The Search for Lily Myers ✓

19 | Moving Too Fast

The next fifteen minutes were a frenzy of Amelia trying to make her living room look presentable before Henry arrived—it was just her luck that this was the one weekend she'd decided to let her apartment get uncharacteristically sloppy. And two of those precious minutes were wasted just rummaging through her kitchen drawers for a box of matches so that she could light a candle to compensate for the fact that she'd just left a smelly Taco Bell wrapper on the floor for two days.

Just as she'd struck the match and the wrapper had met its fate in the trash can, the doorbell rang. Amelia looked down at herself; she hadn't gotten around to changing, so she supposed Henry would just have to deal with her pajama shorts and baggy tee shirt. She tugged down the legs of her shorts as she went to answer the door.

When she pulled it open, she was greeted by a gust of chilly autumn air (her bare legs were not a fan) and Henry, wearing a sweater that made him look very handsome in an adorable sort of way. But the faint hue of pink on his cheeks reminded her of why he was actually here and it only now dawned on her that she didn't know how to react.

"I didn't have time to fix my face," she said stupidly, very aware that she didn't have any makeup on right now and thus might have looked like an egg. At least she'd moisturized.

He smiled just slightly. "I don't think there's anything wrong with your face."

"Right. Um, come on in." She stepped aside to let him in and shut out the cold. "Do you want anything to drink, or like a snack, or..."

"I'm fine, thanks."

She watched as he sat down on the couch, his palms resting flat on his legs like he wasn't sure what to do with his body. She couldn't decide if knowing that he was also nervous made this easier or more difficult.

But she eased herself onto the couch beside him, leaving a somewhat generous amount of space between the two of them. It was as though her subconscious was treating this push and pull between them as a third entity entirely, one that she needed to physically make space for until it was resolved one way or another. She'd been completely coherent—or at least coherent enough—on the phone, but now that he was actually here in the flesh, close enough in proximity to her that she could smell the clean scent that lingered on his clothes and watch the little dimples on his cheeks when he talked, she felt incapable of forming any sentences that were both logical and un-embarrassing.

She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. "How about we just, like, take turns saying how we feel about what happened last night?"

His lips curved back into another small smile. "That sounds reasonable. Should, um, should I go first? Or did you want to?"

"You can go."

"Alright, well..." Henry seemed a little bit conflicted about if he should look at her or at the floor. "I really like you, Amelia, and um, that was really nice and everything. I enjoyed kissing you."

She almost felt guilty for thinking that it was just the teeniest, tiniest bit satisfying for him to start getting tongue-tied over kissing her when he was usually the more eloquent of the two of them. The planes of his cheekbones flushed more brightly when a giggle slipped out of her mouth.

"I sound ridiculous, don't I?" he asked sheepishly.

"No, I think it's sweet," she assured him. "But I sense there's a but coming."

Henry didn't deny it; he shrugged. But he kept his eyes on her this time. "I guess it felt like, I don't know, like I might be taking advantage of your emotions while you're vulnerable."

"I could say the same thing to you."

He nodded. "That's fair. But I'm not—I don't feel vulnerable in the same sense, you know? I mean, I didn't just get out of a relationship with someone else. I wished I'd just stayed and asked you how you felt instead of giving you the wrong idea though."