The Night We Said Yes Read Online Free Page A

should know by her look that she doesn’t want to be touched. Never touch lit dynamite.
    I turn back to Matt, scared. I’m not ready to do this, to simply talk to him after six months apart. He’s staring at his untied laces, not meeting my eyes. His shoelaces were always untied, and the memory hits me with a force I wasn’t expecting. Him always sighing when I pointed it out. Me always laughing at the repeated act, and loving him even more for the simple imperfection.
    He drops down to tie them, taking his time, and brushing them off when he’s done. And inside I want to cry because he’s here. And him being here proves it all happened. I want to touch him and make sure this is all real and tangible. I close my eyes and feel every emotion I tried to hide when I was being braver, stronger, moving on. The pain. The loneliness. The shame.
    “Um. How’re you?” he asks, standing back up.
    How am I? I almost laugh at the question, because I’m a complete wreck. My heart isn’t sure if it should soar or crash and my body is both pushing me closer to him and pulling me away. And I don’t know what’s right, and I need Meg here to tell me. But I can’t say all that, so instead I open my eyes and say, “Fine, you?”
    “Okay,” he answers, putting his hands in his pockets and he’s still so cute. It kills me seeing him there, so nonchalantly.So there. He doesn’t move from where he is, staying a few feet away, still behind the bar where Anthony was. “This is incredibly awkward, isn’t it?”
    My body loosens and a brief calm washes over me. I smile slightly, agreeing. He’s always had a way of pointing out the obvious when it needs to be said. I take a moment to look at him. He’s different, but not really. His glasses are new; thin frames instead of his black-rimmed plastic ones. They make him look older, more mature. But behind them, his eyes are still the same. They’re the eyes I fell for. Green with hazel flecks. It’s dark, but I can still see them flash in the tiki lights. The familiarity pushes me to ask him the first thing I can think of.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I go here now. To UCF. I just moved back,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. It’s as if he wants his look to convey an inner meaning his words won’t allow. And when my heart flips, stupidly I want his look to say I’m back for you, this whole year was a mess, let’s run away together and never look back . But I can’t want that. I can’t allow myself to get hopeful again, not after what he did. I hated him once—I have to remember that, and not the way his lips felt on mine.
    “Oh,” I answer, because it’s all I can say.
    Sensing my discomfort—as if it’s hard to—he walks toward me, closing the gap that has stood between us ever since he left.
    As he comes close, my stomach clenches and instinctivelyI put my hand up. An image of the letter he sent me—the one I promptly ripped up and burned—flashes in my mind and I can’t go back to that moment. I can’t be the Ella that was innocent and vulnerable and easily fell for him after a crazy night. That Ella is gone.
    “It was nice seeing you,” I say, quickly, eyes searching for an out.
    “Oh,” he says, head down again. “Yeah, okay, you too.”
    “I’ll see you around,” I add, but my words hold no real meaning, and he probably knows that.
    “Yeah? Okay, cool,” he says, nodding, and still not looking at me.
    “Bye,” I mumble as I turn to leave. I know he’s still behind me, I can feel him there, staring at me. But I have no clue what it all means. I have no clue why he’s even trying to start a conversation with me after all this time. We are over; we are in the past. We should have stayed there.
    I find Meg by the door once I get inside. She’s leaning against the counter but she looks too comfortable, too posed. She was spying, of course.
    “How’d it go?” she asks as soon as I shut the door.
    “Uggghhh,” I answer, knowing she’ll