“Can you elaborate then?”
“Elaborate?” I stuff a bite of taco in my mouth, so I don’t have to say anything else.
“Yes, explain what you meant. Expand on the idea of not working out. I know you said it, but by the time I got home that night, you’d already packed your stuff, and you were just sitting there, waiting to tell me you were leaving. It was a week before graduation, which kind of put a damper on the end of college celebrations. As in, it ruined them completely.”
I shrug and set my taco down. Kayden’s only sitting a few feet away, and I can practically feel the heat of him spilling out under the table, slithering up my legs, and landing straight in the pit of my stomach.
“I also remember you had some crap explanations, the token things people say, which wasn’t you. It didn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know,” I squeak. Some cheese falls out of the taco in my hand and lands on my plate. As I pick it up and stuff it back in my mouth, I feel like a mouse. I sound like one too, making all those tiny little mousy noises because I can’t, and shouldn’t, find my voice.
Kayden basically inhales another taco down and gives me a look that says he knows, and I know he doesn’t know, but it’s still unnerving as all get out, and I squirm in my chair. I feel like the mouse who is just about to grab the cheese off the edge of the trap, except this mouse won’t make it because traps are deadly, and the kind sitting in front of me isn’t one of those nice live traps that catch mice all humanely and shit.
“I want a real explanation, or I want another chance.”
Right at that exact instant, my taco caves in at the middle, and everything drops out onto my plate. It’s pretty metaphorical, I think, and all I can do is gape at Kayden. Holy god, he’s ballsy. My chest aches at seeing him now, at still having all the versions of the past Kayden in my mind—the old Kayden—because maybe there’s two of him as well. Even as the sadness, regret, bitterness, and familiar ache creeps up, my body turns on too, because it’s Kayden sitting across from me, and if he has a talent for eating tacos, he also has a talent for…well, more than just eating tacos.
With a small sigh, I toss the rest of the shell onto the plate. I’m going to have to get up and get a fork, but right now, my butt is pretty firmly glued down to my chair. I wish I could attack Kayden’s beautiful, smug, confused, and earnest face. With my lips. This is bad because it’s what my overactive brain, body, and lady box want. I’m not giving in because my brain and body—and um, well, I guess I can’t speak for the lady box, so she has to get left out of it— definitely don’t want that.
“You’re not getting either of those things,” I blurt without really processing that it’s a bad idea.
“Why not?”
“B…because! You just aren’t! I gave you all I could give all those years ago. It’s not my fault you haven’t let it go. Or can’t. I won’t give you another chance because I have my life now, and I like it. I liked it very much without you in it. I was doing just fine, and I was able to support myself. I even visited my family a few times a year. Besides that, I have Sadie, and I also have other friends. I have lots and lots and lots of things.”
“But you don’t have me.”
“Argh!” I stomp my way to the drawer and yank it open. I wrench out a fork and sit back down at the table, knowing full well I should probably just make a hot escape, but tacos! I can’t let them go to waste. “That’s totally the point.”
“The point is you should tell me why you really left.”
I purse my lips. “Nope. If I were going to do that, I would have told you when you told me if I did, you would leave.”
Kayden finally seems to be finished with the tacos after consuming somewhere around twelve of them. The good news is he’ll probably leave soon, but the bad news is he’s studying me way too intently. “You really want that?”
“Yes!”
Kayden’s damn dimple makes a reappearance as he grins at me. “Well, too bad. I’m not going.”
“You…you…you big pile of poo!” I pick up my plate and my fork because we are done here. I’m going to eat in my room where I can have some freaking peace.
I’ve been known to be a little bit clumsy in the past…errr…always, and when I get up, my toe hits the edge of the chair leg while my knee bangs into the table. I howl in surprise and pain, and my hands release the plate as my forward momentum carries me down. I make sure I catch myself before the table rises to hit me. When I look up, horrified beyond horror, I see that Kayden is now wearing my taco. I’m not being metaphorical here, but wouldn’t that be a sight? LMAO. What I am not LMAOing about at the moment is the meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and olives dripping off Kayden’s face.