You and Everything After (Falling #2)(39)
“Totally unaffected,” I whisper, wanting to tease, but unable to execute my joke because holy hell…that quite honestly might really be a super power.
“Liar,” he says, the corner of his lip pulling up at the side just enough to produce that perfect dimple—going in for the final kill.
When he pushes away from me completely, to sit along the end of the bed, I feel cold, and there’s a part of me that wants to pull him back down to lie next to me. But that would be needy. I know that needy isn’t good. Needy doesn’t get you a boyfriend. Needy doesn’t keep a boyfriend. So I just look at him and smile as I watch him pull his jeans up his legs and bend forward to reach his shoes.
“What’s on your agenda today?” I ask, immediately worried that even that sounds needy.
“I have some things to take care of, and I think I have one client at two. But then…” he leans forward one final time to reach me for a soft kiss, “then I’m all yours. Don’t forget—dinner with my parents tonight.”
“I’ll be ready,” I smile, trying to keep the covers over my body, which is now full of nervous energy, knowing I won’t have the distraction of a football game to keep conversation—the one-on-one kind—to a minimum with Ty’s parents.
Ty moves to his chair and he pauses, looking at me with a strange expression, and then I realize why. I’m still in his shirt.
“Oh! You probably need this, huh?” I say, sitting up and pulling one arm through the shirt before Ty stops me.
“You keep it. I’ve got a whole closetful down the hall. I think I can make it safely a few feet to the east,” he says, his eyes moving down to the exposed skin on my stomach and my black underwear. He’s practically undressing me, and I let him. I actually move the blanket a few extra inches away for a better view. My move makes him smile. “Damn.”
“Damn what?” I ask, knowing, but wanting to hear it anyway. I’m insecure, and I admit it. I like hearing him talk about me like I’m sexy.
“Damn…I should have waited until you got the shirt off completely before I stopped you,” he smirks. I want him to stay, but he’s backing away. So I let him go, and simply blow him a kiss as he disappears out my door.
Play it cool, Cass.
I bury my head in my pillow when I hear the door shut, then I replay everything I did and said over the last twenty-four hours—hoping it was enough, but never too much.
After a fast shower, I head back to our room and slip into my cotton shorts and T-shirt. My body is tired today. It’s been tired all week. The few hours I have before my dinner—the one where I have to sit down and talk with Ty’s parents—are necessary, unless I want to spend the entire night worrying about tingling legs or strange eye pain. I haven’t had any symptoms since the leg tingles a day or two ago, but I’m on this constant look out, questioning everything I feel.
Rowe walks in only minutes after me. She’s smiling—like big time smiling. And that makes me smile too.
I don’t like that we fought. I know it wasn’t a real fight, but still…I was pushy. I was pushy because I really wanted my way, just this once. I wanted the night, last night, with Ty. But before I fell asleep, I did think of Rowe, worried that she wasn’t as okay as I was. The smile is still there, though, even as she slides a small, opened cereal box onto her desk shelf.
“Saving up to win the prize?” I ask, kind of wanting to test the waters, seeing if she’s still angry with me.
“Something like that,” she says, and the smile remains, maybe even grows bigger.
“So…how was your night?” Please let it have been as good as that smile on your face is making me believe it was. Please, oh please, oh please. “Does that smile on your face mean what I think it means?”
“Nooooooo,” she says, but her cheeks are darn near fire-engine red. She looks like a thermometer in the ER during flu season. “We just…slept. But it was really, really, really nice.”
She’s still smiling. This is good. I think this might be very good, and I didn’t blow this friend thing with my selfishness. And Rowe looks happy.
“Hmmmmmmm, sounds really, really, really boring,” I tease her, feeling good that I can. “Wanna hear about my night?” I am dying to tell someone about my night! And it can’t be Paige.
“Oh god, no!” she says, her face immediately shifting back to a bright shade of red. I’m about to force her to listen anyhow, because oh my god I have to tell someone, but suddenly, Rowe is changing her clothes in front of me, and she freezes.
I freeze too.
I saw them earlier. The scars. But she’s not hiding them now, not even attempting. Her eyes are locked on mine, and she’s waiting to see how I’m going to react. I can see her terror. I’ve been that terrified. I’ve lived that terror. Oh, Rowe, your scars, they’re your story.
But the second that thought passes through my mind, I realize that the moment the welts, from years of shots, finally disappeared from my body, so did my story—by choice. The proof of MS was gone, and I was going to leave it erased.
Rowe doesn’t have that option.
“They’ve gotten better,” she says, turning slowly. She’s letting me see everything, and I can also see her body shivering with nerves as she does. This is scary to her.