Miss, Do I Know You?

35 - Wednesday, March 10

I had hoped for a light-hearted chuckle, maybe even a playful roll of her eyes or a fragile smile. But what met me was a gaze layered with melancholy. Sensing the weight of the moment, I swiftly shifted gears.

"I'm sorry. I'll stop doing that," I conceded. "How about I make it up to you? Dinner after work? I can bring some takeout."

"I don't think I'll have the energy for anything. Not today. Sorry."

This was a first for us, her declining my company. It left me in unease. Not the rejection itself, but rather the tension that clouded her. Just that morning, the world had felt right, with tender morning kisses and coffee left at her bedside, but an unspoken strain had crept in, making her seem distant and ill at ease with me near.

With a quiet cough, I forced myself not to dwell on it. "Are you picking up Benji today?"

"Yeah, around eight. He has that field trip today."

"Just go home and rest. I need to go to the music shop anyway for guitar strings. I'll do that after work and pick him up while I'm at it."

"Kayla, you're tired. I can't ask you to do that."

"You didn't ask. I'll just drink a liter of coffee at work, and I'll be good."

Gravity suddenly pulled her forward until her forehead met the desk. Her features disappeared behind her palms, and her voice emerged only in a muffled groan.

"Alex?" I grew concerned. "What's wrong?"

"All this is stressing me out. It's too much," she said through her hands. "You're constantly helping me with Benji, with housework, with everything. And it makes me feel like shit because I'm over here having thoughts that make me a total asshole for even thinking about it, let alone admitting it to you."

The worry in my heart tripled. "What are you saying?"

Straightening up, she looked at me, her eyes damp. "This isn't right, and we both know that."

Quiet draped the space, the conversation taking an unsettling but expected turn. I had known the moment would come eventually, given the care with which we had skirted it in the past. The inklings of doubt shadowing her eyes seemed destined, a premonition that a sliver of my intuition had always foreseen as inevitable. I couldn't agree, yet I had no rebuttal.

The air started to sting. But despite my dread, I forced myself to say something. "We have known each other since we were kids, Alex. It's just a strange circumstance."

She shook her head. "That doesn't change anything."

"What changed? We were fine for weeks."

"Are we really fine, though? Somehow, it doesn't feel like it anymore. We're spending every day together to the point where your grades are clearly suffering because of it, and you're at my place so often that you might as well move back in."

"What?" I muttered, taken aback. "I really hope that was rhetorical."

Alex sighed, speaking more to herself than to me. "I'm not even sure at this point."

"You can't possibly ask that of me in the same breath in which you say how terribly wrong this is of us. I already wake up to you almost every morning, and it looks like it's becoming a problem. Imagine how much worse it'd be if you had to come home to me, too."

"Doesn't sound half bad. But you're probably right."

The wavering of her emotions placed me on a treacherous seesaw, trapped in a space between being cherished and being sidelined. "Make up your mind and stick to what you decide, okay?" I said with a biting edge. "So you don't have to push me away when you get cold feet. That really hurts, you know."