: Chapter 25

Vincent’s hair is windblown, his black Clement Athletics jacket is speckled with rain, and his nose is a little bit pink from the cold. He’s utterly and devastatingly beautiful. And for one brief but magical moment while he’s frowning down at the ringing phone in his hand like he’s debating whether or not to take a chance on an unknown number, I get to absorb the full weight of how badly I’ve missed him.

Then he looks up, and his dark eyes land on me like I’ve shouted his name.

My stomach drops into my feet. I want to run. It takes everything in me to fight that gut instinct, even though I’m really not ready for this. I’m dripping wet, my hands are full, and I still don’t have a grand gesture planned. But I’m fresh out of time to brainstorm, because Vincent is straightening his spine and squaring up to face me. His expression is equal parts dutiful—like he sort of saw this coming—and pained—like he’d really rather not.

And his phone is still ringing.

“Oh, shit,” I blurt. “Sorry. Hold on.”

I fumble with my sunflowers and Vincent’s note and The Mafia’s Princess, nearly dropping all three in the process, before I manage to tap the button on my screen to end the call. Vincent looks between me and his (now-silent) phone like he’s just now connecting the dots.

“Hi,” I say, taking a cautious step into the aisle.

“Hi,” he says back, and fuck, I’ve missed the deep timbre of his voice.

But he doesn’t exactly sound thrilled to see me. Not that I can blame him. The last time we saw each other, at his birthday party, I told him to fuck off and leave me alone.

“Hi.” Fuck, I already said that. “I, um, come in peace.”

I offer him the brightest smile I can muster and hope he doesn’t notice that I’m shaking. This is the worst. I hate being brave. I hate being perceived. Most of all, I hate this weird distance between us. Not the literal one—it would only take another five or six steps forward to get to him—but the metaphorical one. Vincent’s not smiling back at me. I want him to. I want him to crack a joke about if I come here often, and I want him to call me by my last name and make a double entendre about the fact that I’m dripping wet.

I want us back the way we were.

But I broke it, so now I have to fix it.

“What are you doing here, Kendall?” Vincent asks on a weary sigh. “It’s Friday. You’re supposed to be at the library.”

I shouldn’t be so touched that he remembers my work schedule.

The bar really is too low for men.

“My shift doesn’t start until ten,” I say. Then, because I’m genuinely stumped: “What are you doing here?”

Vincent freezes up like he’s suddenly remembered that he’s holding a romance novel in one hand. Before he can either hide it behind his back or lob it over the stacks and into the next aisle, I tip my head to the side to read the title on the cover.

“Oh, ew. Don’t get that one. It was published, like, a decade ago. There’s tons of unchecked sexism and homophobia.” I pause and then add, a bit sheepishly, “The main character is the worst too. She always says the wrong thing at the wrong time. It’s infuriating.”

I worry I’m being too subtle.

But then Vincent arches one eyebrow, as if to point out the irony of my critique, and it’s such a familiar expression of his that I could cry. I’ll gladly take his snark, his passive-aggressiveness, his scathing commentary on my high expectations and romance novel obsession. That I can handle. What I don’t think I could handle is if he treats me like a stranger. But before I can latch on to the little spark of hope, he slides the book back on to the nearest shelf, shoves both his hands into the front pockets of his jacket, and fixes his gaze on a spot somewhere over my right shoulder.

It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to read the closed-off body language and scattered eye contact. He’s got his guard up.

“I got your note,” I blurt, lifting the slip of paper up as proof. “Nina donated my stupid Mafia book, so I had to come here to find it. And I did. Obviously. Finally, I . . . got your note.”

I don’t know what reaction I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Vincent balling his hands into fists at his sides and biting down so hard a muscle in his jaw ticks. At first, I think he’s mad. But then I catch the blush crawling up the column of his neck and painting the tips of his ears, and I realize that he’s embarrassed. This note was him putting himself out there, and now he thinks I’ve come back to rub it in his face.

Fuck. How am I messing this up so fast?

“These are for you,” I announce, thrusting the bouquet of sunflowers at his chest.

Vincent doesn’t take his hands out of his pockets. “What are they?”

“Sunflowers.”

“I know that,” he huffs. “I meant what are they for?”

“Because I was going to look for roses, but I think the sororities are doing their recruitment or something, so this was all Trader Joe’s had, and I—yeah. I got them for you. Because you deserve flowers.”

Vincent’s fully blushing now, but his eyes are narrowed.

“Is this another poetry thing?”

“What?”

He looks down at the bouquet, then up at me, and then the bouquet again.

“Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers,” he grumbles. “It’s an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem. You know it, right?”

“I don’t think so,” I admit. “What’s the—oh, wait.”

I tuck the sunflowers and the romance novel up under my arm and use one thumb to pull up a new browser tab on my phone. Vincent twitches like he wants to step forward and take something out of my hands before it all goes tumbling to the floor, but instead he folds his arms tight across his chest and watches me struggle to type out the aggressively long title into the search bar. The poem is public domain, so it’s easy to find. I recognize it by the third line. I have read it before—we covered it in one of my freshman-year English lit classes.

The narrator’s lover brings her flowers, and she cherishes them—really, she does—but the gifts she prefers to give and receive are far less ephemeral.

So, in the like name of that love of ours, Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, And which on warm and cold days I withdrew From my heart’s ground.

Poems.

Her love language is poems.

