Page 17 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

Maggie and I both seem to have stopped breathing.

She looks up at me with astonished green eyes, and I look at her with all the solemnity in the world.

I’m so serious about this.

Worry gnawed at me all night and all the way up until a few minutes ago when I laid eyes on her and found she was safe. Then it came back when she mentioned the grocery store thing, and that sealed it—that was what made me feel sure about what I came over here to say. Before then, part of me wondered if my idea was hasty or an overreaction or just plain fucking senseless.

“What?”

she breathes out.

She’s back to having working lungs. I get back to it, too, so I can give my little speech.

“What did you say?”

she prompts me.

There’s something strangely and deeply sad about taking my hands off of her, but I do it anyway. I can’t believe I even put them on her shoulders in the first place; the urge arrived and overtook me fast as hell.

Her next breath seems to go deeper, but she doesn’t step away from me.

I don’t move either as I reply.

“You heard me.”

She blinks, blinks, blinks.

“You—you think that we should pretend to…be in a relationship?”

“Yes.”

Also strange is that my hands had seemed to stop shaking when I was touching her, but they’re back at it now. You’d think the opposite would be true. I cross my arms once more and, heart hammering, keep talking.

“I felt better after we all left the bar last night and Kyle wasn’t around. I got you through the night, you know? You asked for my help and I gave it and we were successful and you were breathing better and everything was fine. Then you girls came in here, so Pax and I left, and I didn’t feel better anymore. I guess it was because you were out of my sight, I don’t know, but as my night went on, it got to where I straight-up worried about you—I barely slept, Maggie. I couldn’t stop wondering, ‘What if he honestly didn’t care that we sat together? What if it wasn’t enough and that’s why he stuck around? Was he just waiting me out? Is he gonna go back to following her the first chance he gets? What if he corners her alone somewhere again?’ And I kept thinking I should’ve done more—you hadn’t asked me to, but I should’ve, and—”

“Luke.”

She’s officially overwhelmed in a different way from when she was babbling about him.

“I-I’m confu….”

Well, that’s not an outright no. She also hasn’t smacked me for my audacity or kicked me out of her place.

It gives me some hope.

I breathe for a few moments and try to calm my heartbeat.

“Look,”

I say slowly.

“we hoped a few hours of me being with you would turn this guy off, but for whatever reason, it didn’t seem to. I haven’t been able to shake how much that disturbed me, because I remember how disturbed you were. So I came here to see how you feel today and offer this idea even though it might’ve been too early to tell if he’s gonna back off. But now, after what happened at the store—even if he didn’t know you were there—and how worried you got that I was him showing up at your door, I know for sure that you’re still afraid. If you were relaxed at all when I left you here last night, that’s not true now. Right?”

Her brow is creased with bewilderment and dismay.

But she nods.

I tell her.

“It’s not okay for him to keep you from living comfortably, and it’s not a problem you have to deal with by yourself. Us putting on a relationship sounds absurd ’cause of who we are to each other, but—”

A weak laugh escapes her.

“It is absurd.”

“Okay, but I’ve thought about this. If he didn’t believe that you’re with someone else and that he needs to move on, we can try harder to make him believe it. We can do better than the bare minimum.”

I swallow hard. Gather my last bit of courage.

“We’ve dated before. We can pretend to do it again.”

Although I’d planned the words and practiced them many times before this moment, they still send a heavy ache through me.

The stumble in her inhalation tells me something similar is happening to her.

Our past is a difficult thing to talk about. Sometimes it’s difficult to even think about. I had to mention it, though; no matter how cracked our foundation is, we do have one to stand on, and that’s worth noting.

Carefully, I continue.

“I don’t mean we should try to seek him out and intentionally show off in front of him. I’m talking about doing this for the sake of ‘just in case he’s around.’ If we go to work together and I run your errands with you and we do normal-looking things with each other, wouldn’t it kill two birds with one stone if he happened to be watching? You wouldn’t feel threatened ’cause you wouldn’t be alone, and he’d see more proof of you being unavailable.”

Maggie hasn’t broken eye contact with me for whole minutes, and she doesn’t start now.

I can see a lot of things churning in her expression, but she’s still listening, still not telling me to fuck off.

So, more quietly, I ask.

“What do you think?”

She continues to give me her undivided attention, silently, motionlessly.

I settle in for the wait while she processes this. It took me all night and the first part of today to get a grip on it. I even had to ask Paxton’s opinion. He was on board pretty fast—‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ he’d said—but he’s not Maggie. He doesn’t even know our history, only that we’ve been at odds over some ugly stuff from years ago.

Even the quickest thought of it brings up how much she hurt me, how angry she made me.

