Page 26 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

“What?”

I ask, nearly folding over where I’ve been stirring a fruit salad, dropping the spoon into the bowl. As I turn to look at Emma, I can feel the worry spiking up to my face from my tightening chest.

She leans one hip against the counter and nods, her brown eyes serious—and seriously displeased.

“He sat there the entire time.”

I stare at her for a few more long moments, then look back to my fruit. Don’t really see it, though. My brain is too busy forming images to go with what she has just said.

She went to Merritt’s with Paxton tonight for the margarita special they have on Wednesday nights. On my break at work, I checked my phone and saw a text from her that said not to randomly come to the bar myself because Kyle had shown up and was sitting alone at a table facing them. But just now, she has said that although she and Paxton were mostly interested in each other, she noticed more than once over those couple hours that if Kyle wasn’t seemingly checking on them, he was keeping a close eye on the door. And one time, someone called out for a woman named Maggie, so Emma looked over with worry that I’d dropped by against her advice for some reason, and she saw Kyle looking around, too, with purpose.

With purpose, she said.

“You think he was waiting to see if I’d be there?”

I whisper.

“You think he was hoping to see me?”

I feel her brush at some of my hair with her fingers.

“Signs point to it. He knows you like the bar. He recognized me and Paxton as people you know and who you very likely might’ve planned to meet up with. He wasn’t watching us quite like he watched you those other times, though—it’s like he just kept hoping you’d appear at our table, yeah.”

She pauses before her voice drops lower, carrying even more displeasure.

“And there was something else.”

There’s more?

I’m growing cold, like I haven’t been wearing warm pajamas since Luke dropped me off after that shift we worked once our day together wrapped up.

Coiling my arms around myself, I lower my gaze to the floor.

“What was it?”

I ask, though I don’t really want to know.

“Harleigh Merritt came to our table after a while. She pointed Kyle out to us and told us he spoke to her.”

Emma gives a single humorless laugh.

“Still can’t fucking believe this…. He said he heard she’s neighbors with you, so he hoped she would give him your address. He wants to be able to send you flowers.”

I lift and turn my head to finally stare at her again. “What?”

Her eyes are sharp now.

“Obviously, Harleigh didn’t tell him shit, but yeah. He asked someone for your address.”

What the hell?

“How would he have even heard that about her?” I ask.

“More eavesdropping? I don’t know.”

After a reeling moment, I restate what Emma said before.

“And he sat there the whole time you and Paxon did.”

“Correct.”

“Was he there when you left? Like, he didn’t give up and go home before you did?”

“Also correct.”

I suck in a nervous breath, but she continues.

“But he didn’t follow us—not from the bar to Paxton’s place and not from there to here. I promise I watched out for anything odd. And Harleigh knows to watch out for that for herself and Huck, in case Kyle thinks to follow them.”

Relieved about those things, at least, I nod.

“Okay. Okay.”

“I just wanted you to know everything that happened so you can put it in your incident log.”

She puffs out a breath.

“And so you can be aware that he doesn’t seem to have gotten over you just yet. Fucking pathetic.”

Worrisome, my brain adds. Frightening.

Arms wrap around me and squeeze tightly. I hug my friend back the best I can from this angle.

“It won’t be forever,”

she says.

“I’m sure of that. He’ll fuck off.”

“When?”

I ask weakly, as if she could possibly know the answer.

She sways us in our hug.

“Soon, I bet. Either he’ll see you with Luke again and finally give up, or it’ll get handled some other way.”

I remember Luke saying the same thing. He doesn’t think this will take long to sort out either.

I wanna talk to him.

Nevermind that I spent almost all of my free time with him before work, then saw him there, then left with him, then got an, ‘I’m home safe,’ text from him not even an hour ago.

Having him around me so much was comforting even when it was slightly awkward or sad. Only now that I’m learning Kyle still has me in his sights am I realizing just how much I had relaxed thanks to Luke.

Emma releases me from the hug. I give her a little smile and tell her.

“Thank you, sister.”

“No need for thanks. I love you.”

“I love you.”

She walks away, leaving me with the fruit salad I barely want anymore and a head full of swirling thoughts.

—

Since nothing of note happened with Kyle after the grocery store sighting, this is the first time in a while that I’ve had to add a full update to my incident log.

When I called the police after Joy’s birthday party to ask for guidance on what to do about him, the officer told me to write down everything that has transpired between us. I recorded every detail of every encounter I could remember, no matter how insignificant it seemed. I even wrote about the guy who spooked me at the sporting goods store, even though he might not have been Kyle at all.

