Page 84 of So Not My Thing
“Did you seriously tell her that she should ignore me because I’m at the mercy of my emotions?”
“No, of course not...” But he paused, his forehead scrunched like he was recalling the conversation. “Oh. Yeah. I did. I’m sorry. Hang on.” He opened the door and poked his head back in. “Also, for the record, Ellie is not super emotional, and she definitely meant the very logical thing she said.” He paused again like he was listening, mumbled, “What?” and stuck his head further in the door for a few seconds, then said “Bye” and shut the door again.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What? Nothing. She was clarifying something.” He started down the sidewalk.
I had to do a two-step to catch up. “Clarifying what?”
“Doesn’t matter. You don’t believe her anyway, right?”
“Right.” I wanted to press him on whatever Heather had added, but the whole reason I’d left was because I didn’t want to talk about what she’d told us in the first place, so why was I pushing now? If anything, I should be changing the subject. “So those were good sandwiches, yeah?”
He looked at me like he couldn’t figure out why I was lurching from one topic to the other like a drunk tourist. “Yeah, good sandwiches. Thanks for telling me about them.”
“Yeah, sure.” It fell quiet, and I wracked my brain for something else to talk about as we walked but it was blank, and Miles’s mind seemed to be somewhere else completely.
When we stopped in front of the Turnaround, he stared at the front door in mild surprise. He blinked. “Want to come see the new addition?”
“Raincheck? I think I’m going to go up and unwind,” I said. “See you tomorrow, maybe?”
“Definitely.”
I kept walking around the corner of the building to take my back stairs.
“Ellie,” he called when I was halfway there.
I turned around to find him smiling at me, his gaze fully present again.
“You got it bad,” he sang softly. I recognized the melody immediately.It was an Usher song he’d covered onStarstruck. “You got it, you got it bad,” he continued, smiling slightly.
I froze like I’d just been pantsed onstage at a half-time show. “It’s not funny,” I ground out. Then I whirled and sprinted for my stairs.
“Elle, wait!”
“Go away, Miles!” Then I rounded the building and took the stairs two at a time, racing into my apartment and slamming the door.
But it wasn’t hard enough to keep the humiliation from following me inside.