If she isn’t remembering the ways I wronged her, too, I’d be shocked.

But same as last night at Merritt’s, her current situation feels more important to me than turmoil from high school. I can’t seem to help wanting to do something about it, even if that means taking a route neither of us anticipated.

The question is, does she feel the same way?

“Joy….”

At the faint word, I tune in to the contemplation on her face.

“At the bar, when Joy told me her idea for you to sit with me…she said she had faith in it because we were nice to each other at work the other day. She said we could get along if we tried just a little bit.”

Funny, Paxton said something similar earlier: ‘This won’t be hard to pull off if y’all can agree to temporarily put your bullshit on the back burner for a greater purpose.’

“She was right,”

I reply.

“We’ve proved that, I think.”

“Yeah….”

Taking a deep breath, she finally pulls her eyes from mine. While they rove the apartment, she tucks her hair behind her ears, and I try not to stare too much at how soft it looks hanging long and loose over her shoulders and the front of that shirt.

It’s not an incredibly revealing shirt, but the collar does dip lower than anything I’ve seen her wear. For it being such a simple piece of clothing, she sure is owning the hell out of it. And I gotta be honest, I’m a big fan of the shape of her in leggings, because—

“Are you sure you wanna pretend to date me when I don’t look as good as I used to?”

My gaze snaps back up to her face. Shit, she caught me.

But I see the color in her cheeks and that she’s actually still not meeting my eyes, so I replay her diffident question, then raise an eyebrow at her.

“Who said you don’t look as good as you used to?”

She studies the front of my hoodie like it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever seen.

“Well, you know…”

her tone tries and fails to be nonchalant.

“…we both saw my ex and his new girl the other day.”

“Yeah. Did one of them say you look bad?”

A released breath becomes light, dry laughter. Her eyes find mine for a split second and then she’s looking away again.

“No, but it’s obvious I do—it’s a fact. There she was, all slim and graceful, poured into that dress with not one inch of her out of place. She was perfection.”

“No, she wasn’t,”

I disagree.

“If you ask me, she was a seven out of ten.”

Now Maggie looks right at me and laughs in full incredulity.

“A seven? My God, does a ten exist if someone like her is only above average to you? In any case, I saw how you stared at her and then how you looked at me, so my point is made. I’ve put on some weight and gotten soft, and it’s plain to see.”

…Is she for real?

Does she honestly think she’s got nothing on that girl? She thinks I think she’s got nothing on her?

That day, I’d wondered if some of her snappiness towards me involved the new girl being flaunted, but I didn’t expect it to mess with her this much.

I open my mouth to keep digging—and possibly inform her of the entire truth—when she holds up both hands to stop me. She seems to be trying to compose herself.

“We don’t have to talk about that,”

she says.

“Forget I brought her up. I only got on that topic because…uh….”

She hesitates.

When she doesn’t go on, I prompt lightly, “Because?”

Her blush is furious.

“I was thinking about your idea and how I actually don’t—I—well, I don’t hate it. Your explanation makes it sound better than it should for people like us. But if our goal is to make Kyle believe he doesn’t have a chance with me, that means we have to sell that we’re together, which means we…we have to show some kind of attraction to each other. And I don’t wanna force you to act like I’m….”

Compassion and sadness paint the look she gives me.

“Luke, I-I don’t wanna ask too much of you. You’re already offering so much more than anyone else would after how I acted when we were younger. As if last night wasn’t a big enough favor.”

The self-awareness there puts a skip in my pulse.

It’s not what I was expecting—the part about high school, I mean. My brain may be all over the place right now, but I still know this is the first time older Maggie has mentioned her retaliation for my fuck-up.

There’s no discerning whether or not she stands behind it the way younger Maggie did, though. It’s not like those few words were an apology.

“Why are you offering me this?”

she whispers.

“Why are you offering something that’s so ridiculous for us?”

Valid questions.

Those resentful parts of me have asked them plenty of times.

But I keep returning to the facts that hit me last night when she was on the edge of a breakdown and I seemed to be the only person who could save her.

I voice them now.

“Because no matter how angry I’ve ever been at you, I’ve never truly hated you. I’ve never been so mad at you that I would stand aside and watch something hurt you. You can get on my nerves all goddamn day—and sometimes you do—but I still don’t wanna see you in danger.”

Her breaths aren’t quite steady.

Her expression is softening so much it almost goes sweet.

My head is such a wreck right now that that look has another truth falling out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“And I wouldn’t have to pretend you’re attractive. You are that. You’ve been that to me since the first time I saw you.”

All at once now, her brow creases and her eyes close and she turns her face away.

