Page 13 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

I wouldn’t say I’m limping, exactly, as I finish my short walk to Merritt’s from the convenience store across the street. Hobbling? Maybe I’m hobbling. In any case, I’m going more slowly than usual. After the run I went on this morning, my legs absolutely hate me and refuse to carry my ass around with their usual smooth strength.

Am I doing it wrong? Running, I mean? The attempt I made the other morning didn’t go very well, but I thought another try would be a good way to start my day today; I didn’t have to work and the hours were full of potential, so a bit of exercise sounded nice. I’m regretting it now, though. Are you supposed to build up to this kind of thing somehow? I kicked it off with a jog before upping my pace, but that doesn’t seem to have helped much. All it did, really, was give me a less painful cramp in my leg than my first run.

One thing is for sure: I’ve got gummy worms in my pocket and a mixed drink waiting for me, and they will help.

Eager though I am to get out of the cold and get settled at whatever table Paxton has claimed for us, I don’t give in to the temptation to hurry to the bar’s wooden double doors. I’ve taken it easy all day, and I fully intend to chill and be lazy here, too, especially since it’s not likely I’ll run into Maggie. The bar’s Hump Day Half-Prices thing will be the perfect end to my quiet day and the perfect accompaniment to Paxton’s good news.

Still, even each careful step nearly makes me groan.

I guess if I’m going to try to exercise whatsoever, I should read up on how to do it in a way that won’t hurt me. I didn’t think it was a big damn deal to just go for it, but obviously—

“Luke!”

is a stage-whisper on the air the moment I enter Merritt’s.

I pause walking and look to my right, puzzled by the instant greeting…and I see an all-too-familiar girl huddled in the old payphone alcove set into the dark wall.

I do groan now. “Magno—”

“Please come here and be serious for a minute. Luke, I’m scared.”

Her words just about surprise me out of my irritation.

She’s…scared?

I straighten up and look around this front area. We’re the only two in it. The main room lies beyond the next double doorway, which is open as usual, and everything appears to be in normal order. I can hear chatter and laughter and a bit of music; I can’t tell that anything weird is going on in there.

Maggie’s pinched expression of anxiety is real, though.

I shuffle over to her, glancing around again as I go.

“What are you scared of?”

She swallows hard, peeks out of the alcove and around the room, too, and then slinks back in.

“A guy who’s in the other room.”

My eyebrows shoot up. She’s scared of someone? Has someone been bothering her?

Or worse, has he tried to harm her?

Is she hiding from him right now?

Even more questions are building in my mind, becoming a clutter—including the question of why she’s telling me this, of all people.

Once I’m closer to her yet, I see the alcove is a little bigger than it looks. There’s enough space to the left of the payphone that someone could tuck themselves just out of sight. I’m sure it was intended to give people some privacy while they talked on the phone, but yeah, it’s a pretty decent hiding space for Maggie as well.

Even not being on good terms with her, I don’t like that she’s having to take advantage of it. No one should have to.

I step in enough to lean against the metal phone stand and cross my arms.

“What guy? What’s he doing?”

Maggie folds her arms across her chest too. Her widened eyes move from me to the direction of the rest of the building.

“Can you keep watch while we talk?”

Her voice is growing unsteady.

I nod, check the room again, and assure her.

“It’s just us.”

She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then back. She chews on her bottom lip and drifts those nervous eyes over me.

“He keeps—um—”

Uncrossing her arms, she pulls her dark hair over one shoulder, then starts fidgeting with it.

“If I count tonight, I’ve seen him five times in less than a week. He keeps ending up where I am and flirting with me, and—and the way he talks, it sounds like he watches me a lot. I don’t like it. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

This information hits me in a strange way.

He watches her a lot and keeps showing up around her?

I narrow my eyes, check the room again, put my attention back on her.

She goes on talking.

“I don’t think I have a lot of time right now to tell you all about it, but he came to Lucent the other day while I was working, and maybe that was a coincidence—maybe all the times I saw him were coincidences except for last night, ’cause he was at Lucent again, but he didn’t dine or even go in, he just came up to me out of nowhere while I was alone in the parking lot, and then tonight isn’t a coincidence either. Anyway, I don’t know, but he has made me uncomfortable in some way every time I’ve seen him, and he keeps touching me, and just a little while ago he said he thought I would be here tonight and that’s why he’s here. He works at Mellow Burger, and the other day he overheard us—I mean, I guess when I saw him that time, it really was a coincidence because the girls and I went there, not the other way around, but—”

Flustered, she abandons her hair and crosses her arms again.

