order food. They have a peppercorn steak that’s kind of famous here. And we will keep our hands off each other and talk.”

I want to kiss him again.

He’s so calm. Usually that’s my role, so this here is a novelty. There’s somebody to lean on because we’re in this together. It’s not just me trying to figure things out.

I’m not alone in this.

We place our orders when the waitress comes back. Milán tracks her with an absent look on his face as she walks away, but I don’t think he’s really even seeing her. He turns back to meetmy gaze, and there’s such intensity in his eyes that it makes my skin prickle.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says. “A lot. So here’s what I have. This is a terrible idea. Reckless and stupid. All of this is to say, it’s right up my alley. I wouldn’t expect anything else from me. This has all the necessary components to get really fucking messy.”

It’s a strange feeling, wanting something—someone—this badly and at the same time being perfectly aware and pointing out to myself everything that could go wrong like I’m trying to talk myself out of it, but still desperately hoping it doesn’t work.

“Yeah.” I roll my eyes.Intelligent input.

What if he says we shouldn’t do anything? While I’m sitting here, each kiss we’ve shared so far seared into my brain, playing on a constant loop. Because kissing him has flipped something inside me. It’s like randomly glancing out a window you’ve looked out of thousands of times and discovering the view has changed since the last time, and you’re trying to figure out how that even happened while also being intensely curious about those new surroundings of yours.

And I’m scared shitless, because when was the last time I tried to navigate a new reality? When Theo was born. Fourteen years ago. It’s a lifetime.

With so much uncertainty about what I’m doing, it’s really fucking unfair to involve him in this at all. An asshole move if there ever was one.

What was I thinking?

Well, clearly I wasn’t. This is what I get for not planning ahead. Not thinking things through. I just saw him smelling my clothes and something inside me snapped, and now it’s too late to stuff that genie back into the bottle.

I’ve screwed us both over.

Can’t go back.

Don’t know what happens next.

Holding back feels impossible.

Giving in will make things unimaginably complicated.

What do I want? Anything.Everything.

What does he want?