Page 20 of Ruined

“I was thinking I’d take you to lunch. There’s a nice place around the corner.”

He shrugs and bounces up and down a little. “Okay.”

“How’s your foot?”

“It’s fine.”

“Let me take a look at it.” I sit on the kitchen chair and tap my thigh, and Oliver rolls his eyes but sits down and lets me lift his leg into my lap. Rolling the hem of his jeans up, I slide his white sock off to inspect his foot. The swelling has gone down considerably, and there’s no more trace of blue on his skin.

“Told you,” Oliver says.

“How’s this?” I press my thumb and index finger against the sides of his ankle like last time and watch his reaction. He doesn’t scrunch his face up in pain, but a gasp falls from his lips.

“Still a bit sore?” I ask, and he nods.

I stroke his skin as if I’m trying to heal him by touch alone. When I shift my fingers to the sole of his foot, my brain supplies a distant memory, and my touch turns ticklish instead.

He yelps and yanks his foot away. “Stop,” he giggles helplessly, suddenly breathless.

He’s still as ticklish as when he was a kid. The thought makes me smile. At least one thing between us hasn’t changed.

For lunch, I take him to Murphy’s Coffee, a small café down the street. When Oliver realizes where we’re going, his eyes widen a bit.

I hold the door open for him. “Have you been here before?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “With Lane.”

I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t, so we order our food at the counter and take a seat near the window. Oliver taps his fingers on the table, gaze bouncing from me to his food to the people passing by on the street outside.

I eat my chicken teriyaki sandwich quietly, watching him. In some ways, he’s like a stranger; he’s not the boy I remember. Some of his mannerisms still remain, though, like the way his gaze bounces around when he’s nervous, and the way he leans his cheek on his hand and hunches over the table when he eats.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, wiping my mouth with a napkin and taking a sip of soda water.

Oliver shrugs and flashes a smile that looks more like a grimace. “This feels weird.”

“I know,” I say, though I don’t know exactly what he means.

He’s quiet for a while, tapping his foot harder. “Why did you want to meet me?”

I raise a brow. “To get to know you again.”

“No, I mean… before.” He sends me a pointed look, and my stomach drops when I realize what he’s getting at. “You saw my pics. You must have… liked them.”

“Oliver.” My voice comes out stern, and my insides simmer with discomfort. “We’ve been over this. I didn’t know it was you.”

“Yeah, but you knew he was… young. This person you were supposed to meet.”

“I thought he was twenty-three. Not nineteen.”

“There’s not that much of a difference.”

I don’t agree with his mumbled statement, but I don’t know what to say, so I take another bite of my sandwich. It tastes like nothing, my racing heart and the uncomfortable nature of this conversation ruining any enjoyment.

“How about you? You knew I was older. A lot older than you.” It sounds like an accusation, and I don’t mean it to be. For reasons I don’t want to admit, I just want him to confirm what I already know.

He shrugs, hacking his sausage roll to pieces with his fork. “Yeah, I like older guys. So what?”

The thought that he was about to meet a forty-three-year-old man—not me but a stranger—makes my stomach churn. I’ve tried not to think about the implications, but now they’re impossible to ignore.