I hadn’t thought about it before, but that surprised me, too. “Lucky us?”
“Seriously. Now, shhh, I’m trying to read you a letter.” He was still holding my shoulders. I was still warm from the inside out.
“Go on then.”
“I was surprised when I found out it was you that day, but the more I thought about it the less I was surprised. Then I was frustrated, because this amazing girl I’d come to know on paper was the only girl in the whole school who wanted nothing to do with me.”
“The only girl in the whole school? That might be a bit of an exaggeration.”
“No interrupting letters. If you were reading this, you wouldn’t be able to interrupt.”
“I would’ve definitely stopped at that part to scoff.”
He laughed and sent my heart racing. “So,” he went on, “I thought maybe if you could get to know me through the letters without knowing who I was in real life that you would eventually be willing to look past my mistakes. I was again surprised to learn you had been doing the same thing. So here we are at a crossroads.”
I waited for him to continue, to finish. He didn’t. I spoke up. “Here we are at a crossroads? That’s how you ended it? All cryptic like that?”
He took a step forward. Even though there wasn’t room to take that step. My legs hit a desk.
“I think there might’ve been a P.S.,” he said.
I couldn’t breathe again, only this time it had nothing to do with running. It had to do with his closeness and his voice, which had turned quiet, and his eyes that hadn’t left mine since he arrived.
My voice had lowered, too. “P.S.? We haven’t written one of those before.”
“It felt like it needed one.”
“It did need one.”
“P.S.” He brushed a piece of hair off of my cheek. “I like you. A lot.”
My breathing was shallow, my eyes starting to water from staring too long. “That’s a great P.S.”
“For our first one, I thought it was solid.”
It didn’t take much because he was so close. All I had to do was rise up on my tiptoes and our lips met. He tasted like mint gum and all my hopes and dreams. Well, not all of them, but a lot of them. His hands moved to my back where they pulled me against him. He deepened the kiss. My arms slid their way under his, finding his back as well. Why had we waited so long to do this? His breath was warm, his kiss as intense as his stare had been.
Something clattered onto the floor and I vaguely registered it was the keys I’d been holding. My brain was too muddled to think about that for another blissful moment in his arms. Then I remembered Isabel.
I gasped and pulled away. Too fast. The back of my legs whacked against a chair. “Ouch.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The keys. Isabel. I have to go.” I somehow twisted my way out of his arms, swiped the keys off the floor, and took off.
“Lily!”
“We’ll talk later! I like you, too!” I turned and walked backward for a moment, smiling his way. “In case that wasn’t obvious.” Then I left.
Running was fun, freeing—so easy.
“I’ll drive. You talk.” That was the first thing Isabel said when we climbed into her car.
I’d managed to put the keys back in the office, thanking whatever form of luck had kept Mrs. Clark and Isabel talking the entire time. Then I went through the front door of the office.
“There you are,” I’d said to Isabel, as though I’d been searching the campus over for her.
She turned around at the sound of my voice and the look in her eyes spelled murder. I tried to convey to her that I was sorry with one look as well. She’d hooked her arm in mine and said, “It was great talking to you, Mrs. Clark. Thanks for the info on dress code.”
“You’re welcome, hon. See you later.”
We’d then walked away in silence like we were being tailed by a spy, not saying a word until in the safety of her car.
“I’m sorry,” I said now, buckling my seat belt.
“Why? What happened?” She pulled out of the parking lot.
A smile spread across my face. “Nothing … Everything. Cade showed up. I guess he saw me running by and followed me.”
“He did?”
“Yes. And he knew. He knew I was the letter writer for weeks but he thought I hated him so he didn’t want to tell me.”
Isabel gave a knowing laugh. “So you were both being dumb.”
“Yes. How did you keep Mrs. Clark talking for that long, by the way?”
“What? No. Who cares. Why are you asking that question when you haven’t finished telling me the story?”
I laughed. “Wow. I could really drag this out and make you mad.”
She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “But you won’t do that because you owe me big-time for what I just did.”
“True. Thank you so much.”
“I don’t need your praise. I need the rest of the story. Tell me.”
I sucked my lips in to keep from laughing again. She was portraying perfectly how I felt on the inside, all excitement and manic happiness.
“Okay, sorry, sorry. Let’s see, where was I. So, he recited his letter, which he had apparently memorized, to me, not letting me get it from the desk. Basically he said that he was afraid I wouldn’t like him once I found out who he was and that when he realized I was doing the same thing, he was relieved. And then he told me he liked me. So I kissed him. But then I remembered you were waiting so I ran.”
“Wait, what?” Isabel cried, her eyes on the road as the car swerved a tiny bit. “You’re just going to casually mention kissing him and move on like that’s nothing?”
I wasn’t going to casually mention kissing him. I wanted to go into detail but suddenly with Isabel sitting next to me, squeezing my hand, I remembered something I hadn’t when I was kissing him—that she’d kissed him, too.
“Don’t,” she said as though reading my mind. “Don’t think about that. We’ve both kissed several people since then and I’m sure it’s nothing close to the same. We were young. I wasn’t even thinking about that, Lil. I promise. You two are adorable. It’s not even comparable to what Cade and I had. So spill it.”
I let out a happy sigh. “It was perfect.”
She pulled into a parking lot and I realized she was taking me up on the ice cream sundae offer right this second. “This story is going to be even better with ice cream,” she said.
It was seven o’clock when the doorbell rang. I was already in my pajamas and makeup free. I hardly registered the doorbell because I’d just written several lines of a new song, one that wouldn’t exploit Cade’s tragic life.
It’s easy to judge not knowing the truth
Only seeing carefully built walls.
It’s hard to undo years written in youth
But how amazing when the tower finally falls.
And I see you standing there
All sweet and kind of scared.
And you see me standing here.
Hope in my eyes but full of fear.
A knock at my door startled me from the lyrics. “Yeah?”