“Not a dare. More like an invitation,” he says, his eyes narrowing in on mine and my heart speeds up. Is he flirting with me? No that can’t be. If this were Cal, it’d definitely be flirting, but it’s not, so I can’t read too much into this. He’s being friendly. Just because he’s being nice to me doesn’t mean he’s flirting. I just want him to be flirting with me, which is why I need to get back in that house where I’m not alone with him before I do something that’s going to make this really awkward for the rest of the day.
“Does this invitation have an expiration date?” I ask, my eyes meeting his briefly. He smiles and shakes his head.
“Not at all,” he says, folding his arms across his chest and closing the distance between us. Not so much that I feel like he’s invading my space, but enough that my heart catches in my throat. I let out a deep breath because it’s taking everything in me to keep my hormones and emotions all tied up in a neat little package.
“I’ll take you up on it when I haven’t been walking around the zoo all day,” I say lightly and turn away from him to walk back towards the house.
“Uhm, about earlier,” he says, quickening his pace to walk beside me. He’s walked next me like this all day, but now it’s causing my skin to tingle and feel hot even though it’s cool and damp from the rain.
“Yeah?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the wet grass that’s being crushed under our feet.
“When you asked me if I remembered anything…”
My heart almost stops and so do I, right in my tracks. I turn to face him and look up at him, hoping my expression isn’t showing how I feel inside. I look into his eyes. They avoid mine for a few seconds, then he looks into them briefly.
“I do want to remember,” he says quietly. I feel like he has more to say but I wish he wouldn’t, because this, what he just said, is enough to get me through the rest of the day.
“I want you to remember,” I say with way too much enthusiasm and a smile so wide I have to bite my cheeks to contain it. I see him look down nervously.
Okay, dial it down a bit.
“I mean, I want you to because if you start to remember that’s a good thing. Right?” I say, trying to turn this around from being about us or about me.
“After Cal left,” he says, pushing his hands deep into his pockets, “what made you not…You didn’t…” he trails off.
I let out a deep breath. “Get a divorce?” I say, trying to help him along and he nods. I try to think of the best thing to say. The thing that will make him the least uncomfortable, that would make this the least awkward, but I don’t know how to do that. I always tried to hide my feelings from Cal, even before things started to go wrong. When we first met, I didn’t want him to know how much I liked him. I didn’t want him to know I was starting to fall for him because I thought it would scare him away. It’s ridiculous now because he knew everything before I did, even about me. With Chris, I’ll take a different route. Complete honesty. Well, when he asks for it.
“Because I loved him and I still had hope.” My eyes don’t leave his chest. I’m afraid to look in his eyes. I don’t want to see what’s there but I wish he didn’t have on that big khaki coat he’s wearing. I want to see if his chest is heaving, to know if his heart is beating as fast as mine is right now. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I glance up at him and see his eyes on the ground, a chill passes through the air and one creeps down my spine as I wait for him to respond…to say anything.
I hear him let out a breath, a long one, and he runs his hand through his hair. “And now?” he asks quietly, and I close my eyes and think carefully of how to answer him. I raise my gaze to meet his, and as soon as I see his eyes, even though they’re not the grey I’m used to, I love them just the same. I look up to the sky and feel myself biting my lip. Ugh. The truth. I want to tell the truth but the truth could really complicate things between us and cloud the reason I'm here.
Caylen.
“You don’t have to answer that,” he says quietly. There’s warmth in his voice, and when I’m brave enough look at him, he’s wearing a sympathetic smile, which makes me feel worse than if he were scowling at me.
He feels sorry for me. Great. That’s just great.
We head into the house and Chris immediately heads to the kitchen. He has the appetite of a teenage boy. I don’t remember Cal ever eating as much as Chris has in past few hours. Not only did he eat two sandwiches, three Snickers, and an ice cream, he bought a container of popcorn and he ate half before he decided to save it for later. I wonder if the six-pack Cal had has morphed into a keg under that big khaki jacket.
As promised, Mr. Scott has the doll house put together, and Caylen is mesmerized by it. I return to the brown chair I sat in earlier. It almost swallows me but is one of the most comfortable things I’ve ever sat in. Mr. Scott has turned on a college football game, dividing his attention between it and Caylen, who’s hitting him with a doll they bought her. My eyelids feel heavy as bricks. I guess emotional exhaustion eventually translates into actual exhaustion.
“Lauren.” I look back and see Mrs. Scott smiling at me.
“Do you want to go lie down before dinner?”
“Oh I’m fine,” I say, a yawn escaping my mouth, and she smiles knowingly.
“Mom, something’s burning,” Chris says, reappearing. Mrs. Scott’s eyes widen.
“Chris, show Lauren where your room is so she can take a nap before dinner,” she says, scurrying to the kitchen.
“I’m fine really,” I say, fighting another yawn. He tilts his head to the side in disbelief.
“Okay, maybe just a really short one.” I stand up from the comfy brown chair and stretch. I look over at Caylen and Mr. Scott.
“I’ve got her,” he grunts, only briefly glancing up at me. His ice has melted with Caylen but with me, not so much. That’s totally fine since I’m still not too thrilled about him either. I follow Chris down the hall and up the stairs, sunlight pouring in throughout this whole house. Once we’re upstairs, he gestures to a room on the left further down the hall.
“There’s the bathroom in case you need it. That’s my parent’s room.” He points at another door by the bathroom, and we make a sharp right. He opens the door and waits for me to step in. I wrap my arms around myself and think back to the first night I stepped into Cal’s apartment. Then, I had on a teensy cloth that barely covered my butt. Now I’m in an oversized sweater and jeans and you can barely tell I have a butt at all.
Chris’ room is pretty large, surprisingly just a little smaller than ours...my room back home. I try to resist the urge to scour it looking for hints of who this person next to me is.
My attempts fail.
He has a queen-sized bed with a navy blue comforter. A desk with a laptop on it sits in the corner. And posters, lots of them lining the walls, mostly of bands and a few sports teams.
“I haven’t really done much decorating since high school,” he kids. He’s standing there with his arms folded across his chest, the outline of his muscles showing through his blue t-shirt, the khaki jacket gone. I look down quickly at his stomach but can’t tell if my earlier theory about his stomach ballooning outward is correct. I walk over to a shelf housing at least thirty trophies. Basketball, hockey, soccer all different years. There are two pictures near them. One is of him and his parents, all wearing Lions Jerseys, and the other of him by himself. He looks really young. His hair is so much shorter and he has a smaller build. I can’t help smiling. I’ve never seen any pictures of him this young before. He’s standing next to a girl about his age with strawberry blond hair. They’re holding what looks like a science project.