I’m nervous that I’ve had to add to my log tonight for a very real Kyle reason.

Just as I’m finishing with it, my phone dings from next to me in my bed. It’s probably Luke responding to my text about this development.

Seeing that I’m right soothes me.

LUKE: I know earlier I said it’d be okay if we went somewhere you like to go and he was there, but my mind has been changed. We’re not doing that. We’re not knowingly putting you in a place for him to bother you. The thought of him bothering you pisses me off. I’m PISSED that he tried to find out where you live. Though I guess it’s a relief he doesn’t already know, like we were concerned he might

Despite my mood, this makes me smile a little.

ME: I’m upset, too, but you’re right, it’s good he doesn’t know. And yeah, I was gonna say I definitely don’t wanna risk going to Mellow Burger now. Doesn’t sound fun at all anymore

LUKE: Well, you know what does sound fun?

ME: What?

LUKE: Us learning to make our own mothafuckin spicy fries

A loud laugh escapes me—I get a hand clapped over my mouth quite uselessly. It doesn’t stay there but for a moment anyway since I have to text back.

ME: LOL oh my God, I just laughed so loud

LUKE: Oh yeah?

We exchange laughing emojis. Ugh, I’m chuckling so hard that my back is already starting to hurt. It’s probably tired from all the laughing he had me doing throughout the day.

ME: And just like that, you’ve improved my mood. Thank you

LUKE: You’ve improved mine. Let’s try to forget about him for a while

What a good idea.

ME: Yes, let’s

We’ve made each other’s mood better, and it’ll be nice to keep it that way.

My words from earlier hit my stomach like so many letters’ worth of butterflies: ‘We’re good together, aren’t we?’

‘We are,’ joins them and flutters up my spine, down my legs.

A new text from him:

Can I call you?

The butterflies intensify.

His request is unexpected; except for when we’ve used Lucent’s system while working, we haven’t spoken on the phone in a long time.

I send him a yes.

I’m a little breathless as I wait for the call to come. And the breathlessness worsens when my phone starts ringing in my hand with his name on the screen.

I answer, “Hi.”

“Hi,”

he echoes with low ease, like he’s relaxing in that huge, cushy chair in his living room.

While I wait for him to keep talking, I try to get my lungs under control.

But he doesn’t say anything else.

Even after many moments, he’s quiet.

“Are you there?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

He clears his throat as if to bolster his tone, but it still doesn’t sound off to me in the first place. It sounds calm and normal.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay.”

I feel like I should add something to that, but I don’t want to be like, ‘Is there something you need?’ or whatever because I don’t want him to think I’m too busy to talk. Or that I’m not interested in talking. Or that he’s annoying me somehow.

“I….”

His trailed-off word is as short as a word can be—a single letter, a single syllable—and yet I find myself hanging on it.

More silence comes and goes, and then his soft laughter is drifting into my ear.

“All right,”

he says.

“think me lame if you must, but I…just wanted to hear your voice again.”

Pleasant surprise brushes over me like gentle fingertips, warm liking in its wake.

He doesn’t seem to mind that I need a few seconds…

…or several…

…to figure out my response.

I end up with.

“That’s not lame.”

A bit more silence on his end too. Then, “No?”

I shake my head, but of course he doesn’t see it. “No.”

“Boyfriends and girlfriends like each other’s voices, huh?”

“Yes. Or they should, anyway.”

“Right.”

It kind of makes me sad that we’re coming up with an excuse for it to be okay for him to like that about me.

I wonder if it makes him sad too.

My eyes land on the incident log lying on my blanket. The reminder of Kyle nearly makes me shudder.

But I focus on Luke’s soft laughter from moments ago and his words from just now, and I surrender to a much nicer light shiver instead.

I get to my feet. It’s time to put the log away and trade the overhead light for lamplight.

“So what are you up to?”

I ask Luke.

“What have you done since you got home?”

“Bunch of nothing. Ate some mac and cheese.”

“Yum.”

“Yeah, it was all right.”

With an audibly growing smile, he adds.

“Maybe we can make it better ourselves.”

I register that I’m smiling with him right as I pass by my mirror and see it.

“Maybe so. We should make a list of all the foods we wanna try to make.”

“Sure should.”

After I’ve left the log on my dresser and turned my lamp on low, I switch the overhead light off and crawl back into bed.

“Speaking of food, did you enjoy your gummy worms? I forgot to ask.”

