Note: I love his rumbly voice.
“Like, a bucket list?”
He paused and glanced up from his phone. “No. I don’t wanna call it a bucket list, because I’m not planning on waiting that long, and I’m not kicking the bucket early.”
I turned over to my back and stared at my bedroom ceiling. Nothing to look at but ceiling, but this position meant I wasn’t staring at Tate. “So it’s an Anti-Bucket List?”
Then my eyes went to him.
Tate tilted his head from side to side, contemplating. “I see it as an organizational document to guide future decision-making.” He sat back in my desk chair, scrolling on his phone, like he had a notes app open, but then he set it down and started riffling in my desk drawers. “So, I repeat. What do you wanna do after we graduate?”
Be with you. “How should I know?”
“You could start thinking about it.”
I already know. I want to be with you. “Okay. Umm. Go to New York City.”
He refrained from rolling his eyes. “You’re such a dork sometimes,” he said, his tone fond. “That’s already on the list. What about when we aren’t in school? We can travel on weekends, holidays. Hell, maybe I’ll talk you into ditching class or taking a semester to study abroad. We can do whatever we want.” The way he growled out “whatever” sounded sexual, and it made me shiver. That shiver was nowhere near platonic.
I’d never done that, but I didn’t want to put that down on the Anti-Bucket List. I had no idea if he had, and I didn’t want to find out, because it wouldn’t have been with me. I clung to his other words. “Can’t we already do whatever we want? We’re both adults.”
“And get written up for truancy and hauled before the principal? Or have to explain what we’re doing to our parents? Nah, no thanks. I’m talking about after we leave Merlot. When we’re really free.” He reached out to touch my hand. His long, lean fingers felt warm on my skin.
He moved his hand back almost too fast for me to register the contact and kept talking. “My mom says we need to make plans, or we won’t live. I don’t wanna wake up at forty-five having never experienced half the things I wanted to do. I want to go on the Orient Express and learn to sail in Denmark and climb mountains in Argentina. As a famous pirate said, if we don’t have a personal map, we’ll never find the treasure.”
I sat up and narrowed my eyes at him. “No pirate said that.”
“True.” He grinned, and I laughed, reached over, and shoved his shoulder. He wasn’t that close, and my shove wasn’t very hard. I tried not to linger on the muscly shape of his upper body.
“You’re the dork.”
Tate was always planning. And doing. He’d show up with my favorite pizza on a Saturday afternoon or haul me to the BART station to go to the city for an indie movie. I think he liked riding the Bay Area Rapid Transit.
Or maybe he just liked trains.
He also brought me presents all the time. A cute new pair of knee-high socks with taco cats on them to wish me luck before an important test. Strawberry-flavored KitKats from Japan because of my obsession with candy. Pink Himalayan salt—that he got in the Himalayas—because, yeah. That was what Tate was like.
And why he confused me as to whether he was my friend or more than friends.
Constant gifts equaled more-than-friend behavior. Right?
God, he made me feel stupid sometimes. Not by anything he said—and he never belittled my intelligence—but because I couldn’t figure him out.
My dad called him William Randolph Hearst—Hearst’s mother took him to Europe at age ten, which influenced the later construction of Hearst Castle in San Simeon—because he said Tate was the spoiled boy whose parents dragged him everywhere. I usually argued back that Tate had brothers, so he couldn’t be a Hearst, who was an only child. That argument went nowhere.
Tate remained on his Anti-Bucket List, dragging me from my thoughts. “Start easy. Where do you want me to take you shopping?” He licked his lips, and my brain stumbled to a stop wondering what it would be like to lick his lips.
“Oh. Lemme think.”
As I contemplated, I sucked my lollipop, getting dangerously close to the flavor-laden gum in the center. I pretended to think about the future since I was really just wondering what Tate tasted like. But after a moment I had a few things to rattle off.
“I want to buy gold sparkly Doc Martens in London. Wouldn’t those look amazing with a bouclé jacket and jeans? And go to F.A.O. Schwartz in New York City for a limited-edition Barbie. If they have one that looks like me, all the better.”
“Uh huh,” he muttered, scribbling these in a small memo notebook decorated with cats that he’d found in my desk. “Get an Audrey Barbie in NYC. Anything else?” He grinned. “You know I love going with you for retail therapy.”
He actually did. I’d never met a guy more willing to hang out while I tried on shoes. He usually encouraged me to purchase both pairs of shoes that I liked, not pick one. Once, he even returned to the store to buy a pair I didn’t have enough money for and gave them to me as a present.
I should marry him just for that. For a brief moment, I imagined what it would be like to wear a white dress and walk down the aisle to Tate wearing a tuxedo, his blond hair and blue eyes shining in the sunlight.
Of course, not at age eighteen.
Or before I knew what he was like when he was naked.
Or before I confirmed he liked me like that.
“Any other shopping? Or other places to visit?” He asked this as if all I needed to do was just say what I wished and I could have it.
“All the Harry Potter filming sites in the UK. Venetian glass in Italy. A real Fabergé egg. A meat pie in Australia.”
“Meat pie?”
“I heard they’re good.” I shrugged.
“Any other food?”
“Sushi in Japan. The more challenging, the better. I want tentacles.”
The serious look on his face as he concentrated on the page, recording my comments, made my heart swell. But all he said was, “Got it.”
“Ooh! I know!” I scrambled to the edge of the bed and faced him. “I’ve always wanted to ride trains.”
He glanced up from where he was writing. “Why trains?”
“They’re the most civilized form of transportation. I mean, besides private jet, I assume. You can get up, walk around, sleep, have a nice meal, knit, paint, read a book, look out the window. Freedom and independence without the responsibility of driving. Plus, they’re romantic.” I hoped I didn’t blush.
“Alright,” he said. Then he looked up. “Wait. You don’t paint or knit.”
“That’s not the point. I could.”
“True. Okay, what else?”
I was getting worked up now. “Well, if we wanted to ride a train in every continent or every country or every kind of train, that could pretty much keep us busy the rest of our lives. It’s perfect!”
Oops. I hoped he didn’t pause at my use of the word “we.” But it would be us doing these things together, right?
Why haven’t we kissed yet?
“Sure. Do you want to travel by any other method? Blimp? Sidecar? Paddleboat?”