Page 33 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

LUKE

“Jesus,”

I groan as I haul myself out of my driver’s seat. My back and legs aren’t happy with me; yesterday’s first try at Maggie’s exercise routine is speaking up this morning.

“HIIT and I are not friends.”

On the other side of the car, she chortles even as she agrees.

“I feel ya.”

We close our doors, and while we head for the sidewalk, she gestures around at the sunny park.

“A walk will be especially nice today, hm? Relaxing?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

After a beat, I admit.

“You’re tougher than I am, doing those kinds of workouts as often as you do.”

“Nah, it just takes some getting used to.”

She pauses, too, before laughing a little more.

“I say that like I’m some seasoned exercise person. I’m not. And I don’t go all-out every time I do it. And I don’t do it every day. Really don’t know what I’m talking about.”

We come to a stop in front of each other on the sidewalk. I drop heavy hands onto my hips, and she gives me a light lift of her chin.

I want to step up to her, take that chin in my fingers, kiss her hard and long and slow.

I’ve thought about it—daydreamed about it—so many times since yesterday morning. I kind of hoped the desire would ease up as more time passed, but it hasn’t. It was with me during our conversations and during work and when I dropped her off at home later. It was with me when I woke up alone today and during me getting ready to see her and through every other minute leading up to this one.

Plain and simple, I haven’t gotten anywhere near enough of her. All I’ve had is a knot high up in my chest from how I want more with her. I want better than twenty seconds of kisses we barely talked about.

But we still haven’t talked any more about any of it, much less done anything more about it. We’re still teetering. Neither of us has made another move.

And I know we’re just getting ready to go for a walk on an unremarkable Sunday, but for some reason, the sight of her right now is kind of perfect. It’s somewhere between cool and pleasant out here, so she’s in leggings and a dark pink sweater. Her hair is down and fluttering in the faint breeze. And her expression is even and calm because it seems she truly doesn’t think she has any right to give exercise advice, like her recent experiences don’t mean much.

“What?” she asks.

“What?” I echo.

“What are you smiling about?”

I realize I have started smiling at her a little.

And she’s doing it back to me.

My lips fucking ache for hers.

I mentally shake myself, raise an eyebrow, and work to keep my tone light.

“Am I not allowed to smile at you just because?”

She presses her lips together, then shrugs.

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“Well, why are you smiling at me?”

“Because you smiled first and I liked it.”

Maybe that should seem like the cheesy kind of honesty, but it doesn’t.

Maggie’s eyes are so green out here with the sunlight and the faded grass and the pond. So, so green as they drift over my face.

They draw some of the truth out of me even though I hadn’t actually been trying to keep this particular bit from her.

“I was smiling ’cause you’re gorgeous and you’re goofy for trying to belittle how hard you’ve been working at your exercise. You shouldn’t do that. Your experiences are helpful to hear about.”

Once again, she presses her lips together and lifts her shoulders, all shy-like. And once again, she lets her eyes go over my face; I feel it exponentially every time they hit my mouth.

Cheeks pink, she says.

“Okay. Thank you. And…well, I don’t wanna sound like a know-it-all, that’s all.”

A laugh bursts out of me. How can she say that with a straight face?

As if she knows what I’m thinking, her sweet look goes flat.

I reach out and drape an arm over her shoulders, then tug her with me as I turn and start walking.

“Oh, Magnolia.”

“‘Oh, Magnolia,’ what?”

“I’m sure you’re already aware that you’re the know-it-all type more often than not.”

The sound she makes is half-scoff and half-squeak, and it makes me laugh again.

I insist.

“There’s no way you can say it’s not true!”

“You’re not true,”

she counters.

“Oh, good one.”

“You’re a good—”

The silence that falls as she stops herself fills with even more of my laughter.

She tries to hang on to her little protest, but she quickly ends up laughing with me.

“Whatever,”

she says—and the curl of her arm around my waist says in a different way that she really isn’t that annoyed.

I can’t lie to myself: I love it.

“You’re gorgeous too,”

she tries to add in a casual tone. I hear the bit of unsteadiness in it, though. The bit of shyness returning.

Both because the urge is too big to ignore and because a few nearby people can loosely be called an audience, I tilt down and press a firm kiss to her temple.

“Thank you.”

