Chapter 8 Clark
EIGHT
CLARK
I'd been telling myself something was wrong for two weeks. I’d been making excuses for Flynn's increasingly distant behavior, but I couldn't ignore it anymore. The man who'd held me tenderly on our first night together a month ago was slowly pulling away.
It’d started with small things. First he canceled a coffee date because of a delayed order. Okay that wasn’t concerning. But as the days went by, he took longer to respond to my texts. And when we met, his smiles were forced, giving me the impression he was performing rather than feeling.
I pushed through the door of Turning Pages and as usual, the bell chimed above my head. Flynn looked up from his computer, and for a moment his face lit up before a mask slid into place.
"Hi."
"Hey." I approached the counter, noting how he tensed as I got closer. "How are you?" I wanted to lean in for a kiss and I would have if he hadn’t been acting weird.
"Fine. Busy." His fingers drummed against the counter. "What can I help you with?"
Damn. He was treating me as a customer, one he wanted to get rid of pretty quickly. The formal tone stung. A month ago, I would have teased him about something and he would have smiled. Now he was treating me like anyone else who walked into the store.
"I brought lunch." I held up the bag from the deli down the street. "I thought maybe we could eat together? I know you forget to stop for food when you're working."
His lips parted and I hoped for a grin. "That's... kind of you. But I have a lot to get through today."
"It's just lunch. Twenty minutes."
“Yes, but..." He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm swamped. Maybe another time?"
Another time. He'd been saying that a lot lately.
I set the bag on the counter anyway. "At least eat something. You look tired."
There were dark circles under his eyes, and his careful composure seemed frayed around the edges. Part of me wanted to reach out and smooth away the worry lines on his forehead, but the wall he’d put up was too high for me to hurdle.
"I'm fine.” But he took the bag. "Thank you."
Him putting distance between us was confusing and painful. If he cared about me, which I was sure he did, why was he pushing me away?
“Listen.” A couple had entered the store and were browsing the new releases display. "Can we talk later after you close?"
He clenched his teeth and I winced. “That's not a good idea."
If he’d punched me in the stomach, it wouldn’t have hurt more than those words. "Why not?"
"Because..." He glanced at the customers, then back at me. "Because I think we might be moving too fast and we should slow down."
“Slow down?” Shoot, that was louder than I intended and the couple reacted to my voice. But after a month of seeing each other, he wanted to slow down. "I don't understand." Now I was almost whispering. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No." His response was immediate. “This isn’t about you."
Was he going to give me the “It’s not you, it’s me” run around? "Then what is it about?"
My heart tightened making it difficult to breathe because there was pain in his gaze.
But before he could answer, the customers approached the counter with their selections.
I stood awkwardly while Flynn processed their purchase, his professional demeanor taking over despite the tension radiating from his shoulders.
The people left and I told him I should go too. There was no point when he was pushing me away without an adequate explanation.
He nodded and didn’t meet my eyes. "Yeah. Okay."
I made it half way to the door before glancing over my shoulder. “Whatever this is about, we can figure it out together."
We were so new but deep inside me, I was convinced we were destined to be together. Maybe that was silly.
For a moment, Flynn's controlled expression cracked and what peeked through was longing. Or that was how I interpreted it, though maybe I was wrong.
"Some things just don’t work out. Maybe we’re incompatible."
Incompatible? The word echoed in my head as I walked home and my belly churned not from being hungry but with sadness and confusion. What could possibly be incompatible about us? We liked the same books and made each other laugh. I’d thought we looked at the world in the same way.
The next few days passed in a blur of unanswered texts, and I avoided eye contact when I walked past the bookstore. I threw myself into writing, but even my characters seemed to mock me. They were all about happy endings and true love conquering all.
By Friday, I was coming apart at the seams. I couldn’t concentrate, I had no appetite and I cried whenever I thought of Flynn.
And then I started feeling sick.
It began as a vague nausea that I attributed to stress, not eating and too much coffee. But it got worse, accompanied by fatigue that no amount of sleep seemed to cure. I called in sick to a school visit I'd been looking forward to and spent the day curled up on my couch with a bucket nearby.
"You look terrible," Miranda said when she stopped by with soup.
"Thanks. That's exactly what I needed to hear."
"I'm serious, Clark. When's the last time you ate something that wasn't crackers?"
I considered the question. "Tuesday?"
"It's Friday!"
"I know what day it is." I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. "I haven't been hungry."
She sat beside me and her expression morphed from teasing to worried. "This is about Flynn, isn't it?"
I'd told her about him putting distance between us, though I'd kept the details of our sex life private. "I don't know what I did wrong."
“Have you considered that he’s scared?"
"Of what?"
"Of this being real." She squeezed my hand. "Some people run when things get serious."
"But why? We were good together." I kept to myself the bit about falling for him and never wanting to be with anyone else.
“He might need more time to figure it out."
I wanted to believe her, but his words were so final. “Some things are just incompatible.”
Another round of nausea hit me and I barely made it to the bathroom before I was retching. When it passed, I slumped against the cool tile wall.
I made a decision. I was going to talk to Flynn and demand an explanation so I could figure out what was really going on. I couldn't keep living in limbo.
When I arrived at the shop, he was closing up. From a distance he appeared tired. He tensed when I approached.
"What are you doing here, Clark?”
"I need to talk to you, not whatever that was the other day."
His hands stilled on the lock. "I told you, I don't think that's a good idea."
"Well, I do. I'm going crazy here. One day we're..." I didn’t want to talk about sex so I waved my arms around. “And the next you're treating me like a stranger. What changed?"
"Nothing.” His voice didn’t give anything away. “We want different things."
Anger flared inside me. Who was he to tell me what I wanted? "What do I want since you seem to know better than I do?"
He flinched. "You want something simple and someone who can give you what you need.”
Didn’t everyone want their needs met? This was getting us nowhere.
"I can't be that person.” The certainty in his voice had me blinking away tears. "You can't understand."
"Then help me!"
"I can't." He dropped his keys, making me jump. "Just... please. Let it go."
"No. I'm not going to pretend that what we have doesn't matter." I wasn’t giving up until I got an explanation.
"Of course it meant something." His control was slipping.
He looked so sad and his expression matched my own.
"That's the problem. Because you don't know what you're signing up for!
" His voice rose, then dropped to a whisper.
"You don't know what I am and if you find out, you’ll look at me in disgust."
"I know exactly what you are. You're kind and intelligent and you love books more than anything else in the world. You're careful with people because you don't want to get hurt, and you think you're not good enough when you're actually amazing."
Flynn stared at me and his eyes glazed over. He mumbled about something that happened when he was a kid. I wanted to find out more but he batted the words away with his hand. “You’d never understand and you should go.”
The dismissal hurt as if I’d been slapped. "Fine. If that's what you want."
"It's not.” He was so quiet I almost didn't hear him.
He had me twisted in knots but I had to get out of the store and breathe in fresh air. I had to forget him and get on with my life. I’d fallen for this man despite his walls and his fears but I didn't know him at all.
My vision blurred and the nausea flared as I headed out. Behind me, he said my name, but I didn't turn back. I'd fought for us. But I couldn't fight Flynn's demons for him. I spent the night alternating between crying and throwing up, my body as miserable as my heart.
Whatever he was hiding, I was done trying to solve the puzzle. Some people weren't ready to be loved.