He padded across the room, hair wet, wearing his usual pajamas—a pair of boxers. “It was better than the alternative.”
My feet stopped bouncing. “What alternative was that?” My tone was on the chilly side, not needing an actual verbal confirmation of the conclusion I’d arrived at.
Boone didn’t answer me. When he looked at me, his eyes told the story.
“So what? Out there on some back dirt road, you were all ready to fuck me ‘like a man,’” I lowered my voice in an attempt to sound like him, “and an hour later, back in my bedroom, you’re all for cold showers and silent treatment?”
Boone threw a few blankets and pillows on the floor, making his bed. “What do you want from me, Clara?”
“Well what I wanted earlier sure isn’t the case any more.” I grabbed a pillow from my bed and threw it into the pile he was making on the floor.
“Good, because that’s never happening between you and me again. I mean it.”
“Really? Because it sure didn’t seem like you were so conflicted when you had me pinned against my dad’s Chrysler.”
He kicked and punched the blankets and pillows around, making a bigger mess than when he’d first heaped them into a pile. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And why would you? Since your preferred method of ‘working things out’ includes you turning your back and walking away.” I motioned at him to prove my point, not that he saw it.
He was crouched on the ground, his back to me. “It’s a better method than letting myself say the things I want to sometimes.”
My feet were back to bouncing. I was so wound up, it was a miracle I was able to stay seated. “That sounds like a convenient excuse.”
“Call it whatever you want, but it’s the truth.” He managed to keep his back to me as he moved around the room, turning off one light after the next. He was shutting down and closing up in every way possible.
When he reached for the lamp on my nightstand, my hand snapped out and caught his wrist. “It might have been easier on you, leaving me without an explanation, but I swear to you it was the opposite on me.”
My back stiffened, the rest of my body following, when the memories came spilling back. How could I still feel the things I did for the man beside me after everything? How could my skin touching his make me feel like I’d come home?
I wanted to cry. So I glared at him instead.
“You have no idea what I wanted to say to you. What I still want to say to you sometimes.” His jaw set as he stared at the spot on the wall just past my shoulder. “Believe me when I say it was better for us both that I went the way I did, instead of the way I wanted to.”
“And is that why you’re acting like this now? Closing up and refusing to talk?” I shoved his hand away from the lamp and away from me. The moment I did, I wanted it back. “Is this your way of punishing me for what happened back then or for what happened tonight?”
“I’m not trying to punish you.”
“Then what in the hell are you doing?” I couldn’t stay sitting on the edge of the bed anymore. I leapt up and moved to the end of it, pacing up and down by the footboard. “I was starting to think that we were patching things up between us, that we might be able to become friends again, then tonight happened and it became pretty clear that we both might have been interested in exploring the more-than-friends thing. Whatever it was, impulse or recklessness or nothing more romantic than wanting to get laid, I know you felt what I did. I know you felt it before we even put our hands on each other.”
Boone stayed crouched beside my bed, his jaw set and his chest tense. “You’ve sure got yourself convinced you know everything I’m thinking, don’t you?”
“You felt that connection. The one we had and the one that’s still there. I know you did.” I was probably talking too loudly. I was probably going to wake up anyone who had been asleep. I would probably regret saying all of this in the morning. That didn’t stop me.
“Yeah?” His forehead formed into three deep creases. “What makes you so sure?”
I stopped pacing. I stared at him still drilling holes into the wall across from him. “Because of the way you looked at me right before you kissed me, and because of the way you’re refusing to look at me right now.”
“It doesn’t matter what I felt or what you think I felt tonight,” he said, the muscle running down the side of his neck quivering. “I won’t do that to myself again.”
“You won’t let yourself do what again? Fall in love with someone who loved you back?” A sharp huff rushed from my mouth. “Because yeah, that must have been real rough on you.”