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“So… did you want to talk about it?”
She floundered, her mouth opening and closing a couple of times.
“No,” she said finally. “Not particularly. I just needed to acknowledge that it happened because I can’t stop thinking about it. And I wanted to thank you for… for just being there. It helped me a lot.”
“No need for thanks.” He swallowed. “Like I said then—I get it. I spent my entire childhood with undiagnosed and untreated complex PTSD. I’m very familiar with freakin’ the fuck out.”
“Complex PTSD?” Her voice was soft.
Walker nodded but didn’t clarify any further.
“Generalized anxiety disorder.” She said the words matter-of-factly, like she was introducing herself to him for the first time.
He smiled.
“Is it awful that it makes me feel better that you understand firsthand that way?” she asked. “I feel like that’s an awful thing to feel comforted by.”
His mouth tilted downwards in thought. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want somebody to understand you in that way. I mean, I know we live in a time where some people feel more comfortable talkin’ about mental health than they have in the past, but it’s still easy to feel alone when you’re in the thick of it. Plus, it’s not like society as a whole makes it safe for people to be as open as they might want to be about this kind of thing.”
“Yeah.” The nod of her head was emphatic. “When I was first diagnosed, I remember feeling a ton of… shame. Some of it is gone, but not all of it, and what’s left definitely keeps me from opening up to people about my anxiety. Even if it would make life easier for me in the moment.”
“I was twenty before I saw a psychiatrist and got diagnosed, and I didn’t tell anybody about it for a long time after that. Not even Gram.” The unexpected intimacy of the conversation had his throat dry, so he took a sip of his sweet tea. “Shit’s hard. It’s important to be open and honest when you’re ready and willin’. But I don’t think we owe it to anybody to tell them shit we aren’t comfortable tellin’ them either.”
Aja bit down on her bottom lip, seeming to mull his words over. He hoped he didn’t sound like some know-it-all pushing his opinions down her throat. But if he’d only learned one thing in life, it was that not everyone deserved to know all of him. His soft spots were his to expose, and he had the right to be very fucking discerning. He must have felt some kind of kinship with Aja, seen parts of himself in her that made it easy to be so open and honest.
“This is a hell of a conversation for a…” She paused, then cleared her throat with a wince.
Walker couldn’t have stopped the smirk from overtaking his face if he tried.
“A…” he prompted.
“Nothing, just a”—she waved a hand around in the air—“an outing.”
“An outing otherwise known as a date?”
Her eye roll was drenched in exasperation, but he could tell she was a little flustered. She did this thing where she widened her eyes and pinched her chin between the knuckles of her middle and pointer fingers whenever she was unnerved. She’d done it when Gram had introduced them at bingo, and she was doing it now. The very last thing Walker wanted was to make her uncomfortable, so he watched her closely, hoping that his teasing hadn’t toed over the line.
“Please,” she smirked, and it was so wildly sexy that it made his fingers twitch, “if this were a date, I definitely wouldn’t have worn leggings and a grungy sweatshirt.”
He didn’t give a damn what she had on. When he’d gotten a look at her at bingo earlier, he’d had a hell of a time taking his eyes off her for the sake of decency. Even in her unassuming clothes he could see how spectacular she was. Dark material stretched over the wide expanse of her thighs, her stomach pressed against her sweatshirt, refusing to be hidden. He’d had to stop himself from thinking about what she looked like naked in order to keep his head on straight. All he knew was that the woman was damn gorgeous. She could have been wearing a burlap sack covered in sawdust and his opinion on the matter wouldn’t have changed.
“It’s all right,” he drawled, trying to see how far he could take the flirting. “I wouldn’t bring you here on a first date anyway. You seem like the type of woman who likes a little winin’ and dinin’. You’d have me takin’ you to someplace with eighty-dollar steaks, where they make sure you’re wearin’ a tie before they let you in.”
Aja tilted her head to the side, her lips pursed. “I don’t know why, but I have a hard time picturing you in a tie.”
It was probably because he could count on two hands the number of times in his life he’d worn one. When he was on his own time, he was a jeans and T-shirt type of guy. The Charleston Journal didn’t have a very strict dress code for beat reporters; most days he wore a dryer-ironed button up and slacks to work. On days when his boss wasn’t around he wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Walker didn’t consider himself to be some kind of rough-and-tumble country boy, but he couldn’t deny that the whole suit-and-tie getup made him feel stuffy and claustrophobic. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be willing to get choked to death by the stiff collar of a button-up shirt for the chance to see Aja all dressed up in her Sunday best.
But odds were his wish would never come true. He was in Greenbelt for one reason only: Gram needed him. Her doctor had said that it would take about eight weeks for her fractures to heal. He’d gotten the go-ahead from his boss to work from home in the meantime, but he had every intention of leaving as soon as Gram was self-sufficient. As beautiful as Aja was, and as intriguing as he found her, none of those things could hold up to the bitter taste this town left in his mouth.
If they’d been in Charleston, he would have taken her words as an opening to ask her to go out with him. And he wanted to. He wanted to sit across from her in some place with low lighting and listen to her talk about whatever the fuck she wanted while he admired her. But to what end? In two months, he’d probably never see her again.
He wasn’t the type of guy who could thrive in a long-distance relationship. He craved affection and physical closeness as much as he valued emotional connection. It wasn’t that he was afraid he’d cheat—he liked to believe he had more integrity than that. But he knew that type of arrangement wouldn’t work for him. He could deal with it for a while, but in time the physical distance would cause him to become emotionally distant. He’d pull away slowly, inching towards the end until all he could manage was a terse once-a-week phone call until the inevitable breakup.
He was confident that this would be the outcome for him. Largely because it was almost an exact mirror of how his relationship with Gram had deteriorated once he’d left town and couldn’t feel her hugs or love so keenly.
So no, he couldn’t ask her out on a date. Not if he was trying to be responsible with both of their feelings. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends though. Eight weeks wasn’t a very long time, but it was too long for him to exist with only his grandmother for company. And he sure as fuck wasn’t about to hang out with anybody else in town. They already had a few things in common, and if her presence was any indication, she didn’t hate his company. He could keep his desire for her in check long enough to maintain a casual friendship with her… if she wanted one.
“That’s probably because I only own two of them,” he laughed. “And both are balled up in a drawer in my apartment back in Charleston.”
