Page 40 of Dopplebanger

Evan caught my wrist, holding me in place until I slowly turned back to face him. His eyes bored into mine, and it was like he was challenging me to… I didn’t know. See something there.

“I see you,” I said. “You’re the guy who’s made me happier than I ever thought was possible these past few days. The guy who’s different in more ways than I realized. The guy who makes me feel safe, even on rides that are built overnight by people in a hurry.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up, bringing out that chiseled jawline that I’d gone from borderline to full-out obsessed with.

It seemed like whatever was holding him back was fracturing. Peeling away.

I stepped down one stair, the extra boost in my height leaving us nose-to-nose, and whispered, “I see you, Evan.”

His expression shifted, and the smile he gave me held so much sadness. He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm that sunk deep and radiated all the way up my arm. Then hedropped it and said, his voice so quiet I could barely make out the words. “Goodnight, Guinevere.”

Since last night, some of the ease had leaked out of my interactions with Evan. Instead of falling asleep, I’d tossed and turned for hours, thinking of him downstairs. Thinking of how it’d been in the car. At the carnival. While we were touring D.C.

Now it was back to the way it had been before our road trip, where he seemed constantly distracted and there was no PDA when other people were around—I’d sort of initiated that in the before period, not totally comfortable with kissing in front of his friends or at large gatherings.

But Evan was the one keeping me at a distance now. My tour guide spiel as I showed him around my tiny town was stilted and passionless.

And I’d shown him the old-fashioned ice cream place! You know it’s bad when you can’t get excited over ice cream that’s been freshly churned.

Maybe that’s the way Evan feels about me. Maybe he’s Gwen-intolerant.

Thanks, brain. Have I mentioned you suck today? If you’d like to not talk to me as punishment, that’d be great.

It didn’t make sense, though. He’d told me I was beautiful, and sure, there was a big difference between telling and showing, but I hadn’t imagined his hard length pressing against me when we’d been making out in front of his car before my parents interrupted us. So glad we got to recap that awkwardness with a meal so full of tension it’d make dinner with a hungry Hannibal Lecter seem like a nice way to pass an evening.

As if I wasn’t frustrated enough, recalling our heated kissing session, with all that exhilarating friction I wanted more of, added a different kind of frustration.

I slowed in front of one of the cozy wooden benches that lined the sidewalk in this area of town. “Shall we sit for a minute?”

“Sure,” Evan said.

Ugh, the perfectly polite, perfectly impersonal responses were killing me. I’d hoped that leaving my parents’ house would help, but our banter remained off in the ether with everything else that’d been building between us before it disappeared into a black hole of suck.

The extra depressing thing was that if I would’ve broken up with him before our trip, like I’d been going to, I wouldn’t be nearly this hurt. But the thought of missing out on the conversations and kisses of the last few days also caused my heart to knot.

Part of me just wanted to swing my leg over him and straddle his lap as we sat on this bench, public decency be damned. Either compel him to grab me and kiss me the way he had yesterday, or to pressure him to tell me he didn’t want me that way.

“Gwen! Ohmigosh, is that really you?”

For all my trepidation about coming home after so much had changed, the way Madison squealed and ran at me took me right back to high school. We crashed in the middle of the town square, talking over each other and complimenting each other’s hair and makeup.

My heart swelled as I took her in. “Man, it’s good to see you,” I said, not realizing how much I’d truly missed her until now.

“Girl, you have no idea.”

I laughed—anytime I ever used “man” to start a sentence, Madison began her response with “girl” and vice versa. “I can’t believe you’re getting married today! What are you doing, strolling around town?”

“Had to get a few last things from…” Her smile turned into a propped-up version and her brow creased.

“It’s okay to say Paige’s name. I’m sure I’ll hear it a lot this afternoon, what with her being in the wedding.”

Madison gripped my hand. “I wanted you to be a bridesmaid, too. It’s just since I can’t exactly ask Kade not to have his brother as a groomsman, that means Kyle’s in the wedding party, and I thought that would probably mean you didn’t want to be, and?—”

“Madison. We already went over all this.” Sure, I’d experienced a pinch or five of bitterness that our town’s small population made it slightly incestuous in the way that there was no way to avoid cross-dating—for the record, no actual incest—but my resentment didn’t get aimed at Madison. She fell in love with Kyle’s older brother, who’d always been super nice to me, and I was sure he adored Madison. “I told you that with me living out of state and so unsure of my schedule, it’d be hard to even make it to the wedding anyway. I truly only meant that I can’t avoid Paige forever and we… Well, we’re working on repairing things.”

A stretch, but it was the woman’s wedding day, and she was one of my best friends and had always been there for me, so for the foreseeable future, Paige and my issues didn’t exist. At least I’d fake like they didn’t.

Madison’s gaze drifted over my shoulder. “Since I don’t recognize him, I’m guessing this is the boyfriend?”

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