Out of the Blue by Opal Mellon Read Free Book Online Page A

making me uncomfortable,” she said.
    “What?” He looked up.
    “Checking me out,” she said. “We both know I’m not your type, and there’s no reason for you to be doing it, so stop. It makes me uncomfortable.”
    “So it would be okay if you were my type and there was a reason for it?”
    Her mouth fell open for a moment then snapped itself shut. “No.”
    “Fine,” he said. He faced the window with folded arms and a pout.
    “Fine,” she said. “What is there really to say about my work? You were in my major. You know what we do.”
    “I don’t know what you specifically chose to do though,” he said. “There is some variety in computer engineering.”
    She looked at him like a driver surveyed roadkill on the road and decided it was unavoidable. “I don’t know why we are even talking about this. I don’t know why we are pretending we are friends when we aren’t.”
    “Can we really not be Molly?”
    “I don’t see how,” she said. “I don’t know that you ever were.”
    “Okay, I’m sick of this,” he said. “I left. I know. And I didn’t tell you why. But it was for your own good. To protect you.”
    “To protect me?”
    “Besides, it’s not like you ever wanted to see me outside of class and studying. How could I have known you cared so much? You have a way of keeping everything in, Molly.”
    “I don’t even know why you kept inviting me out when I said no so much.”
    “Believe it or not Molly, I wanted to spend time with you. Non-homework time.”
    She pressed her top teeth to her bottom teeth. What did he even mean? Non-homework time, what would they have had in common then? Not that she hadn’t imagined time alone with him, even a date in her more bizarrely farfetched fantasies. She didn’t want to think about all of the times he was kind. She wanted to focus on her anger so that she didn’t end up getting attached again to someone who could just disappear.
    “Why did you leave? You say you wanted to protect me, but I don’t see how you could do that by disappearing.”
    “This is what I always liked about you Molly,” he said. “You always lay it on the table.”
    “This is what I hate about you: you speak in riddles that I can’t understand.”
    “I left because I had to,” he said. “I left to protect you and everyone else. If I told you more it would defy the whole point of leaving.” He stood and folded his arms and leaned on the window. He hunched slightly and ducked his head, like he’d been walking in the sun and suddenly been hit by a rainstorm. She felt an uncertain impulse, to go to him, to touch him, though she knew little about how to comfort with touch, and how to tell if someone wanted you to comfort them that way.
    “I guess I’m just supposed to be okay with that?” she said. “I guess I can be.”
    When he turned to her with a surprised look, she stood and came to him at the window. She brushed a lock of hair back from his face, and he turned to her with shocked, vulnerable eyes that seemed to expect her to wound him. How had she missed this Justin in the years she had known him? Why hadn’t she wanted to see it?
    “We all have secrets,” she said. “I’ll protect yours, whether you share them with me or not.”
    “You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “If anything, I owe you. I shattered you.”
    She narrowed her eyes, and then snorted. “As if.”
    “I’ll make it up to you. You figure out a way and name it.”
    She wanted to tell him that he was right, that the day he left didn’t undo how he had been a friend to her, how he had protected her. But she sensed that letting him make it up to her was important to him, that there was part of him that was protected by protecting others, so she nodded.
    “I’ll think of something.”
    “Good.” Justin smiled, barely, and put a hand over on her shoulder for a moment before dropping it. “I’m glad I get to assuage my guilt.” He glanced at her with a grin. “Then again,