More of his soft laughter comes with me as I snuggle under my blanket and against my pillows—and somehow, the warm feeling it brings me also brings chill bumps.

He says.

“Actually, I haven’t eaten them yet.”

My jaw drops. I look beside me like he’s there and not on the phone.

“Huh? How’s that possible?”

As it occurs to me, I frown and ask.

“Are they expired? Or was the package open a little bit? I didn’t think it was open, but I know I didn’t check the—”

“No, nah,”

he cuts in, chortling.

“It’s not because of a safety reason. It’s because once I eat them, they’ll be gone.”

Now I look quizzically at the empty air beside me, and he and I laugh in full at the same time.

“Yeah…?” I ask.

“Yeah, okay, obviously. I know how eating works.”

I swear he’s holding up a hand in an, ‘I’m not a dumbass,’ way.

“Sure,”

I reply teasingly.

“It’s just that they’re special, so I don’t wanna treat them like ordinary gummy worms. I wanna appreciate them.”

His meaning settles with me.

Even as I go on grinning, my voice gentles.

“They’re special just ’cause I gave them to you?”

He hesitates, then admits, “Yeah.”

Actually, I vaguely remember what he said when I gave them to him—that they were the most special gift he’s ever gotten. It doesn’t seem like they really would be, but who am I to judge why something matters to him?

My grin fades away, too, into a little smile.

“That’s…really nice. But just so you know, it won’t hurt my feelings if you wake up tomorrow and wanna chow down on them for breakfast.”

Oh, that laughter.

It’s a simple truth that Luke’s laughter owns some part of me, and God, I really don’t know anymore if it’ll ever let go.

“I still love the way you laugh,”

escapes me in a hush.

There’s no time to hope he didn’t hear it before he quiets in a way that assures me he did.

My insides suddenly feel trembly. Timid. Nervous.

I amend.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you said it.”

His tone is lower too.

“I’ve been thinking it about you all day.”

I don’t know how to describe how that affects me.

All I know is I like how it feels.

That’s been an all-day thing on my part—how he’s made me feel. Everything was so nice. We got along well. And holding his hand had been the opposite of how it felt when Kyle grabbed my hand that day at Mellow Burger; it was better than ‘nice’ and we fit better than ‘well,’ and thinking about it now makes me miss it.

I spend a moment letting that reverberate through me.

Then I recall the questions we exchanged. We didn’t literally count out twenty to ask each other, but we still learned new things and got refreshers on old ones. And I realize that even though it’s late, I’d be happy to keep going down those random paths with him right now.

I ask.

“Do you need to get off the phone and go to sleep, or would you wanna ask questions again?”

“Questions sound great,”

he says without pause.

“You go first.”

“Oh, great. Okay.”

I think back on what we’ve already gone over. Some of his favorite foods are Thanksgiving foods, so he’s really looking forward to going to his mom’s house for that soon. He wants to try skiing someday and he wants to get a tattoo, though he’s not sure what kind. He likes kids but doesn’t know if he wants any in the future, same as me. His least favorite adult thing to do is go for dental checkups; love of gummy worms aside, he takes care of his teeth, but he hates all the poking and scraping and flossing that happens at the dentist.

That last thing leads me to thinking about professions, which leads me to ask.

“Do you wanna be a bartender forever?”

He thinks about it.

When he says.

“I don’t know,”

he sounds casual and cautious and curious at the same time.

“I don’t know what else I’d be good at, honestly.”

“A lot of things, I’m sure. What could you at least picture yourself working with? Numbers or computers or law or medicine or handiwork or the arts or…?”

“Oh, I….”

I can practically hear him trying not to repeat, ‘I don’t know.’

This time, I frown about it.

He really doesn’t think he’d be good at anything else?

The longer his silence goes on, the more discomfiting it becomes, and the more I realize the answer to my internal question seems to be yes.

And that strikes me as sad rather than pathetic.

“I like people,”

he finally says.

“Being a bartender is fun. Mixing drinks is fun. And I get to connect with people in a unique way, get to listen to stories and give advice sometimes—not that I’m really intelligent, obviously, but still.”

“Of course you’re intelligent,”

I say softly.

For the first time today, his little laugh is wry.

“No, I’m not. I’m just some dude.”

“I disagree.”

“How? If you really look at me, I’m not very impressive, Maggie. I never have been.”

Something about that one hits my heart.

