But if she wasn't messing things up... No. No, she stopped her brain before it would allow any more confusion to fester. If he liked her, he would tell her, wouldn't he? He'd been honest with her about everything else. Hadn't lied to her, and had put his trust in her completely, at least as far as she knew. So... she had to believe that what he was telling her was the honest to god truth. “Neither of us have messed anything up, then.” She paused before adding, “People who don't like me have referred to me as a disease. I won't go away, no matter how much you want me to,” she said with a weak half-smile.
Rae arched an eyebrow and bit her lip. What did he mean by that? She knew she had to be throwing out some serious signals—half of them were actually intentional, whether she was trying to or not—so maybe he knew that, and that was what he meant? Either way, she said, “Looks like we're doing emotional sign language.” Bad joke? Maybe. But she hoped it would break the tension a little.
The thing about her circle of friends was that they all expected things of her. They expected her to be a beacon of sunshine. Knew her as this never-ending source of happiness and comfort. She'd realized, not too long ago, that that was one of the things she liked the most about Topher. She provided him comfort when he needed it, but he understood that sometimes she needed it, too. They were there for each other, ever since they'd met. It was nice to be taken care of, and take care, at the same time.
“Good. I'm a pretty bad liar,” she said as another tension-cutting joke, smirking at him. “You'll always know when I'm lying, because I can't look you in the eye when I talk to you.” Over-talking to avoid the awkwardness. A habit of hers.
In Rae's mind, the comment about stupidity felt almost like he was trying to say that it was stupid of him to kiss her, because she was her. She knew her reputation, knew what Brandon saw her as, and Silas was friends with Brandon, even if they'd just found their way back from the outs. Maybe he thought it was stupid to kiss someone like her, in that way. “You're smarter than you give yourself credit for,” she told him, despite the negative thoughts festering. “Smarter than a lot of other people around here.”
She smiled weakly at him, then looked down at the floor. “Then neither will I,” she told him, but that proved, pretty much doing exactly what she'd just told him she did when she was lying.
He offered for her to come to his place still, and she looked back up, the weak smile becoming a little more sincere as she nodded. “Please,” she told him. “Let's go.” She wouldn't stay long. Just long enough to clear her head, and then she'd go back to her cousins and her son.