The Science of Growing Apart

25- Kiaan

"I'm ninety percent sure he wanted me to kiss him, Nat." I probably looked like a psycho with the way my restless eyes were wild, my hair was unbrushed and chaotic. I didn't get much sleep last night, constantly imagining the way his eyes roamed my body, looking at my lips. It was a very quick glance, but I knew that it happened and the memory of it kept me up.

"Did he break up with Rebecca?" she asked me from her couch as she cradled her baby nephew in her lap. She had been babysitting Kiaan all weekend and was clearly exhausted, so I had been helping her clean up while I was there unloading even more on her.

"No, which is why nothing actually happened," I assured her. "But I really think that he wanted something to happen."

"Well, he's engaged," she stated the obvious. "Whether he wants to be or not. I think until you get the official word that they're broken up, you're just getting your hopes up for nothing."

"I'm not getting my hopes up."

She raised her black eyebrows at me in disbelief.

"I'm not," I promised her. "I'm going on that date with Emmett on Tuesday."

But it was a lie. A very bold and obvious lie that I was trying to tell myself almost as much as I was telling Natalie. I was already planning the speech I'd make a few months after the breakup had healed, I was already picturing where we'd go on a first date and thinking about what it would really feel like to be kissed by him in real life instead of in my dreams.

Had I learned nothing in the six years we'd been apart?

I was just as gullible and naive as I was at seventeen.

This time, I wouldn't wallow in it. I wouldn't waste the next years of my life waiting for him to come to me. I couldn't stop myself from feeling this way, but I could do my very best not to let it consume me.

"This is what I've been afraid of this whole time," she said, gently rocking the little baby. "I knew that if you became friends with him again, these old feelings would come back."

"If he stays engaged, they'll fade with time," I assured my best friend, trying so hard to convince the both of us. Of course, I didn't know for sure that they would fade, but I was hopeful. I think I still had these feelings so many years later because they were never resolved six years ago. He just vanished and I never got any resolution or closure. But getting married to another woman would be some pretty finite closure and I could finally move on.

"So, what's the plan moving forward?" she asked me.

I had no idea. After last night in the greenhouse, I felt like the next time I saw him would be so awkward. Nothing actually happened, so there was tons of plausible deniability there, but we both knew that there was a Moment. We'd have to pretend like it wasn't real, but it was there.

"No more late night greenhouse adventures," I decided. "Our friendship happens in the daylight hours only."

"That's a good start."

"I don't think we should be alone at all, honestly. For now, at least," I relented even further so that she would stop giving me that look of disapproval. "Until I can get my hormones under control."

"That's better." This seemed to satisfy Natalie, or maybe she just got distracted by the stench of a fresh baby turd from the baby on her lap. As a thank you for letting me dump all of my chaotic thoughts on her that day, I took the baby and changed the brown diaper myself.

"I don't think he's good with Rebecca. They're a weird couple and I don't think she makes him that happy. I'm not saying that out of jealousy, even though I know how that sounds. They just don't seem good together," I told Natalie as I laid the baby down on a blanket and began unwrapping him from his onesie. "She's so clinical and high brow and that is so not Casey at all. Also, she doesn't think dick jokes are funny."

"What a sociopath."

"I know."

"Even if they did break up, what would be your plan? You can't pounce on a guy who's fresh out of a four year relationship," she reminded me.

"I would wait a respectable amount of time before I pounced," I assured her. "But I would pounce. If I still have these feelings, that is. I'm not making the same mistake twice, if I get the chance."

"Just makes me nervous," she said with a long sigh. "You know I just don't want to see you get hurt again."

"I know that. I'm doing my best to make this as painless as possible."

"No you're not," she scoffed, watching as I wiped up the baby's little butt with baby wipes before replacing the soiled diaper with a new one. I knew very little about babies, so I was really just making this up as I went, but Natalie wasn't complaining, so I felt like I was probably doing a good enough job. "If that were true, you would have told him to kick rocks from the beginning."

"You overestimate my ability to say no to Casey. I held out for a while, but I couldn't last forever."

"You underestimate your own strength. You could have said no if you tried harder," she insisted. "But, it's fine. This is where we are now and all that matters is you start to work on getting over him."

"But-"

"Nope," she stopped me as I was finishing up the diaper change. I handed her the docile baby after he was cleaned up and then tossed the diaper into the trash. "As long as he's still engaged, I won't be hearing anything else. You are not allowed to wallow in feelings for a nearly married man."

"Maybe what I really need is to just hear the 'I do's," I suggested with a small shrug. "It would really solidify that he was serious about her and I could really move on. Their wedding is set for next June, just a year and a half."

"I think asking her to get married was enough of a sign that he's serious about her," she deadpanned. "I'm not going to indulge your toxic mindset here, girlie."

"I know," I moped. I was being ridiculous, trying to justify old feelings instead of actually dealing with them. Whether we had a moment in the greenhouse or not, the fact of the matter was that he was with Rebecca and as long as that was still true, I was just getting my hopes up for nothing, working my mind in circles until I was buried in hypotheticals that would drive me crazy if I let them.

Maybe we didn't even have a moment. Maybe this thing that I'd wanted for a decade had started messing with my mind and I wanted him so badly that I was starting to imagine things that didn't even happen. I knew he looked at my lips in the greenhouse, but maybe my lipstick was smudged and he was judging me for that. Or he noticed a weird hair or a pimple.

I had to come back to earth. Casey was engaged, I had a date with Emmett coming up. I needed to move on, or I'd allow Casey Gordon to be my downfall for a second time, and that shit is so embarrassing.