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“Are you kidding!” Okay, that may have come out more screechy than I’d intended, but I was incensed. “You wrote about a woman—I’ve got to assume you’re talking about me—tearing you apart and leaving you with nothing? How did you think I’d take it, Alex?”
If possible, the red in his face deepened. “No, that wasn’t what the lyrics meant. And it wasn’t about you, considering this is just pretend.” He scrubbed at his beard, then pinched his bottom lip while I waited for more of an explanation. “I was writing about loving someone who sees through all the prettiness to the stuff that’s underneath. And when she likes what she sees, she takes the heart he’s handing over willingly. I guess I need to go back to Lyric Writing 101, because damn, you did not interpret it the way I meant it.”
My shoulders slumped as my righteous indignation drained out of me. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” He turned his head, some of the heat draining from his cheeks. “Sometimes I think we speak two different languages. The dissonance between us is ugly and I’m tired of it.”
I was tired of it too, but we were stuck together, now more than ever. “You don’t get to decide when our history doesn’t affect me anymore.” I shrugged, glancing at the garden behind him, hating that a place so magical was being marred by a thousand-year-old feud that refused to die. “But maybe this social experiment we’re doing will give us a chance to figure out how to at least be in the same room without arguing.”
“Right.” His hand slid up from his stomach to his chest, laying just over his heart. “We’re doing a bang-up job so far.”
“It was good until I flipped out,” I said. “We even hugged.”
“True.” He held his hand out for me to take, which I did. It seemed to shock him so much, his fingers went limp, but I held on. “Okay. Uh…let’s go.”
He tugged me along, and I looked behind me at the mess we’d left. “Your guitar…”
“My guy will come get it. Don’t worry about a thing.”
In the car, Alex kept quiet, focusing on the passing buildings and pedestrians. I never thought it would happen, but I felt like the shittiest human alive for coming down so hard on him. I had the tendency to look for ulterior motives everywhere and missed what was right in front of my face.
Of course, knowing that didn’t help me stop.
“It was a good song, Alex. Maybe you could play me the rest sometime,” I said.
“Sure. Another time.” He sounded like a kicked dog, and I felt like the kicker. “We’re here.”
The driver pulled to a stop in front of a skate shop. “Are you helping me pick out my own skateboard?”
“Yep.” His lips twitched, a smile fighting to break free. “Come on, boo. Let’s pick you something badass.”
Alex’s bad mood lifted as soon as we stepped in the shop. He clearly knew the owners, who’d emptied the place out just for us. Alex helped me choose my deck, indulging me in my desire for something pretty. I was all about form over function, but luckily, he convinced me function was important too.
I ended up choosing a black deck with a flaming skull in front of red and pink roses, giving it a girly badass feel. I picked out a helmet—yeah, my brain was too important to worry about how cool I was—and matching elbow pads. When I tried to pay for it, Alex gave me a shove and an arched brow.
“Nope. My treat. I’m not arguing.” His tone was as final as I’d ever heard, so I backed off.
When we left the store, Alex’s driver handed him his board, and we skated home, side by side. I slowed him down, but he didn’t complain once.
In the elevator up to our apartments, he held my board while I took off my helmet and shook out my hair. “That was more fun than I’ve had in a long time,” I admitted, and not even reluctantly. “Now I’m determined to practice until I’m a better skateboarder than you.”
A sputtered laugh bubbled out of him. “Ah, there’s the cool girl I know so well.” We stepped off the elevator, walking down our quiet hallway. At my door, he handed me my board. “Glad the day ended decent. I have some stuff of my own I’ve been neglecting while planning our outings, so…”
“So…bye.” I turned, pushing my key into my lock, but I couldn’t let the day end like this. Instead of going into my apartment, I tugged on the back of Alex’s shirt, stopping him from entering his. “Thank you, Alex. The effort you put into this fake date was truly top-notch. I don’t really understand why you’re doing it, but I appreciate that you are. I really do.”
He shuffled, glancing down, then over my head, and I don’t know, he seemed shy, which twisted something inside me I hadn’t known to be twistable.
“It’s all good.” Chin tipped, he avoided my eyes. “Be seeing you.”
I stood in the hall alone, his door gently closing in my face. The feeling that I’d messed up wouldn’t abate, and I hated it. It made me frustrated enough to kick Alex’s door before I went inside my own place.
Alex Murray, even when he was being nice and thoughtful, drove me up the wall. Even worse—this time, he drove me up the wallbecausehe’d been so nice and thoughtful.
