Then
She could tell he was seething, after the swimming incident.
That something had shifted, and she should probably brace for whatever it might be.
Perhaps he would start insulting her more personally, say something like Christian had the other day about her hair, or her dress.
You look so frumpy, she imagined him sneering.
And she had no idea why it seemed to sting worse thinking of it coming from him, than when it had actually come out of her boyfriend’s mouth. Because there are rules of engagement between you and Miller, a little voice inside her head said. And he never crosses them.
Which was probably why she was panicking now as she sat down on her side of their battleground, and he looked at her in a way that felt full of accusation. You intruded on my private moment, those dark eyes said. And what was the penalty for that? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.
“Actually I don’t have anything to read today,” she piped up, before Professor Dunderson could even ask. But even that didn’t work to fend him off. His voice abruptly rang out the second she’d finished speaking.
“Given up on the absurd dream of some perfect love in some foolish story, huh? Finally decided to get real,” he said.
And when he did she thought of Christian.
She thought of the guy before him. She thought of all the guys lined up, a million of them on apps and online and everywhere, all proving exactly what he was saying all the time.
He wasn’t the problem, really. He wasn’t the reason she was finding it harder and harder to write her silly love stories.
He was just the messenger, and she knew it.
But that wasn’t what immediately burst out of her.
“If real is you, then who would want to be.”
“So you’re just going to stay an unrealistic mess forever.”
“You think everything is a mess. You think everything is unrealistic. One bit of passion for anything from anyone and you’re calling the police.”
“Not from anyone, just from you. You and the way you get it all over everybody, rub it in people’s faces, make them have to choke it down even when they don’t want it, even when they can’t—”
He cut himself off there. Or maybe his voice just cut out on him—she couldn’t tell.
It was hard to, with her heart thundering in her ears the way it was.
With actual tears pricking her eyes in a way she just couldn’t let him see.
She looked away at something else. At two people strolling across the grass, hand in hand.
Even they looked more restrained than she had ever been able to be.
Maybe love really is this small, she thought. Maybe it is mean and cynical.
Maybe I should be, too. “You sound like you’re going to cry, Miller. Really, it’s not that deep,” she said.
And then she laughed.
And everyone in the room did, too.