Page 89 of Homecoming

Endings hurt. Beginnings left him breathless.

“Leah,” he said, too firmly. Her head and brows lifted, surprise evident on her face. “Do you wanna have dinner this weekend?”

She stared at him, frozen.

“Not dinner like this.” He gestured to the table between them. “I mean a real dinner. Where I’ll be wearing real clothes, and I’ll pay. I mean – a date. Do you want to go on a date?”

She stared another moment, and then blinked, her gaze dropping. She set her bagel down slowly, and took a few breaths. When she lifted her face, her jaw was tense in a way that didn’t bode well.

His stomach sank.

“You want to go on a date?” Her tone was careful – it reminded him of Elijah’s tone, in those moments when he was trying to get a read on Carter. Unsure of his intentions.

He nodded, pulse kicking up another notch. “Yeah.”

A pause. “With me?”

“Yeah.”

She frowned. “Really?”

He’d run at least a dozen possibilities through his head, and in none of them had this conversation unfolded likethis. “Yes, really.” He fought his own impulse to frown back at her. Tried to keep his voice even and encouraging. “Why do you look like that’s so hard to believe?”

“Because it is.”

He sucked in a breath. “Leah–”

“It’s not that I’m – that I’m not interested,” she pressed on, stumbling over the words. “But, Carter…you got your nose broken for sleeping with someone else’s crush. You have anot-girlfriend.”

“Not anymore. I ended things with her.”

Her brows flew up again, voice getting high. “For me?”

“For me, because I’m not happy,” he said, sharper than intended.

Her expression softened – to one of sympathy. “I know you’re not. But I don’t think throwing yourself at a new relationship–”

He leaned back so hard and so fast the legs of his chair scraped loudly on the tile. “Is that what you think?”

She froze again.

“That I’m just experimenting? Shopping around until I’m less sad?”

She swallowed, and at first he couldn’t place the sheen in her eyes. Quietly, she said, “Yeah, that’s what I think. And I think I’m familiar, and safe. I’m easy. So. No, thanks, I don’t want a date.”

He realized what it was, then, that gleam of emotion: it was fear.

He gripped the edge of the table with white-knuckled force, and his sleeves felt too tight over flexed biceps. He was breathing hard. And when he glanced around, he saw that he’d gotten loud enough that customers were looking at him. Curious, alarmed. And, in Marshall Cook’s case, working toward furious.

“Sorry,” he muttered, stood, and bolted.

~*~

Leah sat very still for a few minutes – save waving her mom off with a murmured “everything’s fine.” Everything was not fine, and it was definitely her fault.

What did I do?

Ava warned her – well, more liketoldher – after the potluck that Carter was, in her words,interested.

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