Page 81 of Meant to be Mine

“What did you get?”

“You said surprise you.” He crawled back onto the bed, still wearing just the towel. “I’m going to make very good use of thirty minutes.”

I laughed as he pulled me down onto the mattress, the sheet tangling around us. I kissed him and pushed the email out of my mind.

27

DREW

Ikissed her again, slower this time, my hand sliding up her side. She made the right sounds but something about it felt off. I pulled back enough to look at her face. Her eyes were open but unfocused, staring somewhere past my shoulder.

“Hey,” I said quietly. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes.

I knew that smile. I’d seen it before when she was trying to convince me she wasn’t upset about something that was clearly eating at her. It was the smile she used when she wanted me to drop it.

I wasn’t dropping it. Sex was great but she was still my friend, and in that moment, she needed the friend side of me.

“Kensey.” I shifted my weight off her, propping myself up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re a terrible liar. Talk to me. Did I do something?”

“Of course not.”

“Tell me. You were fine before I went into the shower.”

She sighed and looked away. I waited. I’d learned a long time ago that pushing her never worked. She’d talk when she was ready.

“It’s stupid,” she said finally.

“If it’s bothering you, it’s not stupid.”

She hesitated, then reached over and grabbed her phone from the nightstand. She unlocked it, tapped a few times, and handed it to me without a word.

I read the email. Fall semester dates. Faculty meetings. First day of school.

My stomach dropped.

I handed the phone back. “Okay.”

“I told you it was stupid.” She set the phone down and rubbed her face with both hands. “I knew this was temporary. I knew I had to go back. But seeing the dates just made it real, you know? Like suddenly I could count the days and it wasn’t enough.”

I sat up, running a hand through my damp hair. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”

She looked at me, surprised. “You have?”

“Of course I have.” I let out a breath. “I’ve been trying not to think about it, actually. But yeah. It’s been there. In the back of my head. The whole time.”

She sat up as well, pulling the sheet around herself. “What do we do?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I still hadn’t come up with anything that didn’t end with one of us sacrificing something we couldn’t afford to give up.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“We should probably talk about it,” she said. “Figure out what this is. What we want it to be.”