Chapter 8

“How’s Jr been?" he asks me.

“Crying, crying, and more crying. It doesn’t stop. Are you sure you want to do this for the whole weekend?”

“Yeah, no problem. I don’t have any plans. And it’s the least I can do since it’s going to be your birthday weekend. Especially after my 16th birthday present from you,” he tells me, a mischievous smile and glint in his eyes.

“Okay, if you’re sure. Thanks,” I tell him, handing Colton Jr. over to him.

“I'm sure,” he answers, shortly. He stands in the doorway awkwardly, now holding the baby in his arms. After another moment of awkward silence, he finally breaks it. “Did you need help with the paper? I can stay and do it with you now if you need me to.”

“It’s pretty much already done,” I answer instantly, desperately wanting to put an end to this awkwardness. Something that had never been a thing between us before.

He gives a short nod, his mouth in a grim line, and turns to leave. The air between us feels stuffy but I can tell something was on his mind and he wanted to say more. I could sense the tightness in his body, could pretty much see it. Against all common sense and warning bells, I decide to stop him. “Colton, wait!”

He instantly stops and turns around, letting me know that I was right, and at least not everything changed because I still knew him better than myself. His eyes meet mine and I can practically see the desperation and want warring in them. My heart hammers in my chest as I open the door wider. I don’t have to say a word, he just knows and walks back up the walkway, up the couple of steps, and inside. He walks up the stairs to my room and I’m not sure if it’s from habit or from him knowing my mom wouldn’t be happy to find him here. Not that she’d not know since his car is parked on the curb of the street in front of our house. I follow behind him, shut the door to my room behind me, and lean against it, feeling tension all throughout my body.

His back is to me and I watch as he looks around my room, appearing to be deep in thought. “I don’t think I could ever get used to this,” he says, his voice nothing more than a whisper, as if he was talking more to himself than to me.

I stay quiet instead of voicing the snarky comment that immediately came to mind. Maybe I’m learning some of that self-control that Riley seems to have an abundance of. His head turns to the side enough for me to see the ghost of a smile on his face. For once, I don’t understand or know what’s going on inside his head. Except, this isn’t for once. It’s becoming a more common and normal occurrence to not know what’s going through his head. “Go ahead and say it,” he tells me as he walks to the wall next to my window, stepping on glass from the picture frame that still lay on the floor from his last visit, and leans against it, leveling his gaze on me now.

The sound of the glass crunching under his shoes makes my heart constrict even more. Making our current situation rebound in my mind and become more real. We only had the small distance from where I'm standing at the door and him across the room against my wall between us yet it feels like we’re years and thousands of miles apart. I can see in his eyes that he feels it too.

“Say what?” I ask, breaking the silence, my voice almost too quiet for him to hear.

He gives me a look that says I know exactly what he means. “The comment you’re dying to make but not allowing yourself to say.”

“I don’t have one,” I reply, my voice still coming out small and quiet.

He doesn’t believe me. It’s written all over his face. He’s always known when I’m lying. He’s always been the one person that I couldn’t lie to. He lets out a small breath, trying to release some of the tension in his body and I watch as his eyes scan me up and down. “You look good,” he quietly observes.

“You look better,” I shoot back, accusatorily.

He doesn’t miss a beat. Was he trying to get a reaction out of me? Was he trying to see if he was able to still get one? If so, I’m just playing right into his hands now. I school my features back into a blank expression and force myself back into being aloof. I will not allow myself to be a fool for him or give more of myself and my feelings away. I work on tossing all emotions behind a door in my mind, sealing them up tight, and locking them away. “How’s your boyfriend feeling?” he asks me, his voice threatening to sound even more accusatory than mine, which gave me some satisfaction and makes me feel like I’m not completely losing in the battle of wills here.

I fix him with my icy stare. “I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I have one.”

He lets out a humorless chuckle and lets his eyes roam over my room once more before settling on me again. He watches me like he’s trying to figure me out as hard as I am him. His eyes catching and taking in every tiny detail that I might give away and making me feel completely exposed. This goes on for what feels like forever before the baby starts wailing and makes us both jump from the shock of the tense silence being broken by something so loud and opposite from our low and icy conversation. He tilts his head and his eyes are squinted due to the cries and his reaction is so him that it triggers something inside of me and I feel like I snap because I start laughing and can’t stop. He looks at me in annoyance then fumbles with the baby, trying to figure out what it’s wanting as fast as possible.

I’m laughing so hard at this point that it almost hurts to stand so I stumble over to my bed until I fall on top of it and try to calm myself down. He finally gets the baby to stop it’s cries and focuses his eyes back on me. When he sees my face still red from laughter, he helplessly joins me. The entire moment feels absurd and insane. I’m finally calming down and catching my breath when he walks over to my desk and picks up some papers that are laying on top of it. His eyes flick to me with a knowing light shining in them and I watch him nervously, racking my brain for what could possibly be on my desk to make him have that look.

He lays the baby down on the desk and walks over to my bed, still scanning the papers, the corners of his mouth tilting up slowly. When he reaches my bed, he fixes his ocean blue eyes on me and watches me as he tosses the papers down to me before laying down on the bed next to me and making himself comfortable. My eyebrows furrow as I grab the papers and look at them. Dread washes over me as I realize why he had that look now. It‘s the stupid assignment questions and the blank spaces for the answers.

“I don’t know what‘s cuter. The fact that you and I have very different definitions of it is pretty much done or the fact that you didn’t even have a clue as to what I was looking at because of you not even so much as looking at those papers yet,” he chuckles.

I glare at him, trying to cover my shame and embarrassment at being blatantly caught even though we both already knew that he knew I was completely lying. “I think it’s the fact that you’re trying to pretend you’re actually here to work on that instead of for another reason.”

His look of shock is quickly covered but not fast enough for me not to notice. I feel the small victory light up inside of me and work to mask my pride over it before he can see it and use that against me somehow. When did every encounter with him become something that felt like war and strategizing every move and word? Just over six months ago, that’s when. He lays on his side facing me and holds his head up with a hand. I look up at him, taking in every detail that I’ve missed for half a year. I notice the small changes to his face that have happened without me, making him look even less like the boy I knew and more like a young man. My heart aches knowing how much I’ve missed that I thought would be part of my everyday life, things that I took for granted without realizing.

“And what do you think I’m actually here for?” he whispers.