But that was the thing; she wasn’t messing things up, not any more than he was. “You aren’t messing things up.” Sighing, he felt like he was at a loss for how to tell her that it wasn’t some signal she was giving off, that, at least this time it had more to do with his own weaknesses and inabilities to ignore an impulse. She didn’t have to finish some of those sentences for him to get the idea of what she’d meant to say. He should’ve just been honest with her last time and put everything out there. Maybe then she wouldn’t be taking so much responsibility for it. Or they wouldn’t be in this predicament at all because she wouldn’t be speaking to him. “You’re not throwing off any signals that I could just ignore,” he told her, whether or not it made sense. “Pretty sure I’ve been throwing off some signals too.” Because it wasn’t fair to place all the blame on Rae. He was as much a part of it as she was.
It was stupid to smile at her words, but he was only a man, after all, and not above enjoying a compliment when it was said. Even if she hadn’t meant to say it; he couldn’t really tell. And smiling was mostly safe, since she still wasn’t looking at him.
Even though he knew that the right thing to do would be to stop encouraging her company, he couldn’t do it. Not when she said things like she liked his company more than anyone else’s. From him that might not mean as much, he didn’t have as many people in his life, but Rae was a woman with a wide circle of friends. He couldn’t even fake himself into believing she was just saying it to be nice; she’d never said anything to him that she hadn’t meant.
And then she was insisting that he wasn’t solely responsible, and how was he supposed to take that? “Got no other choice than to take you for your word,” he responded.
But hell, he shouldn’t have said the bit about stupidity. Because her tone of voice relayed almost everything he needed to know about her opinion on that. But there really wasn’t any way to save face either, or take it back. He’d said it, god only knows why, but the statement was out there now. “At least on my part. Ain’t exactly working with the most smarts.” A lame, half-hearted attempt to deflect some of the opinion that she was being stupid.
He just couldn’t take the sadness in her eyes when she looked up at him though. That kiss hadn’t made anything better, not in the slightest. “Promise,” he began, “I’ll take no blame.” And all he wanted to do was pull her back into his arms, to try and soothe away some of her sadness. But he couldn’t do that, not after everything that had already happened.
What he could do was still offer her a space to gather her thoughts and get her resolve built back up before she had to see Luke and April and EJ.
“My place is a little warmer than the hallway,” he told her, but waited for her to move, just in case she decided her apartment was where she’d rather go now.