“God. I can’t think straight. It’s just—it turns out that while we were there, he listened to us talking and planning to come here tonight, and now—”

“Are you saying you’re worried he’s stalking you or something?”

I can hardly believe I’m asking her such an alarming thing. I’ve never known anyone who had an issue of this kind. But I have to ask because I’ve also never seen her this shaken before.

This is not how I expected our already unexpected conversation to go.

Even more unexpected is the aggravation suddenly burning in her eyes.

“Do not mock me right now.”

Her voice is a low burn, too, even as it wobbles.

“I know how all this sounds, but I’m upset and stressed and having a damn hard time processing—”

“I’m not making a joke, Maggie,”

I all but snap.

“I’m asking you an important question.”

She clenches her jaw and counters my even gaze with that glare.

Only briefly, though, and then her expression wavers back into one of distress. Her eyes leave my face and stick on the ceiling of the alcove.

“I’m sorry,”

she whispers.

“I’m just…I’m….”

When was the last time she apologized to me for anything?

My stomach clenches. It happens again as the weight of this situation continues to descend on me.

While she closes her eyes and works on her breathing, I check again that we’re the only two around. I also relax my fists, which I evidently balled up at some point.

“Yes,”

she says.

“I’m getting worried he’s….”

She can’t seem to get the whole sentence out.

That’s enough for me, though.

There are a lot of details I want to ask about—he approached her in our employee lot last night in the dark once she was by herself?—but she’s right, we don’t really have time for her to catch me up. I try to decide what needs my attention right this minute.

Not like I have much of an idea of how to help her. My growing urge to go find this dude is both insistent and quite unusual considering what my relationship with Maggie is like. Plus, I’ve never been the kind of guy who resorts to threats and violence; in my opinion, there’s always a better way to handle things.

I end up asking.

“You said he heard you and your friends would be here? Does that mean you’re not here by yourself?”

She nods. “Right.”

“Where are Joy and Emma?”

“At our booth with Paxton. I was with them, too, until Kyle—the guy—started talking to his server at his own table. We were sure you’d be here really soon, so I snuck out here to wait while Kyle wasn’t looking. I thought it would be best to ask you somewhere he couldn’t see.”

Kyle, huh? Good to know the name I’m apparently adding to my shit list.

That said, I frown about one of those other details.

“What’s Paxton doing at your table?”

“Flirting with Emma.”

Now I roll my eyes.

“Oh. Okay.”

“Yeah.”

She takes a slow breath.

She finally reopens her eyes and looks at me straight again.

She gulps.

“Luke?”

Her voice around my name sounds so…frail.

It makes my stomach clench again because flustered, shaken, frail Maggie is not the Maggie I’m used to interacting with.

I nod my assent for her to go on.

She gulps again.

“There’s no way to…to ask this that won’t sound strange. You’re gonna think it’s a crazy idea. I thought the same thing, but Joy was right, it’s the strongest one we have. It’s the least confrontational or antagonistic or whatever, you know? We aren’t sure if the cops should be called because he hasn’t tried to hurt me, he’s just made me feel afraid, which isn’t exactly a crime, and we don’t know if calling them into the bar would anger him somehow, and of course I couldn’t set Emma on him because she angers almost everybody, and he already wasn’t happy when he asked me out and I said no.”

Trying to keep up with her vague babbling is difficult enough, but that last part threatens to fully distract me.

I don’t have time to think about why before she levels a downright pleading look on me.

It nearly takes my breath away.

“I’m afraid to leave Merritt’s right now even if other people go with me, and our friends are afraid of it, too, because we don’t know if Kyle might try to follow. We don’t know if he would try to figure out where I live or something—and then what if he already has figured it out? I don’t know what to expect from him, Luke.”

Holy fuck, that would be—

“So I wondered—Joy—we wondered—”

One of her feet starts up a jittery bounce against the floor.

“The thing is, when I told him a little bit ago that I won’t go out with him, he got this way about him that made me nervous, especially on top of him finding me on my own last night, and he asked why I said no and I kind of panicked and lied and told him I have a boyfriend. But I don’t think he believed me. I’m worried he knows it’s not true ’cause he’s been admiring me from afar for God knows how long, plus I didn’t think to say it last night. So this idea we have….”

All of this leaves me short on breath for real.

Am I understanding this right? She isn’t dating that lame-ass dude anymore, so she can’t call him, so she wants me to pretend—?

“I mean, I’m not asking you to act like you’re my boyfriend,”

she hurries out.