Something else I love is the way her breathing hitches. The way she squeezes my waist in her arm. The way her other hand comes up and touches the front of my shirt, then judders down to my navel, then falls away—except I don’t love that it falls away. Not at all. I don’t love that I’m left with only the ghost of that contact and the invisible fire it left behind.

I’m in trouble.

The whisper goes over and through me, quieter but no less ardent than the desire I feel for her to touch me and not stop.

And of course now is when her arm drops from me, too, and she takes a small step away.

I very nearly ask why she did that, but she speaks first.

“I guess we can’t do much powerwalking if we’re all close to each other.”

Oh. Right.

“Guess not,”

I agree.

“Can’t be too leisurely today, huh? I gotta get you back to your friends before long so y’all can do your Friendsgiving shopping.”

“Yeah….”

I hope I’m not imagining the disappointment in that word.

We get into our more exercise-y pace and talk a little more about those plans of hers. Even though she, Joy, and Emma are doing their Thanksgiving thing tomorrow, they’re starting some of the cooking today.

And although I don’t let myself focus on them, I keep having flickering thoughts of the upcoming plans I have with her. Plans for us to stay together while her friends are out of town and for her to come to my mom’s with me on Thursday. Even briefly thinking about it all puts a strange feeling in my stomach—not exactly nervousness, but not an entire sense of calm either.

I guess I’m just on edge, except in a way that isn’t bad.

Indeed, as our chatting goes quiet, I imagine watching a movie with her, or trying to talk her out of cleaning some other part of my apartment, or becoming comfortable in hers, or lying close to her again, or soothing her when something spooks her, or introducing her to my mom as my girlfriend…and, yeah, the feeling intensifies into something I can name: eagerness.

It’s hard work not letting my mind wander farther than that, like it has plenty of times since we settled our plans. God knows how tempting and easy it is to imagine more kisses, touches, confessions, burning moments that stitch us closer together instead of ripping us apart.

“Luke,”

she says suddenly softly.

“do you remember…?”

I look over at her and see her tucking her hair behind her ears, watching her feet.

I match her tone. “What?”

She takes a deep breath like she’s steadying herself.

Then she shakes her head.

“Nevermind.”

“What is it? You can say it.”

She slips her gaze in my direction, but it only goes to my legs. Then she looks away again.

“No,”

she disagrees.

“I…shouldn’t.”

She shouldn’t?

“We shouldn’t talk about it,”

she murmurs.

“Just forget I said anything.”

I can only think of one kind of thing she shouldn’t bring up to me—one topic we agreed not to discuss. Her choice of words plus her original half-formed question equals something that has to do with our past somehow.

Yeah, no, we shouldn’t talk about old stuff.

Except maybe we should, seems to emanate from my chest. Maybe it was smart to avoid it when we were more at odds than anything else, but now? Is avoiding it really the best thing to do now? Has nothing else become more important?

The questions are as full and real as the air entering my lungs.

And just like that, I find myself stopping walking, swinging my hand out, catching Maggie’s to stop her too. It works—with a breath of surprise, she goes still.

Continues evading my gaze, though.

It occurs to me that she might not have been thinking about past stuff at all. That’s possible. There are plenty of other things she might not want to talk to me about, right? Like our kiss?

But I don’t feel like that’s true, so rather than use it as an excuse to drop the whole matter, I gather the courage to keep pressing.

“What’s on your mind?”

I ask.

“I wanna know.”

“We’re not supposed to—”

“Does that mean it’s us? Younger us? Are we on your mind?”

I shuffle over and around so I can see her face. I find her eyes on the ground and her bottom lip folded into her mouth.

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.

My free hand jumps up under her chin and my thumb does some sort of pleading half-drag over her mouth. Her bottom lip gets untucked thanks to a little gasp, but more words still fall out of me.

“God, please don’t do that with your lip, Maggie. It drives me fucking crazy.”

The breeze moves her bangs and shows off the frown she aims at my shirt.

“Well, excuse me.”

“No, I’m—”

Now my thumb draws two stumbling swipes along her jawline.

“It drives me crazy in a good way.”

I pause.

“In a way it’s ‘not supposed to.’”

At that, her eyes come upwards a little bit. They land on my throat.

I wonder if she can see how hard I swallow.

For a few moments, nothing else happens.

Then that gaze is moving up more, more…

…hanging on my lips, triggering a swell of heat there…

…and finally finding my eyes.

