Greedily, I tug it over my head and huff the delicious evergreen scent. I can feel the frizz his hoodie causes in my hair and do not give a shit.
“Thanks, Ry.”
He nods, his eyes locked on mine. His stare lasts longer than normal.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
He finally blinks, then sweeps up his phone and types in his rapid-fire way. I’m wondering if after you wear that hoodie, I’m going to be cursed with hair as frizzy as yours.
I lean across our food and punch his arm. When I sit back, I make a point of jamming my fingers into my crazy hair and only making it crazier.
Ryder’s face breaks into one of those rare, wide grins, and my heart skips a beat. He lifts his hand to the air in front of his face, swirls his fingers until they’re pinched together, then opens them as if releasing a burst of magic. It’s sign for something that I don’t know.
A shiver rolls up my spine, but it’s not because of the breeze swirling across the grass, making leaves dance between us. Wind whispers through my hair and plasters Ryder’s shirt to his body. Time suspends.
“What’s that one mean?” I ask.
Balling up the empty paper from his sandwich and tidying our mess, Ryder slides his bag up his shoulder and stands. His fingers ruffle my hair as he smiles down at me. Then he walks off, leaving me in a haze of unanswered questions and cedar-scented air.
Damn mind-fucker of a lumberjack.
“Beckett Beckerson, get your rank-ass hands out of the taco meat!” Tucker smacks Becks’s fingers away, then shoves him, nearly sending Becks crashing into me as I close the front door.
“Sorry, Willa,” Becks mumbles, straightening me out.
“Wilhelmina!” Tucker shouts.
I flick him off. “I requested Swedish meatballs.”
Tucker shrugs. “Ryder didn’t get home until fifteen minutes ago. He asked me to do him a solid and get taco meat cooking.”
Huh. That’s weird. I hate to admit it, but there’s no point in denying I have Ryder’s schedule memorized. He should have been home hours ago.
Becks goes to the fridge, pulling out taco fixings. “You like tacos, right?” he asks from inside the fridge.
I drop my bag on the table and wave my hand, already making my way toward Ryder’s room. “I love them. Thanks, guys.”
“Cool.” Tuck nods, jamming to some music he has playing quietly from his phone.
Knocking twice on Ryder’s door, I let myself in. He’s on his laptop, squinting at something with headphones on. He looks so intensely focused, I’m wildly curious to know what he’s watching.
When I step closer, he does a double take, eyes widening as he rips off the headphones, slams his laptop shut, and practically sits on it.
Tipping my head to the side, I fold my arms over my chest. “Okay, Brawny?”
He nods and swallows loudly. Pushing off the desk, he grasps my elbow and steers me out of his room into the main living area. One hand guiding me, he sets the other at his sternum. Fingers splayed with the middle one higher than the others, he swipes up his chest.
How are you? he signs. What’s up?
I’ve noticed him using a little more sign in the past few weeks. We still talk our texting way plenty, but it seems like sometimes he just wants to look at me and have some conversation.
“I kicked my Feminist Literature final paper’s booty, that’s what’s up.” He releases my elbow now that we’re safely away from whatever’s on that laptop that he doesn’t want me to see.
He smiles, and signs, Good!
Becks is organizing tiny little bowls of all the toppings, Tucker warming up tortillas. I glance from the kitchen to Ryder. “Putting your minions to work, eh? What happened?”
Ryder’s face slips slightly. I’m sorry, he signs. He hesitates, frustration pinching his face as he retrieves his phone from his back pocket and quickly types, Forgot about a doctor’s appointment. I cook them dinner nightly. They owe me. You love tacos though, right?
Something melts a little inside me. He’s right. I don’t like tacos. I love them. They were, until his Swedish meatballs, my favorite food.
“Yep, I say.” Reflexively, I clasp his hand and squeeze. “Everything okay at the doctor’s?”
I try to ask it in a way that isn’t invasive but shows I care because I do. I can’t pretend I’m not invested in Ryder’s wellness. He gently tugs a curl of my hair, then steps past me, into the kitchen, typing as he goes. My phone dings.
Just some tests because science has yet to understand how I got so manly and shockingly lumberjacked. Nothing serious.
“Lumberjacked.” I snort a laugh, derailed from my concern.
Dinner’s served, and I enjoy the tacos as much as the volley of insults lobbed between Tucker and Becks and Ryder via catapulted food, texts in group chat, hands thrown in emphatic gesture.
I stare at Ryder, feeling weird, un-frenemy things. Which is so stupid. A pointless road to go down. I’m a frizzy-haired, foul-mouthed thorn in his side, not a woman he wants. I mean, we might have, half-asleep and half-drunkenly, dry-humped each other a little. We might have kissed because our brains misfired. We might have made out like goddamn prodigies under that waterfall until we broke apart and it felt all at once awkward and transformed and mysteriously the same.
Giant, dry-humored, snarky, insult aficionado, asshole lumberjack has emerged as my type for down the line, but Ryder Bergman is nothing but my frenemy. Maybe a frenemy I could hate bang if he were up for that kind of thing.
“Willa.”
I jolt, and my mind is now back at the table. “Huh?”
“Want any more?” Becks holds the taco meat bowl out to me. I stare at it, feeling my appetite dwindle.
“No. No, thanks. I’m okay.”
Ryder’s eyes are on me. His hair is pulled back in a man bun so it doesn’t get in all the taco goodness, but he has some salsa in the corner of his mouth. I white-knuckle my jeans as an impulse strikes me to push away from the table and straddle his lap. To kiss that salsa off Ryder’s lips until our mouths burn for a very different reason besides habanero peppers.
His eyes darken as they hold mine and he slowly lowers his food.
“Here we go.” Tucker drops his tortilla chips and wipes his hands on his jeans. “They’re doing one of their stare-downs. Quick, get the timer.”
Becks yanks out his phone, setting it. Ryder and I have in the past engaged in a few juvenile showdowns of unblinking stares. Becks and Tucker have historically placed bets both on duration and victor. But this is not one of those times. This is…something very different, even if I can’t say just what.
His irises are pristine, glittering green. It’s unfair. I stare into their depths, their shades of lush hillsides, soccer fields, dazzling emeralds. My eyes start to water from staying open for so long. Ryder’s jaw tightens as his pupils dilate. A huff of air leaves him, and finally, he blinks.
“Woo!” Becks slaps the table, then sets his hand, palm up, for Tucker. Tucker grumbles and smacks a five-dollar bill into it.
I turn their way and lob a lime wedge at Becks’s head. “I should inspire a higher bet than that, Beckerson. I’m insulted.”
Ryder stands, collecting plates and stacking them. I help clear the table, then dry the plates Ryder washes in a daze, staring at the backsplash tiles. What is going on with my brain and body? And does Ryder feel the same way? Empty and full at the same time, like a balloon about to pop, a bubble that’s grown too heavy. Something between us feels incomplete and unavoidable. Something’s coming. I just can’t figure out what it is.