“Well…”
“May I ask why it bothered you that I was kissing Mike?”
“Mike?” I ask. “Isn’t he your friend from town?”
“Yeah,” Leila answers. “He was just having one of his moments and badgered me into letting him know if he was a good kisser or not. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Oh, nothing,” she says. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“What was your question?”
“Why does it bother you that I was kissing Mike?” she repeats.
“Why would it bother me?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
I sigh.
Am I really going to do this? Wrigley is a perfectly wonderful woman: totally out of her mind, but still, very much my type. Am I really willing to risk that for someone I hardly know?
Of course, I hardly know Wrigley, but that’s neither here nor there.
“I just didn’t know you were home,” I answer. “When I came in, I realized that I was probably intruding on something, but my phone rang before I could get out of here.”
“Oh,” she says. “So it didn’t bother you that I was kissing someone else?”
“Why would it?” I ask.
This is painful.
“I don’t know,” she says. “We almost, you and I, you know…”
She trails off; her newfound discomfiture is hardly helping things.
“What?”
“Okay, I didn’t black out that night,” she says. “After your friend came out of your room wearing—or not wearing…whatever—I kind of wished that I had, but—is this too weird?”
She’s talking really fast, and it’s a few seconds before I realize she’s just asked me a question.
“Is what too weird?”
“Talking about this,” she says. “I know you and that Wrigley chick have a thing and all that. I just don’t want to make things uncomfortable between us for the next couple weeks.”
That’s actually a pretty solid idea. She’ll move, and I’m sure I’ll be over her in no time.
“I think I’m in love with you,” I blurt out.
That was stupid.
The remote falls from her hand and it looks like her jaw is trying to follow it.
“You’re what?” she asks.
“You know what? Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything. You got some big news today, and I think that’s what we should be talking about.”