“I got average grades in school and I only got the basics done in college ’cause I couldn’t figure out what to be when I grow up. The longest I’ve ever dated a girl is a few months ’cause nothing ever seems right, like I can’t figure out how to fit with anyone. I’ve never had lots of friends and I basically have just Paxton that I talk to anymore, and my mom is the only family I’ve been talking to—it probably makes me an asshole that I haven’t spoken to my aunt since the other day, but I’m still not happy with her. And I’ve never traveled farther than one state over or done anything to make a difference in the world.”

As he scoffs, I get the feeling that he’s shrugging.

“I’ll be twenty-five before much longer, and I’m still just…. You know?”

I hadn’t expected my job question to take us in this direction, nor had I expected it to end up putting a lump in my throat.

I feel like I don’t know what to say.

Briefly, that is—as the moments tick by and stretch out between us, I feel more and more like I do know what to say. It’s just not what bitter Maggie would’ve ever said.

That’s not the only Maggie I am anymore.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Luke,”

I tell him.

“You’re okay.”

His scoff is weaker this time, almost like a sigh.

“I mean it,”

I go on.

“I didn’t ask if you wanna tend bar forever because I think it’s a stupid job. To tell the truth, I think it’s a really cool job—one I don’t think I’d be good at. I just wondered about your interests. But it’s okay if you don’t know what else interests you enough to try to make a career out of it. Plenty of people don’t know that. I had a career set up for me with my family’s accounting firm, and I was fine at the work, but something about it depressed me. I didn’t wanna do it every single day, so I went on to something else. You can do that, too, if you ever realize you want to.”

After a beat, I laugh a little.

“Some people don’t realize what they wanna be until they’re in their sixties. It happens. You aren’t hopeless or anything.”

Am I imagining that he’s let out a tiny laugh of his own? I hope I’m not.

I keep talking.

“And you’re allowed to feel however you need to feel about your family. And if you wish you had more friends, go make some—you’re charming and funny and kind-hearted. And if you feel annoyed that you haven’t traveled much, then pick somewhere to go and make a plan. And don’t forget we made charity plans, too, so that’s a difference you’re working on making. And there are different kinds of intelligence, and they’re all valuable, so don’t beat yourself up about never being a straight-A student.”

He makes a contemplative noise that, even just being a noise, sounds calmer than his tone from before did.

It fades into quietude, leaving me with the room to think about how there’s only one more thing to address, and how it doesn’t make me feel calm.

In fact, I find myself trying to figure out how to bring it up without my voice coming out breathily or shakily or—

“What about, uh…?”

He speaks deliberately, like he’s trying to steady his voice too.

“What about my sad love life?”

While I take a couple breaths, I work not to let these moments reach into me too deeply.

We can talk about love lives without there being an underlying current of us. Right? We can do that, can’t we? We’ve talked about Marcus a little bit, I know.

I nod reassuringly to myself.

Why wouldn’t we be able to talk about that kind of stuff? How uncomfortable could it really be? Even in our best times, we never said we loved each other. We may have felt perfect together, felt as if we’d found missing pieces of ourselves in each other, but it didn’t last, and we were kids.

Yeah. Right.

I try not to focus on how shallow my next breath feels.

Then I measure out too.

“Your love life doesn’t sound sad, just…not quite right yet. When you find the right person, you’ll know, and you’ll be able to figure out how to keep them. It’ll make sense because it’ll finally be right.”

I’m not talking about me, I tell my skipping pulse, my fluttering stomach, my trembling hands. I’m not talking about us. He and I are over. Our chance is gone.

Like my lungs, they don’t seem to believe me.

His voice is a murmur around the word, “Okay,”

but I still hear that it isn’t as even as when he last spoke.

I wonder if he’s trying to talk his body out of reading into all this too.

But of course I don’t ask. I just say.

“Anyway, be a bartender forever or don’t. You’re gonna be great no matter what.”

“Thank you,”

he murmurs again.

“Mmhmm.”

After a breath.

“Now it’s your turn to ask a question.”

He heaves a big sigh.

“All right. Let’s see.”

His tone is a bit more normal now.

It’d be a lie to say I’m not a little nervous about what he’ll ask. Will it be something precarious? Something that digs deeper than we’re supposed to allow?

Would I really hate it if it were something like that? part of me counters. Would it really be such a bad thing?

“What are some other songs you like? I need more to listen to.”

My nervousness calms.

…But truth be told, my curiosity about off-limits topics doesn’t dim. It just kind of slips away towards a corner of my mind.

At least it’s backing off, though.

