"Karawynn Long - Adjusting the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long Karawynn)

remember at all, no matter how hard she tried.
Finally, after one particularly long silence, his voice floated to her
in the darkness. "I think I'm falling in love with you, Melly."
For a moment she had no reaction at all, and then Melanie felt her heart
jump up into her throat and just stick there, not beating. Something like joy
began buzzing in her head. She rolled over and looked at him, trying to see
his face. "Really?" she asked.
"Yes." He lifted a hand and touched her cheek, then let it drop and
turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. "And I'm not ready for
that."
She froze, listening, as each word dropped like a stone.
"I mean, in a couple of months we'll probably be living thousands of
miles apart. I . . . feel really close to you, but if we were any closer --
leaving you would just be too hard. I don't want to go through something like
that again right now."
She was silent a moment, choosing her words carefully, though she felt
despair creeping in. Not yet, she thought, he doesn't have to mean that. "So
you are moving to Chicago, then?"
He pulled his arm out from under her neck and propped himself up on one
elbow. "I don't know. But I have to do something. I'm just -- marking time,
here, not really accomplishing anything important."
She felt the knife twist. "So I'm just what, a passing fancy to keep
you entertained until you can move on to something more important?"
"No, you know I didn't mean it like that," he answered reproachfully.
"You've always known where you were going, what you were going to do. But I
just found out. And I can't give that up, even to be with you."
"I never asked you to," she retorted. "I was under the impression that
you were here voluntarily."
"I was," he insisted, the past tense falling like a death blow.
After that she rolled away from him and lay there for a long time,
perversely wide awake. She kept hoping that he would reach out to her -- say
he'd made a mistake, or even just hold her -- but he made no move. Eventually
the rhythm of his breathing told her he'd gone to sleep.
When she awoke next it was morning, and he was already out of bed and in
the shower. She padded sleepily into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and
stood at the counter, thinking. She loved him; nothing he'd said had
diminished that. She knew that eventually they might part ways, but surely
they could deal with that when and if it happened. Right now, she wanted to
be with him -- that was the one thing that mattered to her.
Melanie decided she'd better start by looking at least marginally human.
She set the mug down and washed her face at the kitchen sink, and then hunted
up a comb in her bedroom and started to untangle her long hair.
She was still working on it when he opened the bathroom door. He smiled
at her, but somehow it lacked real warmth. His motions as he stepped into his
jeans and pulled a t-shirt over his head were tense and abrupt, but he said
nothing about their conversation.
She waited, wanting him to speak first and establish a tone. But as he
sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks, then his shoes, all without
saying a word, she began to panic, afraid he would leave then and there
without ever having brought the subject up.