Page 78 of So Not My Thing
I craved seeing him every afternoon the way I craved my coffee in the mornings. Worse, even. I felt like an addict who thought she had it under control, promising myself the tiniest hit, promising myself it would be the last one, then going back the next day. I told myself it wasn’t a real problem because I always made myself leave within twenty minutes. But the truth was, I couldn’t get through a weekday without popping in to see him, and Miles was always there, the work crew gone, like he was waiting for me.
He’d told me once that it was the only time he could be in the space while it was quiet to think about future plans or even his to-do list for the next day. But a part of me believed he was hanging out, waiting for me, no matter how much I tried to talk myself out of it.
“Is this a crush?” I asked out loud. The waves didn’t answer. Neither did the road.
“Siri, what is the difference between love and a crush?” Because what I felt for Miles had the same intensity it had when I was fourteen. But wasn’t twenty-six too old for a crush?
“A crush is about perfection. Love is about imperfections,” Siri explained in her mellow voice. “Would you like more information?”
“Yes, please.”
“Here is an entry from Ask the Love Genius. A crush is based on attraction and does not require a relationship. Love is deep affection for another person based on knowing them. Attraction is often part of this affection. Would you like more information?”
“No, thank you, Siri.”
I ran the answer through my mind.A deep affection based on knowing them.
In high school, I’d made up a whole version of Miles, of what I thought he would be like. I imagined interactions between us, what he would say, how he would look at me. I watched every interview I could find with him. I’d been so sure that once we met, he’d see how perfect we were for each other and our love storytogethercould begin.
But I hadn’t known him. Not even a little.
I couldn’t have imagined my current reality, where we saw each other almost daily, for twenty carefully rationed minutes. I couldn’t have imagined that we would talk that whole time, joking about light fixtures and arguing about flooring.
I could have easily imagined the many times I stood quietly in the doorway watching him for a few seconds before announcing that I’d arrived. Sometimes he was on his phone, sometimes working at the card table in an open notebook. “Ideas,” he’d said once when I asked him what he was writing. But no matter what he was doing, when I made a small noise to announce my arrival, he always turned toward me, a slow smile growing on his face when he saw me. Maybe that smile meant nothing.
But it didn’t feel like nothing.
Sometimes, I caught him watching me as I studied whatever new change he’d made that day. Other times, I could swear he was staring at me, but when I glanced his way, he was doing something else. Looking at his phone or elsewhere.
Did I know Miles now?
I knew how he liked his coffee. That he laughed at stupid puns. I knew he was kind to the jobsite workers but firm with the contractor. I knew he obsessed over details and spared no cost when he found what he wanted for the club. I knew he loved the Saints and spent several hours a week mentoring the kids at Jordan’s music center. I knew he spent his free time looking at pet rescue sites because for the first time in forever, he felt rooted enough in one place to adopt a dog. He called his obsessive scrolling “window shopping,” and he showed me dog TikToks almost every time I came downstairs.
I knew that when he was thinking hard, his fingers tapped out chords on the nearest surface. I knew because I did the same thing. Usually, it was because I had an earworm and I was trying to figure out the notes. Lately, I’d had snatches of original melodies floating through my head. But when I watched his fingers moving across a tabletop, I knew where his head was.
Yeah, I knew him.
Love is a deep affection based on knowing them.
I felt a deep affection for him based on knowing him. And attraction was part of that affection.
A very strong attraction.
An attraction that made me slide my hands into my pockets and subtly shift away from him every time he was near. I didn’t want him to feel the heat coming off me or hear my heartbeats because they sounded so loud in my ears when he got too close. I didn’t want him to sense the way my lungs throbbed or how I could feel each individual hair on my head because the energy coming off him was so strong that it charged all my molecules.
So according to Siri...
“Dammit, Siri.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
I sighed and leaned against the head rest, watching more of the gray sky and brown water roll past. Then I rolled down the window and shouted the truth to the wind where it could be snatched up and carried away with no one else to hear it.
“I think I’m in love with Miles Crowe!”
The wind didn’t answer. Neither did Siri.
But neither of them had to say anything. The pit in my stomach said it all.