“Yes,”

she says.

“Younger us.”

My heart seems to skip entire beats.

I’m not sure this is a good idea, but I’m also not sure it isn’t. So I go with what I do know: I don’t want to step back or let go of her hand I’m still holding or lower my fingers from beneath her chin.

I just nod.

More moments pass with us looking at each other.

Then she asks.

“Do you remember the little things?”

A gentle question.

Not a test. Not a challenge.

An admission more than anything else—her expression tells me so.

“Like how…”

her voice softens and her feet shuffle.

“…like how I remember what color your shirt was the first time you talked to me. Maroon. And that you gave me your last crinkle fry at lunch one day even though I hadn’t asked for it. And I remember you playing air-guitar to Story of the Year and Fall Out Boy. And you got a big waffle bowl of ice cream after we went and played mini golf, but you couldn’t eat the whole thing, so you put it—the chocolate-dipped waffle bowl with rainbow sprinkles all over it—you put it in front of one of the tires on your car and ran over it. And I remember us scaring a bunch of birds out of a tree by the lake ’cause we were laughing really loudly about ‘Egg’ from Arrested Development. And—”

Light laughter bubbles up out of me. Like a few minutes ago, she joins in, a pretty smile taking over her face.

Even as her eyes glisten.

It feels like her fingers flex around my heart rather than my hand.

I squeeze her hand, too, and reflect on those memories—and others—for myself.

My own admission has to be made.

“Yeah, I remember the little things. All that stuff you said. The bird thing was so funny.”

I smile with her.

“You had on a flowery dress and a dark blue cardigan the first time we talked, and your hair was in a braid. And I remember us sharing chocolate at the movies—I touched your hand when I gave you some of it.”

As it drifts through my mind and washes sweetly down my spine, I add.

“I can still see the way you looked at me after the first time we stayed up almost all night talking on the phone. We went to bed at 4:30 in the morning, but when we met up in front of the school just a few hours later, you looked at me like you’d been missing me for….”

My voice weakens away. It shouldn’t be a difficult thing to say, but for some reason, it is.

Probably because I miss that look like absolute hell even knowing how we went down in flames not long after.

Maggie is nodding. She whispers.

“For much longer,”

as an end to my sentence.

I nod, too, and clear my throat once, twice. My voice returns, but it comes out thin when I specify.

“Days. That’s what I thought: ‘She looks like she’s been missing me for days.’”

Those eyes of hers lower to my…I don’t know, my everything. Lips, chest, down, down, down towards my feet.

“It felt like that,”

she tells me.

I slowly take this confirmation in, and she takes a slow breath before looking at me straight again. Her cheeks are going newly pink.

“And lately,”

she says haltingly.

“grown-up me feels it too.”

That has me holding my breath.

My heartbeat seems heavier in my chest. Along with it, another truth starts up a pounding in me—starts trying to pound right out of me. It wants to meet hers and let her know I feel the same way.

I watch her eyes fall closed and I realize my thumb has started brushing over her jaw again. The breeze is shifting her hair again. And I’m breathing again because I can’t not breathe her in.

It feels lacking to just tell her I miss her, too, so while I try to figure out how to put the sentiments in me into proper words, I let my eyes wander away from her. They absently take in the blue sky, the trees, the pond…

…and…

…Kyle.

My soft thoughts stop in their tracks.

Kyle. Kyle. Kyle.

A small, disbelieving part of me wonders if that’s really him lingering over there, pointedly glancing over a sign about feeding park ducks, but the rest of me recognizes him with ease. I haven’t forgotten what he looks like, and he’s close enough that there’s no mistaking a different sandy-haired dude for him.

Sharp, serrated, stunned displeasure cracks through me.

I look at Maggie again before he can notice me noticing him.

My heart is still pounding heavily in my chest, and I don’t like this new reason as much as the one from before. Nevertheless, I make myself speak with low composure.

“So, something’s come up just now, and it’s complete bullshit, but let’s not panic. This is why we’re together. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I feel tension grow throughout Maggie’s body. It’s in her hand around mine, in the clench of her jaw beneath my thumb, in the way she lifts her other hand to clutch clumsily at my waist. And I see the tension when her eyes finally reopen and meet mine.

“Are you saying Kyle is here?”

she whispers.

I wish my answer could be different.

But I have to tell her, “Yeah.”