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I can’t see his face, but the way his fingers curl into fists, the way he rocks from side to side on the balls of his feet—I don’t have to imagine that he’s nervous. With a shaky nod, I push past her, out the front door.
58
zeke
This may have beena terrible idea. And I’m not just talking about relying on November weather in Portland for my grand gesture.
Faye doesn’t like attention. But if this doesn’t work, I don’t want her to feel alone. If we really are done, I want her to know how many people love her. For now, I’m just standing in the fog and the drizzle, next to the bottom step of a penis-pink house in southeast Portland, waiting for my girl.
Hoping she still wants to be my girl.
I hear the door open and shut. My heart is beating a mile a minute as I look up.
She stands on the porch, her eyes glassy and bright, cheeks flushed. Her arms are wrapped around her waist, hugging herself warm.
The breath I let out is part exhale, part relief, and I feel it all in my gut.
“Faye,” I say, her name catching in my throat.
She descends one step, remaining two steps above me. “Did you do all that?” she whispers, blinking quickly.
She’s too far away. I need her to be closer. I ache to touch her. But I need to let her come to me. This needs to be her decision. I’ve already decided. I’m all in.
I nod. “Was it too much?”
She’s quiet. Too quiet. She hugs herself tighter, her breath a little shaky as the toe of her boot digs into a divot in the wooden step.
“Yes,” she says, and my heart sinks. “And no…” Her eyes flicker up to mine. Her bottom lip wobbles as her mouth turns up into the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. “It was wonderful. Thank you.”
I step toward her, and she doesn’t back away. She descends another step, and I’m close enough to touch her. I want to. I’m aching to. But I don’t. Instead, I reach into my pocket and retrieve my phone. I pull up the screen I want and press it into her hand. She frowns for a moment, and then gasps.
She’s gasping at the image on my phone screen: the one of a beautiful, lost girl, wearing a pink slouchy hat and standing next to the back door of a dive bar on the South Waterfront while AAA unlocks her car. It’s not a great image—hell, it’s not even good. But for the first few months we were ‘just friends,’ it was the only picture I had of her. And I looked at it far more times than I would admit.
“When did you…”
“I think I knew, even then,” I say quietly. I don’t want to scare her.
She presses her lips into a thin line and shakes her head, pushing the phone back into my hands. My heart sinks into my gut.
“I heard you, you know,” she says, softly.
I can see all the good that was just done inside unraveling.
“What you said to Zach. About how you’d never want to be anything more than friends with me… becausejust look at her.”
I blink and shake my head. And then laugh.
“Oh my god,” I say, squeezing the back of my neck.
“What?”
“If you hadn’t heard that, and I’d asked you out the next day, what would you have said?”
She frowns and tilts her head, and then shakes it, as if it’s too dangerous to even consider. I close the distance between us and reach for her hand. Maybe I shouldn’t, maybe I should let her come to me, but I need her to really hear me.
“Faye, I did saysomethinglike that,” I say.
She twists her lips to the side as if she’s going to argue. But I can’t let her get into her head again, so I keep going.