I replay Luke’s question and smile. Songs are something I’m happy to think about.

—

I drift awake in the morning with two things oddly firm in my still-drowsy mind.

One is the feather-soft dream I’ve just left about adult me and Luke walking hand-in-hand to the Water Rocks, sunlight dappling us and the ground through the tree branches overhead, a feeling of happy security filling my chest.

The other is a response I didn’t give to a certain thing he said last night during our call.

I shift around in the real-life sunlight coming through my window, find my phone, and open our messages so I can follow my deep urge to say this to him now.

ME: You ARE impressive, you know. That’s always been true in one way or another. It’s impressive how exasperating you manage to be sometimes and how mad you manage to make me—any tendency I have to be quiet and controlled goes away when I’m around you. It’s impressive that the way you look has changed over the years yet you’re still 10/10 to me too. And it’s impressive how you can be cool and casual like you don’t have a care in the world, but then you can turn around and rush to return a customer’s dropped credit card, or keep a craft a grateful little kid made for you, or be embarrassed about a messy kitchen that isn’t even very messy, or come up with a list of the people you wanna help have better lives, or put your own life on pause so you can help me with a problem even though I’m…well, me

Typing this out has me feeling so many different things. Happy and proud things, heavy things, appreciative things.

I send the message and compose one more:

You said.

“If you really look at me, I’m not very impressive.”

But I think you’re the one who hasn’t really been looking

I read it over, my chest seeming fuller and fuller by the second. Then I send it, too, and put my phone down so I can get out of bed.

It occurs to me that I probably could’ve waited and said that stuff in person; we’re seeing each other in a little while so we can go for another walk. But I’m glad I didn’t wait, glad he can start his day with those words.

Once I’m on my feet, I stretch my arms over my head and hum long at how good it feels…and as cool air caresses my midsection where my shirt has gone up, my thoughts go back to how mouthwatering Luke was without his shirt on.

And to my spontaneously bold hand being tucked into work-Luke’s pocket.

And to car-Luke’s thumb tracing my scarred eyebrow.

And to my-kitchen-Luke letting me tend to his scraped palms and knee.

And to yesterday-Luke’s arm encircling me with ease on our nighttime walk to his car after Lucent closed.

I trade stretching for hugging myself. Even though I still feel too soft to me, I can’t help imagining my stomach and waist and hips feeling exactly right being touched by him. And as if that doesn’t stir me in all kinds of ways, I can also still feel him in those other ways once again, like he’s been imprinted on me.

Nor can I help remembering a younger Luke and a younger me hugging each other with shyness, with laughter, with reluctance to let go and, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ between us.

Which means my lips can’t help remembering—can’t help reliving—us sharing sweet kisses at the Water Rocks, pressing ones at the movie theater, happy ones at school when we managed to steal a moment between classes.

All of it was so special.

Only to me, though, my old pain mutters. None of it was special to him. I wasn’t special to him.

It echoes through me, cold and aching, that pain.

But so does…

…uncertainty.

I didn’t let him say much after I learned he asked me out because of some bet—indeed, all he got out before I shut him down with everything I had was that it was a stupid bet, and he begged me to let him explain because he cared about me. I didn’t want an explanation, though. Didn’t want to hear the details of what had led to the most humiliating and heartbreaking thing I’d ever experienced. I was the butt of a joke and had no interest in hearing the setup.

Now, however, I wonder.

I wonder if somehow, on some level, by some twist of plans that he didn’t see coming, he really did care about me—before I chose revenge, that is.

When we were dating, he never pressured me physically or in any other way. I recall that well. He never ignored me or disrespected me, never made me feel small or stupid. He never sat uncomfortably with me.

And he never again tried to apologize or explain himself after I spread those flyers around. I wanted him to know I hated him, and the way I chose to show it made him hate me too.

But is that because I had turned out to mean something real to him? Did it hurt him so much because he’d put real trust in me, because he did start to connect with me, because he wasn’t as fake as my humiliated heartache believed?

Should I have given him a chance to tell me what happened and how he felt instead of…?

I inhale deeply and drop my face into my hands, not needing to finish that question even in my own head. I already know the answer; it’s been creeping up on me for some time.

After another minute of standing here with all this circling me, I lift my head again. Locate my robe so I can go shower. Try to shake the questions off and send them back into that corner of my mind.

This time, though, they don’t go.

They follow me into my hot shower and make me think not just about the way Luke used to feel to my heart and body, but also about the way he feels to them now.