Page 79 of Definitely Not a Thing

“You’re tall!”

“I…” I shook my head, chuckling as I let the ball roll into the corner where I usually left it. “Clearly this was a miscommunication… but it answers a lot of questions I had.”

“No, no, no,” Amelia denied, putting her cup down. “You haven’t asked anything, so let’s not do that. If we have questions, we should ask them straight out, not make assumptions.”

“That only works if we’re gonna be honest.”

“Okay,” she shrugged. “So let’s be honest.”

“Do you have a problem with me kissing you?” I asked, and her eyes went wide like she was surprised I’d just gotten straight to the point.

“No,” she answered. “It just caught me off guard, because I associate a kiss like that with… a certain level of intimacy.”

“More intimate than we’ve been?”

“Differentintimate than we’ve been,” she replied. “Or… maybe not so much, actually. Considering… everything.”

“What does that mean?”

She sighed. “It means… I think we have taken this friendship to the boundary of something else.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s… I don’t know that it’s a healthy thing for me. But it feels too natural to bebad.I think.”

“Natural?”

“As in…coming very easily,” she explained. “Surely you’ve noticed the same?”

“You mean, how we vibe with each other? Yeah. Of course.”

“Okay. So… I guess… what does this mean? Does it mean something?”

“Are you asking me what we are?”

She sucked her teeth. “Uh-uh – donotlay the burden of that on my feet,” she said. “I told you already – I’m not far enough removed from the breakup with Hunter for… any of this, actually. And yet, here we are. I don’t have to pretend to not have feelings for you, but I’mnotgoing to be the one pushing for us to define something.”

“I don’t think we have todefineanything – I don’t know that weshould, actually. I’m just… I know there’s something here, and I know I’m getting ready to spend time in Blackwood, so I’m not going to be around. So… I didn’t know if it was going to be weird – if you were going to feel… shit, I don’t know.”

This was… not the type of conversation I found myself in, not really.

I’d had a couple of serious relationships as an adult, but they had all followed a more clear path – attraction, intimacy, conversation, couple.

Until one of those conversations revealed the inevitable deal breaker.

Then, trying to make it work anyway, until it just has to be called what it is –over.

Never… whatever this was.

Never this…natural.

“Calvin,” Amelia smiled. “Were you wondering if I was going to miss you?”

I shrugged. “I’on know. I mean… yeah, maybe a little.”

“Of course I’m going to miss you.”

Straight like that.