“I know we’re…um….”

Oh.

I only realize my pulse had taken off on a sprint when it starts slowing back down.

But it doesn’t slow down much.

“I know you hate me,”

she goes on.

“but since Paxton and Emma are talking and it’s Joy’s birthday and we don’t wanna try to leave yet and I’m not with Marcus anymore, will you just sit next to me in there? If you’ll sit with me, if you’ll just be there, maybe Kyle will be convinced that I do have someone. Maybe he’ll go away and we can leave later without being….”

This time when she trails off, she looks like something unpleasant is dawning on her.

She vehemently stomps her foot and sends her eyes from me back up to the ceiling, clearly frustrated all over again—though not with me, I don’t think. She looks like she wants to pull her own hair out.

“What am I even saying?”

she huffs out.

“He probably knows you and I aren’t on good terms. He was watching me that night you made me spill my drink on myself, and who knows what else he’s seen? Why the hell would he believe we suddenly like each other? Even if we managed to be decent to each other for a little while and not argue the entire time, we don’t have it in us to look convincing. Which means this is a stupid idea, not a strong one, and it’s insane of me to ask you to go along with it—and why would I think you’d go along with it even if it was a good idea? What’s wrong with me? Why would I think you’d wanna bother with this? This isn’t your problem, and you’re not my friend. This is my unbelievable problem.”

She’s grown even more breathless than she does when she’s telling me off for something. Her eyes are glistening where they’re stuck on the ceiling. She steeples her hands over her nose.

My own breaths have sped up because…well, not only do I get the gravity of this as best a guy can, but no matter what we’ve been through, I also hate seeing her near tears. It’s an unstoppable response—I can’t do a single thing about it, can’t talk myself out of it or detach from it. That was true eight years ago and it’s true now. Seeing Maggie cry is something my heart doesn’t like.

She drops her hands and exhales unsteadily.

“But hey,”

she says.

“you know, it’s possible I’m being overdramatic. It’s possible this is all nothing and I’m scared for nothing. He’s probably gonna leave any minute now and never bother me again, right? Because why wouldn’t he? No one obsesses over another person in real life, do they? Just in movies and stuff?”

After noting that we remain the only two people in the area, I take my time looking at her. Take my time absorbing everything she’s said, everything she must be feeling.

I can only pin down some of how it makes me feel. For the most part, I’m as much of a tangle as she is.

“I’m sorry,”

she says again, not waiting for me to figure out how to reply. Her throat is audibly tightening.

“I’ve wasted enough of your time. You can forget I brought this up to you. I’ll just—um—”

Her words falter into a whimpery noise that tells me she doesn’t actually know what she’ll do.

This normally composed girl really is disturbed by this.

She’s so disturbed that she’s asking me—the guy she’s spent forever detesting—for help. She’s not merely telling me what has her upset, she’s asking me for help with it.

‘Oh, can I trust you?’ resurfaces in my memory.

Without looking at me again, she moves to slip out of the alcove.

“I’m sorry.”

And I throw a blocking hand out, catching her at the waist, stopping her.

We both have hitching breath at the contact.

It makes me wonder if her heart is skipping beats like mine is—if she can’t help noticing how my hand feels, just like I can’t help noticing how soft she….

My chest feels so weirdly tight, it’s like I’m holding my breath, though I’m definitely not.

“Maggie, wait,”

I finally manage.

She takes a step back from my hand. Her damp eyes drift up to my face. I can see color coming into her cheeks.

When she snapped that trust thing at me the other day, I knew there was very real resentment behind it. However, all the words that have poured out of her these last few minutes are telling in their own way. They’ve revealed that some part of her, tiny and reluctant though it may be, is still capable of trusting me. Some part of her doesn’t think I’m the ultimate bad guy.

That weird feeling in my chest intensifies.

She has surprised me a couple of times lately with the not-angry things she’s chosen to say and do, but this is on a whole different level.

And we do have a hard time getting along, but I have to admit she isn’t a true blight on the human race—I’d be ridiculous to act like she is, because way worse people walk the earth. Does she piss me off? Yes. Do I literally hate her? No.

If I did, the thought of someone bothering her wouldn’t bother me, and it does.

In fact, it stings to think any bit of her believes I care so little about her that I would wave off an earnest plea for help just because she’s a professional at getting on my nerves. That talent doesn’t warrant me abandoning her to potential harm.

I would never do that.

And this guy Kyle might finish his drink and leave her be, but he also might not. He might hang around and continue casting a shadow over her night.

