She’d said that out loud. It wasn’t until he was repeating it that she realized it hadn’t been in her head, but out there in the open and she was instantly regretting it. “It’s just...Matt, he can’t, not even something simple. He wouldn't have been able to help me up yesterday...” The words were short and not quite complete thoughts, wishing she could take it back. That was probably beyond the casual flirting, even if it was the truth. Edan dropped her eyes from Evan’s, biting at her lip and wishing she hadn’t said anything in the first place.
He was glad she looked down, because he wasn't quite sure how to feel with that. There was a weird twist of emotions in the back of his mind, though he took one clear thing away from it. She was behaving like she was with him because he was a substitute for some guy named Matt. Who was apparently not into being physical, to the extreme.
So, there was confusion. He'd already been confused with how she was with him, but this kind of just made the waters even more muddy. She was using him, to get something she needed that she wasn't getting from someone else, and that sort of made him feel better and worse at the same time. Better, because it meant it wasn't about him. Worse, because it meant it wasn't about him.
It was double edged, that was for damn sure. He hadn't even been sure what he thought of her, he'd still been busy trying to work out how he even felt about her wild bouts of 'hey let's get naked' and 'anything you want' offers. How he felt about her in general, besides he liked her enough to arm her and wanted to keep her away from him. But now, with that out there, he was pretty sure this entire thing was just a transference thing. She wasn't getting touch from someone else, and he'd apparently just caught her attention by not being a total fucking creep. He'd helped her up. Helped her out. Let her cling when she was afraid of the storm outside. It didn't actually have anything to do with him, just his ability to not be a frigid weirdo who couldn't make simple contact.
Right. So, there was that.
He looked back towards the door, figuring his room was really not that far away, and she was probably trapped in there by the storm. Was he that much of an asshole? Did he want to be?
"Why can't he?" he asked, just to have responded. At least it hadn't been too long a pause. His confusion and thoughts on the matter had all rocketed by in record time.
“Fear. Like the storm, but touching. Anyone. He stays at a distance.” Edan drug her fingers through her hair and shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said it. It’s not the...same. It’s just...” It was nice. It was honestly nice to be able to hold on to Evan’s arm when she got scared, to feel someone close enough to touch and not add in the anxiety of touching him to the existing fear. Matt’s anxiety was starting to ratchet up her own anxiety, just from being worried about scaring him or upsetting him by slipping up. “it’s hard to be terrifying even when you are trying so hard not to be.”