But we hadn’t done much talking back then. Mostly orbiting. Avoiding. Pretending not to notice the weird electricity whenever we did make eye contact for longer than five seconds. Even if I was the only one who must’ve felt it.
In spite of that, Josh was the one who had talked me off the ledge when I nearly bailed on going out of state for college.
Gina had been at rehearsal, and I was sitting on their front steps, trying not to cry. Josh came home from school early, found me there, and stayed.
He didn’t say much. But what he did say stuck.
“I get why you’re scared,”he’d said.“But you don’t get to stay small just because it’s comfortable. You’ll regret it.”
And he had been right.
He always had this way of saying things like that—like they weren’t a big deal, like he wasn’t changing my life slowly, permanently.
I had gone to college out of state, and the first few months were a transition, but one I could handle, even if my one grammar class kicked me in the butt more than any English class in my life and made me question the decision more than a few times.
Because I often asked,What if I fail?
But then I heard Josh’s words and thought,What if I don’t?
And now, here we were sitting next to each other once again in the dark of the Hutton household.
“How are you doing?” I asked as I fought to get comfortable next to him. “Final year of college. That’s exciting.”
“I’m doing good.”
“Figuring out what you are doing after graduation?”
“As much as I can,” he said.
He didn’t seem as thrilled as I’d figured he would be. As much as he had been when he first invited me even to sit on the couch with him.
“Yep. It’s great,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Positive,” he said, though blandly.
“You just seem different.”
He stared at me. “Maybe that’s just you.”
I shrugged, not commenting on that. Since I’d started college, I’d felt different, but we weren’t talking about me. “Are you upset then?”
“Upset?”
“About … Lauren.”
His eyebrows bent low over his gaze.
“I just thought … she didn’t come, and your mom said that you were bringing a girlfriend that you’d been with. I thought it was kind of serious.”
“My mom likes to get ahead of herself,” he said swiftly. “I’m surprised you are here though this year.”
“What do you mean?” Did he not want to see me?
I shifted on the couch to get ready to head back to bed. I’d likely already overstayed my welcome here. It was his house after all. I was the guest.
“Surprised that you don’t have a boyfriend by now or someone from school who invited you home with them for the holiday.”
