Page 49 of Drawn Together

Thirty-three

Word of the day: Lethologica

Definition: When you can’t think of a word for something

We land on eating at the Italian place, again. It’s less of an out-loud decision and more of an intuition on his part, knowing exactly how much I love mushrooms. Our food comes and the waitress slowly backs away, like that makes any of this less awkward.

“Are you okay?” Fletcher whispers low. His eyes have yet to leave my face, like maybe the words floating in my head might present themselves on my skin if he stares hard enough.

“I-I’m not sure.” I look up and the eye contact is gut-punching. “I don’t exactly know where to go with all of this right now.”

“I’ll follow your lead on any of this. You want to know more? I’ll tell you everything. If you need some space, I can do that too. I think. I just, I want you to know—” He sighs and lifts a shaky hand across the table to lock fingers with mine. “I—”

“I think you should just say it all. Tell me everything, and we can maybe go from there?”

“Yeah?”

I nod, and he spares me no details.