Page 73 of The Bright Side of Brooding
Chapter Thirty-One
Nick
You’ll have to pry it open. Wrench back the rounded, hollowed halves. Peek into the blackened middle. Ease the fruit from the shell, careful of its edges, its softness, its fragility. That’s the only way you’ll taste the sweetness.
The last six hours had been long. They’d moved so slowly, I’d ended up getting in a second workout after dinner. I normally hated to work out in the evenings if I didn’t have to, but I’d needed some way to expend the anxious energy building inside me.
The tentative smile that greeted me made my stomach dip. She was so beautiful, and I didn’t know how this conversation was going to go.
“Come in,” she said, her voice a little rough.
“Did you have fun?”
A genuine smile now. “Yes. It was great.”
“It still smells good. What’d you make?”
She listed the dishes, all of which were no doubt excellent, and took a seat on the couch in the living room. Adrenaline raced through me so hard my hands shook, but I took slow breaths to keep calm. I sat next to her—not too close, because I already felt like I might be suffocating her with all thefeelingsI had.
“So…” She squinted up at me.
Well. Let’s get to it.“I’m guessing you saw my journal.”
She swallowed and bobbed her head.
“And you thought it was about you?”
She blinked. Nodded.
I cracked a half-smile. “The ones I think you might’ve seen were inspired by you.”
Maybe couching it ininspirationwould help soften it. Based on the page that lay open when she left, it could’ve been worse, but the words were certainly… impassioned.
She didn’t speak. Usually, she spoke constantly, filling the room and the space between us with words, but now, I couldn’t have bribed her. I was groping around in the dark for some way to break through and get a conversation going, because me just blundering along here wouldn’t do me any favors.
“I’m sorry if they made you uncomfortable. I didn’t plan for you to see them. I’ve been journaling and writing poetry since my teens. It was a way to cope—to process things. And there’s a creative element, so don’t let it upset you.”
If she weren’t sitting half a foot from me, studying my face, I would’ve crushed my eyes together at the idiocy of those words.
To my immense relief, she set a warm hand on my wrist. “You don’t need to apologize.Ido. I invaded your privacy by reading it, and then I just… had no idea what to do with myself.”
I nodded, understanding. The alternative might’ve been to pretend she hadn’t read it, but she wasn’t dishonest like that. Leaving had been the best option, if I looked at it like that.
“I don’t feel invaded. But I am concerned.”
“Understandable.”
I waited. Ready for her to take over. I willed her to let me understand.
“So. I was overwhelmed,” she started, then chuckled low.
I appreciated her ability to laugh at the situation. That bolstered me.
She inhaled slowly and turned her eyes to me.
“I’ve never met someone like you. I’ve never been with anyone so…” Her gaze flickered around the space, like she might find the right word hiding in the corner of her living room. “Thoughtful. Intense.”
My shoulders stiffened.Intensewas a word I often heard from women I dated. Granted, I hadn’t bothered in quite a while, but it was never used as a positive term. They wanted a relationship, but with someone easy, sunny, fun. Occasionally, I stumbled into fun, but I was, by nature, intense. That’d ended more than one relationship before it really began. Summer must’ve seen my reaction, though I wasn’t sure I’d moved visibly. She grabbed my hand with both of hers and held it. Relief and wanting sliced through me at the connection.