It hits me then that Vincent and I don’t need enormous public displays of affection. We need words of affirmation, and eye contact, and a quiet moment to shed our armor and face each other with honesty and vulnerability—things an airport or a crowded stadium can’t afford us.

Most importantly, I need to use my own words right now.

I owe it to Vincent to be brave. I owe it to myself.

I close my phone, hold my chin high, and ask, as seriously as one can: “Did you take my underwear?”

Vincent is, understandably, bewildered. “Did I what?”

“It’s a yes-or-no question. On your birthday. After—everything. I really don’t think you did, but I need to ask, even if it’s completely idiotic, because I’m trying to prove something to myself. So. Did you take my underwear?”

He slowly blinks at me.

And then he asks, “Why the fuck would I take your underwear?”

There it is. The simple absurdity of my fear, laid out in plain English. I know that a question in response to a question can be a deflection tactic, but this doesn’t feel like that kind of a situation. This feels like Vincent has no fucking clue why the girl who told him to fuck off on his birthday is at the bookstore, dripping wet and bearing flowers, asking him if he stole her underpants.

Because it’s silly. I’m silly—and I’ve read the whole situation wrong.

“Well, that answers that,” I say with a weak laugh.

Vincent’s still frowning. “Hold on. You thought I took your underwear?”

I laugh again, because the truth is far worse.

“I thought it was a bet,” I admit.

“What? Me stealing your underwear?”

“No—me. Us. The whole thing.” I gesture sweepingly with the sunflowers. The newspaper they’re wrapped in rustles violently. “When I saw all your teammates watching us when you asked me to the bar, I assumed there was some kind of big team joke about us hooking up, and you were just going to parade me or my missing underwear around like some kind of trophy. So, I ran.”

“You thought . . .” Vincent’s face twists like I’ve hit him. “That’s—”

“Gross! I know. But I was scared, and I assumed the worst of you, and you didn’t deserve it. So, this is me trying to tell you that I’m sorry.”

I hold the flowers out again. But Vincent doesn’t move to accept them. He’s staring at me, something like horror written across his face, and then his expression sinks into something much worse. Hurt. He’s hurt that I’d think so little of him. And when he exhales a little scoff and shakes his head, I feel it like a punch to the stomach. He’s not laughing. I really wish he would laugh. Because if we can’t laugh about this—if he can’t forgive me for this—then I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

“But I realize, now, that I was wrong,” I barrel on. “Because you’re a good person.” My throat gets tight when I look at him. I swallow and push through it. “You’re so good, Vincent.”

His face scrunches.

“Not good enough, though, huh?”

He says it like it’s meant to be some kind of barbed joke, but we both wince when it lands with unexpected vulnerability. There’s a tiny crack in Vincent’s walls, and some of the hurt has managed to trickle through.

“You don’t believe that, do you?” I ask softly.

Vincent shifts his weight back and forth between his feet, visibly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation is taking. I watch him fidget. He realizes I’m watching and tugs his hands out of his pockets to shake them out and scrub his hair back, leaving it even wilder and messier than before.

“Look, Kendall, we’re good,” he says, even though we are very much not good. “You don’t have to nurse my wounded ego or whatever. I’m fine. I’m a big boy. I can handle a little bit of rejection.”

He smiles, then, and there’s some honesty in it. He’s not saying this all for sympathy. He’s genuinely convinced I’m here for some kind of closure, and he’s willing to give it.

Unbelievable.

He really doesn’t get it.

“You are . . .” I trail off, shaking my head. “You’re so fucking handsome.”

Vincent barks out a laugh, and it’s half startled and half bitter. I take another step toward him and press on without a shred of humor.

“And you’re better at interpreting poetry than you give yourself credit for.”

“Thanks, Holiday,” he says coolly.

One more step. “And you’ve been playing basketball since elementary school, so you’re disciplined and you appreciate the value of hard work. You’ve been team captain, so you’re good with leadership and responsibility. And you’re going to graduate magna cum laude.”

One more step, and Vincent swallows hard.

Almost like me being this close makes him nervous.

Almost like he’s finally catching on.

“Is there a reason you’re giving me my own résumé?” he asks, voice a little bit hoarse.

He’s close enough now that I could reach out and touch him. And fuck, do I want to touch him. But grabbing Vincent by the shirt and kissing him won’t solve our problems right now. So, I just clutch the flowers tight and refuse to break our eye contact, hoping that my words mean as much to him as they do to me.

“I like you,” I admit, my face so hot it almost hurts. “A lot. I like that we can talk about anything, and I like that we have the same sense of humor, and I like that you understand me when I snap at you, and I—I like that you call me out when I’m being stupid.”

Vincent snorts. I take it like a champ.

“Even though I hate feeling stupid,” I press on. “It’s probably my biggest fear. Maybe it’s the dyslexia thing, or the introvert thing—I don’t know. I guess I have a massive ego. We can psychoanalyze me later.” I can’t look into his eyes for this part, so I stare fixedly into the spiraling seeds of one of the sunflowers. “But at your birthday party, I—I just felt like if I ignored all the red flags, I’d be stupid for walking right into trouble despite all the warning signs. So, I tried listening to my gut, and now I feel stupid for overreacting and not giving you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know how to win here. I don’t think I can. But I don’t think I care anymore, because I’d rather be stupid than hurt you again. Because I really fucking like you.”