Page 80 of Kiss the Girl
He shook his head. “The fact that you want me to just makes my point. Why isn’t this already a relationship?”
“Because relationships have futures, and we don’t have one.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “But couldn’t we? I know this feels like a huge leap forward, but the more I think about it, the less I think it is one. Not based on the way I feel.”
He met my eyes, sure and steady. He was putting himself out there, and it made me want to kiss him again. Or curl into his warm chest and listen to his heartbeat.
All of which was super problematic. Because I knew exactly what he meant. I’d been feeling the pull between us for weeks too. He’d become a part of my day. If I didn’t talk to him, I was still thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, how his day was going. He was a bright spot for me, and the time I spent around him made the day glow brighter and feel sharper, like being around him made my senses clearer.
All except my common sense.
“I’m leaving, Noah. I’ve been clear about that since we met.”
“Would it be so bad if you stayed here? You’ve got family, friends, a job. Me. Is it so hard to imagine sticking around?”
“It’s way too easy because I’ve watched what happened to my mom.”
“You’ve said that before, but she seems happy to me when she isn’t worried about your dad.”
I shrugged. “You didn’t grow up with her. It makes a difference.”
“Help me understand.”
I sighed. “She is happy. But she’s happy in this one version of her life until she thinks about the one she meant to have before my dad. She lost her parents young, when she was in high school, and her great aunt and uncle raised her. They were kind to her, but they were never close. It made her crave family. My dad was the opposite. He’s from a huge family—six siblings—so when she fell in love with him, at least a quarter of that was based on him coming from the kind of family she wanted. She clung to that security.”
“You think she regrets that?” he asked.
“She yearns for the other life she could have lived where she finished her masters in art history and went to work as a curator in one of the museums in DC. Maybe the National Gallery. And she lived this more cultured life with dinner parties and the theater.”
“It must have been hard to grow up feeling like your mom was always wanting something different,” he said.
“She was a great mom,” I corrected him. “But after Tabitha left for college, I had twice as much pressure. She tried talking me into going to Georgia Tech or MIT instead of Virginia Tech because it was too close. She worried I wouldn’t escape the pull of Creekville. She wanted me orbiting out farther. She didn’t let up. Still doesn’t,” I added with a grumble.
“That must have been hard.”
I winced. “She was right to push me out. I don’t feel fully myself here. You should see me when I’m on my game at my real-life job. I’m solving problems that keep enormous machines in the air. Some even go to space. Think about that.” I leaned forward and squeezed his knees for a second, needing him to get it. “I literally have my fingerprints on the guts of machines in space.”
The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. “So this isn’t real life? I’m not real life?”
I wished I could give him a different answer, but this was the time for honesty. “You aren’t real life for me. You’re the best kind of daydream.”
“Except I’m not, Grace. I’m real. I’m right here. And I’m falling for you.”
My stomach lurched, first with the giddiness of hearing those words, but it dropped right away. It was the crappiest of all roller coasters. I loved Creekville, but I’d seen beyond its borders, and the future I wanted was out there, not here.
“Am I the only one feeling this?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” It was true. I hadn’t allowed myself to think in terms of falling because it meant thinking in terms of hurting when we reached our inevitable endpoint.
His face closed and tightened. “I see.”
He didn’t. Not really. Even I wasn’t sure I could explain it.
“Noah…leaving isn’t a hypothetical. I got a job offer today to go back to Boeing in Charleston. I start in January.”
His face softened again. “I see.”
We sat in silence. Not the good kind.