She hasn’t tried to walk away again. She’s still looking up at me, waiting like I asked her to, so I actively take in the sight of her once more. Flustered, shaken, frail. Damp-eyed.

Vulnerable.

Folding in on herself, looking cold even in the sweater I now know is cozy and thick, glancing around….

I remember, too, how she said, ‘Luke, I’m scared.’

“I’ll do it,”

I tell her.

Fragile hope overwhelms everything else in her expression—it relaxes her jaw, lifts her eyebrows. It even fills her lungs.

“You will?” she asks.

Between the way this new look makes me feel and how my brain is still trying to get a grasp on what I’ve found us in the middle of, it takes me a few seconds to figure out how to nod.

And for a few more, we just hold each other’s gaze.

She whispers.

“Thank you.”

Another flicker of something I haven’t seen from her in an eternity.

Indeed, it’s been several long years since we were last able to share personal space for hours and just…be. Not glare or bicker or straight-up argue. I have to wonder how we’re going to manage to look even halfway normal here.

Maybe a rum and ginger ale will help that too.

At thinking this, I recall how sore my legs are. Stepping out of the alcove is a sharper reminder. Funny, though, how the pain is no longer the biggest thing on my mind.

Same as the past, I guess, at least for now.

This time, my belated response is.

“You’re welcome. It might be a challenge, but it’s just for the night. Surely we can exercise some restraint.”

I think back on her kindness from when I had that headache the other day.

Then, clearing my throat, I gesture towards the rest of Merritt’s.

“Ready to go?”

She nods and starts shuffling along with me. Somehow for the first time, I notice she’s wearing high heels—black ones that look simple yet nice with her gray sweater and black pants. I’m still taller than she is, though.

I always kind of appreciated that detail in passing, but something about it means even more to me now.

She quietly rushes out.

“Hold on a second.”

We stop walking. When she faces me, I mirror her and get a front-row seat to the new blush that’s taking over her cheeks.

“Maybe it’s a good idea for—for us to say something not-mean to each other. Before we get in there. To kind of break the ice or whatever.”

She slips an unsure glance over me and tugs at her sweater, as if self-conscious.

“If you can find anything about me that you don’t wanna make fun of.”

I give an approving hum. I do think that’s a good suggestion. I’m also amused by that last thing she said, but if I laugh, she’ll probably take it the wrong way.

She will take it the wrong way if I joke about her being careful walking in those heels; that’s what happened yesterday when I laughed about her tripping at work in flat shoes. I know I’ve teased her before about being clumsy, but yesterday I was still riding the strange high I got from her shoulder drop in the breakroom, so I found her little stumble endearing somehow. Then she got mad at me and turned the whole thing around, including that mood I was in. So I was mad, too, about that and the squabble we got into about my phone.

Thinking about the phone reminds me of how I later noticed another employee getting in trouble for having theirs on them. At first I thought the guy deserved it because he wasn’t surreptitious enough, but I eventually—albeit grudgingly—admitted to myself that that wasn’t really true. He got in trouble because the shape of his phone was visible in his pocket, which could’ve happened to anyone. It may or may not have made me reconsider my own stance on the no-phone rule, and I wonder now if that’s a good not-mean thing to say to Maggie. ‘You were right to tell me to leave my phone locked up in the breakroom. Someone else got reprimanded for not doing it, and it could’ve just as easily been me.’

But nah, I’m not bringing that up, though I’m sure it would cheer her a bit.

Telling her how beautiful she looks doesn’t seem like the best idea either. So I just go with a different simple truth.

“We may not be friends, but I still believe you deserve to feel comfortable.”

There’s no way to know what she thought I might say, but the look in her eyes is one of light surprise. It shifts into gratitude next, and then…something I can’t put my finger on.

Still in her quiet way, she says again.

“Thank you.”

After a beat, she adds.

“We may not be friends, but I still think you’re being kind.”

The compliment brushes over me.

She thinks I’m being kind.

I echo her low thanks because I’m pleased and abruptly saddened at the same time.

I never wanted to give her a reason to think poorly of me in the first place, but my old actions forced her hand.

And what with so many emotions running high right now, I find I can’t keep from wondering if she’s ever still sad about us. If she ever feels regret over how things went, not just resentment and betrayal.

Well, she’s never mentioned it.

But neither have I, and….

She turns away and starts walking again. I shake off that last thought and join her, more ready than ever to get into a drink and my gummy worms. And some bar food later, too, if Maggie is interested.

We both love eggs Benedict, right? Maybe we can agree on something else as well.