I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing by her standards.

Or by my own.

New silence grows between us, the only sounds those of our working lungs and the apartment being an apartment.

I finally decide to shuffle back from her and mosey around. Give her some space in case she has such a fast heartbeat that she feels winded, like I suddenly do.

Takes me a full minute to chill out, it seems.

I’m looking through a big window to check that all is in order outside—and it is—when her quiet voice comes.

“If we do this, coordinating our schedules might get tricky.”

I turn to face her again.

“I don’t mind.”

From across the way, her eyes are back on me. She, too, seems more collected than before.

“What if I take up a lot of your free time?”

“Couples are supposed to spend their free time together.”

I pause.

“Surely we can agree on things to do just like we used to.”

She considers that.

“What about how often we argue? Won’t we look unconvincing and weak if we do that when we’re supposed to be happy together?”

“I’d wondered that myself, but the answer is simple, really: couples also argue.”

I shrug.

“Even the most solid ones. No one is happy a hundred percent of the time.”

As she considers that, too, she looks at me. Over these long moments, her expression seems to grow nervous or reluctant or something.

“What about, uh…”

she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

“…um, PDA? ’Cause we’re not in the habit of touching each other anymore.”

Just like it did the many times I thought of that myself, my stomach dips and flips. I can’t help skipping a look over her body, her face—especially her mouth.

She would probably slap the piss out of me if I tried to kiss that mouth, even for the sake of the ruse, and in a couple of ways, I’d want to slap myself.

But another truth is undeniable, so I say.

“I think we’d have to be willing to do some things. What would look truly unconvincing and weak is if we bickered and never held hands or kissed cheeks or anything.”

I wonder if her hands really twitch like mine do or if my brain has made that tiny motion up.

“I guess so,”

she agrees in a murmur.

“Solid couples don’t do that. They’re balanced.”

“Yeah.”

“We could still have rules, though.”

“Definitely. I’ve already thought of some general ones.”

“Hm.”

Another small stretch of silence.

“And how long do you intend to play this out for?” she asks.

Yet another thing I’ve already thought about.

“Couple weeks or so? I don’t know. I figure either until Kyle backs off on his own or until he gives us a reason to make him back off.”

I gesture between us.

“This idea seems like a strong plan for the interim. We wait to see whether he acts right, and while we wait, we both know you’re safe and comfortable.”

“What if it takes longer than a couple weeks?”

I shrug.

“Guess I’ll have extra time to teach you it’s okay not to live by every set of rules in existence.”

She narrows her eyes.

“Oh, then I’ll have extra time to teach you how valuable rules can be. Stop signs are stop signs for a reason, you know.”

With a tilt of her head, she muses almost innocently.

“Or maybe you don’t know?”

“Ha.”

After a beat, I add.

“At least I won’t be a bore like that dude Marcus, though, huh?”

Mild surprise touches her and she straightens up.

“Why do you think he was boring?”

“Because he was.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, I dozed off every time I saw you two having a conversation. No real smiles, no big laughs, no contagious fun.”

“You and I don’t have those things either.”

“But we used to, so I know what happiness looks like on you.”

She blinks slowly at me.

I blink back.

“Well, really, though,”

she says.

“what if we fake-date for longer than you expect? You can’t hang in there with me forever.”

“Sure, but I wouldn’t have suggested this if I only felt like doing it for three days.”

“What if you meet someone you wanna date for real?”

That redheaded girl from the self-checkout drifts into my mind.

She was pretty and interested, but I looked at her and somehow thought of Maggie.

Maggie, who’s gotten ten times bigger in my mind since then.

Feeling oddly calm about it, I answer.

“Nobody’s gonna take my focus off of you.”

I’m ready for her next question, but it doesn’t come. She keeps studying me, her hands clasping, her bottom lip tucking into her mouth.

All right, that little action is growing on me. It’s not something she does to be cute, but it still makes her look cute, and if she keeps slipping it into our encounters, my shoulder drop addiction is going to end up with a friend.

And though it seems like a good sign that she hasn’t done the shoulder drop since I’ve been here, I do rather wish—

“O-okay,”

comes her soft stammer.

The word springs me from my thoughts. She seems to be torn between relief and reluctance where she stands over there.

I understand that. I’m more relieved and resolved, but it’d be a lie to say part of me isn’t wondering what I’m getting myself into. It does wonder if I’m really ready to be around her so much…even though I have no other option because being around her is the only way this plan will work…and even though this plan was my idea.

However, I say, “Okay,”

back to her, and nothing in me whispers that I’m making a mistake. I feel a lot of things, but a sense of outright wrongness isn’t one of them.

