Chapter 20: Be Alone Together
The air between us went completely still.
’Okay,’ I thought. ’This is weird now. This is definitely weird.’
I just sat there, not sure what to do with my hands or where to look. I ended up just staring at the ground in front of my feet. The silence just kept stretching out, and it felt like if I didn’t say something soon, we’d be stuck like this forever.
"Hey," I said finally, my voice sounding a little rough. "It’s really okay."
She didn’t answer right away, which just made me feel more awkward.
"I mean it," I added, glancing over at her. "Don’t worry about it."
She was still looking at her lap, twisting her fingers together. "I’m still sorry," she said, her voice was really quiet. "I don’t know why I did that. I just made things weird again."
’Yeah, you kind of did,’ I thought, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud.
I let out a breath and tried to think of something, anything, to fix this.
"No, you didn’t," I said, and the words just came out. "It’s... it’s been nice, actually. Talking to you like this."
She finally looked up from her hands and over at me.