“I missed you,” he whispered. He grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together, and when he went in to kiss me again his grip tightened.
“Do—” I started, but broke off at the sound of a floorboard creaking. Will launched himself back and snatched up Michael Jordan, holding the trophy like it was way more inexplicably interesting than anything I could’ve been saying. I didn’t have any nearby prop—he’d stolen mine—so I just sat up as straight as I could and focused on looking calm and not-at-all turned on. Just in time, too, because Will’s dad flung the door wide open without stopping to knock.
In hindsight, I can see how opening a closed door to see his son closely examining a trophy he’d had for years, while his son’s friend sat awkwardly on the bed with perfect posture and tousled hair, could’ve raised an alarm bell for Mr. Tavares. To his credit, if he did suspect something, he stayed pretty neutral. “Ollie, the little guy’s asking after you.”
Way to cock-block, Dylan.
“Thank you, Mr. Tavares,” I said. “We’ll come right down.”
Will nodded and placed the trophy back on the shelf.
As soon as his dad was gone, Will turned back to me. For a moment I thought he meant to kiss me again, but it was just to nod over at the doorway. “Guess the kids need to get to bed soon, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s a long drive back at this time of night for them.”
“Got it. Well, thank you so much for coming.”
It seemed like I was being unceremoniously kicked out. I stood up, and hesitated. “Hey, Will?”
“Yeah?”
“That definitely just happened, right? Like, we’re not going to pretend it didn’t?”
He took a second to reply, but when he did, his expression was mischievous.
“Oh, it definitely happened. Don’t worry about that.”
15
We’d wandered for a while, following the edge of the lake, just talking, before we settled down in front of a tree to finish our ice cream. The crowds had thinned and then I virtually disappeared about five minutes before, giving us some privacy.
Rivulets of melted mint ice cream ran down Will’s cone and over his fingers. He didn’t try to lick them off, not even as they started to drip onto his knees. I stirred my spoon around my own cup until it made a chocolate soup, while Will finished off the last bite of his cone. How anyone could eat that fast without brain freeze was a mystery. “You’re covered in ice cream,” I said.
He looked down at himself and tried to wipe it off his leg. All he managed to do was spread it in a sticky mess around his thigh. “Shit. One second.”
With that, he pulled his shirt off, took off for the lake, and jumped straight in, spraying water all over me.
He popped back above the surface and shook his head to dry himself off.
“You drenched me,” I complained. Not to mention the rest of my ice cream, which was half lake water now.
“Well, you’re wet now,” he said. “You might as well get in.”
Something about the thought of stripping down to my shorts and jumping into the lake with this guy I barely knew seemed illicit and thrilling to me. Even though I knew it was stupid, and he would probably freak out if he knew I was thinking about him like that. Chances were pretty strong that this was completely innocent. Still, it was fun to pretend. And with a guy this hot, who could blame me for fantasizing a little?
But then, when my head emerged from taking my shirt off, I swore I saw Will stare at me. Only for a second, though.
I jumped in.
“You know, a lot of people back home can’t swim,” Will said, his head bobbing up and down. “I asked my friend Matt to come up with us but he bailed because of that.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who can’t swim,” I said. “What if your plane crashed into the ocean?”
Will burst out laughing. “That’s your main concern?”
“Well, it’s true! I mean, I guess you could just float.”
He shook his head. “No way, floating’s way harder than swimming. I can’t do it at all.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I never learned how.”
“It’s easy. You just kind of…” I launched myself onto my back to demonstrate.
He tried to mimic me, and ended up flopping backward into the water like a finless whale. “I told you!” he said, snorting water out his nose.
“No, just try and … yeah, a bit more arched, though—no, more arched, Wi—here.” I put my hands at the top and bottom of his back and moved him into position. “Like that.”
His skin was warm to the touch. “Oh,” he whispered, before swallowing. “Like that.”
Then he rolled over to return to a paddling position. Which brought him about three inches away from my face.
He didn’t move back, though.
Our legs collided a few times underwater. My hands were still burning from where they had touched his skin. He looked at me with an intensity that took me by surprise.
All at once, I realized he had been staring at me before.
With exactly this expression on his face.
I was just starting to hope when one of his hands found my waist, and he kissed me.
Another Thursday, another band practice.
This one was running particularly late, too. The band had a new set of songs Izzy wanted us to learn as soon as possible, and we couldn’t get Sayid and Emerson to agree on anything, from the tempo to the harmonies to the lyrics.
It didn’t matter too much to me if we went overtime, though. The girls were at a basketball game. I would’ve totally gone, but the thing is, I’d rather floss with barbed wire than watch a live sports match, so I declined with regrets. Besides, I’d had to skip the last band practice to play emergency babysitter when Aunt Linda developed a sudden pain in her side. It didn’t turn out to be anything major—thank God—but I couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again, so I couldn’t afford to play hooky from practice on top of that.
We’d been practicing for about an hour when Sayid and Emerson called a time-out to argue over a line in the song—Sayid thought the original “you throw your arms around me, while all the lights surround me” was better, while Emerson was pushing for the obviously superior, “when darkness seeks to blind us, a fire ignites inside us.” Izzy, who thought lyrics were only there to complement an epic drum track, decided to mostly ignore them while she experimented with different beats, humming the chorus to herself. I wasn’t able to focus—I’d been a ditzy, gooey mess since Thanksgiving—so I perched myself on a stool and watched the others with a vague smile. So vague, even, I didn’t notice Izzy had stopped drumming. Until she threw a Skittle at my head.
“What are you all smiley about?” she asked. “You look like a Disney princess; stop it.”
I hunted for the Skittle on the carpet then popped it in my mouth.
“Ew, I touched that,” Izzy said. “My hands are all sweaty.”
“It was a red Skittle. A sweaty red Skittle is worth three green Skittles.”
“What kind of bodily fluid would bring a single red Skittle below the net worth of a green Skittle?”