It’s nice. These days, I’m well aware of what being a dumbass feels like, and for once, I’m unburdened by it.

So I press on; this brief silence would be awkward if I hadn’t come prepared. “Rules?”

She nods.

“Rules. What are the ones you’ve already come up with?”

“First up is that I think I should be the first person you reach out to when there’s somewhere you’d ordinarily go by yourself.”

“That makes sense.”

After a beat.

“We agreed that couples spend lots of time together, and being alone isn’t gonna help me feel safer about Kyle.”

“Exactly.”

“What if you aren’t available?”

She quickly goes on again.

“I think in that case, I should take one of my friends instead. As an absolute last resort, I can go alone but find someone to stick with me so I’m not really alone, like the cart attendant at the store. Right?”

I don’t know anything about the cart attendant part of her trip, but the gist of it is smart. “Right.”

Now it’s time to pose what just might be the rule we’ll have the most trouble with—and it’s got nothing to do with touching.

“The second rule I thought of is like what we were saying earlier about couples arguing. Even though it won’t be possible for us to get along the entire time, we have to make honest attempts at it. We gotta do our best not to get into arguments that might…uh….”

She looks away for a moment, rubbing her hands over her hips.

“Arguments that might damage what we’re trying to do here?”

she supplies.

When she looks at me again, I nod.

As it is, we never talk about our past, but the more time we spend together, the more chances we’ll get to be aggravated with each other, and the more we might be tempted to fire shots. It would get in our way big time.

“No hitting below the belt on purpose,”

she adds.

“Try to…try to be kind instead.”

I nod again.

I find that I can’t quite help mirroring the slight wariness about her, though, because the fact is we still are who we are.

“Okay,”

she says. She drifts a look over me.

“Anything else? Or should we move on to physical stuff?”

The mere mention puts a certain kind of buzz in the air, but I try to stay casual.

“Nope, that’s the last rule, I think.”

I definitely catch one of her hands twitching now. She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them, then knots her fingers together.

I say.

“Well, before we figure out what’s okay, let’s agree that if either of us ever feels uncomfortable, we’ll say so and be respected.”

That almost, almost gets a smile out of her.

She says.

“Absolutely. Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Mmhmm.”

She pauses.

“I think regular touches will be okay. Like, natural ones or whatever.”

She doesn’t elaborate, so I make guesses based off of what I can picture doing.

“Natural ones like…getting an eyelash off your face if I see one? Putting my arm around you when we’re sitting close together?”

“Yeah. Holding hands. Me fixing your work tie for you when it’s crooked and lazy-looking.”

Any build-up of the buzz dips away as I scowl at her.

“My tie looked like that one time, and I told you why when you brought it up.”

“It looked like that because you rushed through putting it on.”

“Well, the blender went stupid and got bright-ass strawberry daiquiri on me, so yes, I had to hurry to put on a random tie from Mr. Polk’s office.”

“You could’ve looked into the bathroom mirror for five seconds and—”

“We were busy as shit that night, so I—”

Almost simultaneously, we hold up our hands as if to say, ‘Okay, this is neither here nor there.’

“Whatever,”

she says aloud.

“Whatever,” I echo.

Taking a breath, I get back to what’s going on at the moment.

Though the notion does something strange to my stomach, I have to tell her.

“I’m fine with cheek kisses. Forehead kisses. If they seem natural at all, like you said.”

She hasn’t had as much time to weigh the pros and cons as I have, so I wait patiently.

Shortly, she says.

“I guess I’m fine with those too. I mean, I don’t mean ‘I guess’ like I’m unsure but going along with it anyway. I just….”

If a glance could be a mutter, the one she sends over me would be one.

“This isn’t something I thought we’d ever be talking about. None of this is.”

I could laugh.

“Believe me, I know.”

She blows a raspberry.

“Yeah, of course you do.”

As seconds tick by with us being quiet, one more detail grows bigger in my mind.

I’m halfway afraid to voice it because even a mention might set her off somehow. But for her comfort and my own, I think I have to.

“No full-on ones, though, right?”

I clear my throat.

“No full-on kisses?”

My eyes go over her lips yet again. For a second, I worry she’s going to fold the bottom one into her mouth again—my stomach leaps at the thought because—

She doesn’t do it, though, just says.

“I—I don’t really think those would be necessary. Do you?”

Cute-action-bullet dodged.

I answer.

“No, I don’t really think so either.”

After a bit of contemplation, I acknowledge.

“I’m sure plenty of couples don’t do that out in public. Doesn’t seem like it’ll be weird if we don’t do it ourselves.”

“Good point. Yeah. So…none of those.”

“Deal.”

