“Messing up our date… Not paying attention to how uncomfortable you were… Not trying to ease that pain—” His breath caught and he shook his head a second time, more violently. “Not trying harder. Not trying to understand—” I flipped my hand over and squeezed his right back. He exhaled like a popped balloon, deflating as our fingers tangled and the unspoken distance that had existed between us—invisible but unsurpassable—since that first night began to close inch by inch. “That was the stupidest, sorriest thing I’ve ever done in my whole fucking life.”