She finally untangles her fingers and lets her hands flop down to her sides.

“Done with rules?”

“Sure. They sound good to me.”

“To me too. What now, then?”

Since I did come prepared for much of this whole fake-dating conversation, my reply comes easily.

“To kick this plan off, I think we should start out saying something nice or easy to each other. Or trusting. Like we did at the bar.”

I lift a nod at her.

“My thing is I listened to that song you mentioned—‘July’—and I thought it was great.”

The tension about her loosens, as I hoped it would. “Really?”

“Yeah, it feels a lot like summer to me. Chill sometimes, upbeat other times. But it’s not only a summertime song, you know? It’s just good.”

As I recall my third time listening to it earlier at home, I add.

“Makes you wanna play an air-instrument.”

“Or move to the beat, yeah. It has a groove to it.”

“It does.”

The tiniest smile of pleased agreement graces her lips.

I wet my own lips, which abruptly feel dry.

“What about you? What do you feel like saying?”

She grows pensive. I think I hear her murmur to herself.

“Something nice or…trusting?”

Momentarily, a weird look comes onto her face. She eyes me and smooths her hands down the sides of her shirt, then smooths at them again.

The next shift in her expression makes me think she’s steeling herself.

“I’ve, uh…been trying to exercise,”

she divulges.

“Not just because of how I think I look, but also because of—of how I feel. Even though it did make me self-conscious to see Marcus’s new girlfriend, that wasn’t the first time I was uncomfortable. I’ve felt that way for kind of a long time. So I decided to do something about it instead of…not.”

I nod slowly while I absorb this.

To be honest, though I do already think highly of her body, I have to commend her for taking care of herself for herself, whatever that may entail. Just because she looks good to me doesn’t mean she feels good to herself, and like I’ve been saying, her being comfortable matters. It matters for all of us. If she’s taking healthy steps towards changing what she doesn’t like, that’s great.

“You think I’m stupid?” she asks.

I realize I haven’t responded out loud yet.

“No, not at all. That’s cool. I’ve been trying to exercise lately too.”

I tsk.

“Well, I’ve gone for two runs, but both of them were nightmares, so to tell the whole truth, I gave up fast.”

Her eyes lighten with understanding.

“Oh. I don’t blame you. I’ve been doing HIIT workouts and they’re really hard too.”

As she pauses, curiosity comes up.

“Why have you been exercising?”

This time, the looks she drifts over me is…

…appreciative?

Am I imagining that?

“You seem to be in great shape,”

she mumbles.

No, I’m not imagining anything. She thinks I look good right back.

She’s still attracted to me too.

I don’t know what to make of that.

It doesn’t really matter, though, so I do my best to shake it off with a stretching roll of my shoulders.

“Well, I think the same about you, but like you said, it’s just something I’ve felt an urge for. Exercise sounded good and it’s a healthy thing to do, so I went for it.”

“Oh. Yeah, of—of c—”

Sudden noise from somewhere on the couch makes us jump. We seem to realize at the same time that it’s a cell phone ringing; Maggie goes over and grabs it.

“Hold on, Luke,”

she requests before answering. “Hello?”

After a moment.

“Hi, Mr. Polk.”

The owner of Lucent. Wonder what he wants.

Maggie frowns sympathetically.

“Oh…. That’s terrible. Yes, I can get there a little sooner.”

A shift pick-up, sounds like.

I’d intended to compare our work schedules for today so we can figure out a carpool plan. I go in at four, so I hoped she’d be going then or before then. Guess I’m about to find out.

She’s off the call in no time and telling me.

“Well, I was supposed to clock in at three, but Mr. Polk needs me as soon as possible. Val is heading home sick and she was the only hostess.”

Nice.

I mean, for our purposes. Not for Val.

“All right,”

I say.

“I’ll drive you over there when you’re ready.”

She takes a measured breath as she looks at me.

Earlier, she seemed relieved and reluctant about our plan. Now she seems to be sharing in a little bit of my resolve.

“Thank you for doing this,”

she says. “Truly.”

I nod.

“I’m glad to help.”

Strange and awkward though this agreement is, I think she knows I mean that.

With a sigh, she starts heading out of the living area.

“Okay. Let me get changed real fast, and then…I guess it’ll be time to start pretending for everyone to see.”

Yeah, I guess so.

I take a seat on the couch. A fresh wave of exhaustion hits me, but there’s no denying I feel more at ease than I have in many long hours…

…even though the reason why is overwhelming in its own way.

The thought of it both has me rubbing a hand over my eyes and has my stomach flipping.

I never thought I’d say it, but it leaves me along with my own sigh.

“I’m dating Maggie Moss again.”