I’ll kiss Harrison until the thought of Fitz kissing Molly doesn’t make me want to cry.
After we climb out of the elevator and tumble breathlessly into the stairwell, Harrison pushes me against the closed door and kisses me again. We stumble home this way, pausing every ten feet, stopping under streetlights, choosing empty subway cars. He tangles his hands in my hair and I feel all the lean muscles beneath his shirt, our hands shaky and fumbling and fast. We’re both breathless and filled with desperate wanting. Whether we want each other or someone else, it’s hard to tell.
All I know for sure is that we kiss until my lips are chapped and my head swims.
We kiss until I no longer think about Fitz at all.
I wake up freezing. Literally freezing. Possibly to death.
I pull the blanket to my chin, only to have my feet stick out the bottom. My cocoon has dissolved. I curl my legs into my shaking body and am startled by a noise. Fitz is adding wood to the dying fire.
“Hey,” I whisper through chattering teeth.
“Hey,” he whispers back, adding another log. “You looked cold.”
I’m shaking too hard to reply.
The flames flicker brighter, enveloping the new logs hungrily. Looking at Fitz in the dark, something stirs low in the pit of my stomach. He dusts off his hands and returns to his spot, facing me. There’s at least eighteen inches between us and I’m still shaking uncontrollably.
“I feel partially responsible for this blizzard,” he whispers.
“W-wh-why?”
“I asked Clover to pray for snow.”
My laugh forms a cloud of icy breath in front of me. “If I die of hypothermia, do I blame y-you or C-Clover or G-G-God?”
“I was prepared to take the credit for your first snowstorm, so I guess I’ll take the blame too.”
I laugh again, but it’s muffled behind chattering teeth.
“This is stupid. Take my blanket,” he says.
I shake my head. I can’t leave him with nothing.
“You could get under my blanket with me. Unless—unless that’s weird.”
Well, it’s weird now that he mentioned it could be weird. But I’m honestly too cold to care. “I co-could make an ex-exception to my rule.”
“What rule?”
“Never mind. If there was ever a situation that ne-ne-necessitated touching, it’s now.” I crawl under his blanket with him and flip over so my back is against his chest. He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me tight to him. Heat bursts across my skin.
“Are you a little drunk on vinegar right now?” he jokes, his voice low, his breath tickling the back of my neck.
“Are you?”
He cinches me tighter. “It would explain a few things.”
It’s obviously a joke, but I don’t love the implication that he needs an excuse to put his arms around me, so I squirm out of his grasp and turn to my other side so we’re still under the same blanket, but facing each other instead of touching.
I regret it immediately.
Bad idea.
Super bad idea.
The worst idea.
The thing is, my face is inches from Fitz’s and all I can think about is his lips. The firelight casts a glow on his face, and the shadow of his lashes on his cheeks does dangerous things to my stomach.
“I haven’t done anything.” I don’t know why I say that, or even what I mean by it. Except maybe what I mean is that for every drink I took, Bernie had six. And now I’m in the dark next to the boy I’ve loved for years, and I can’t do anything about it. Just like every other day of my sad, boring life. “Bernie’s more exciting than I am,” I add. I glance at her over my shoulder, remembering the way she chose to sleep next to him. “I think she’s still into you.” Again, I’m not sure if I mean it, or if I want to hear him deny it.
“She’s not.” His warm breath feels too good on my cheeks. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
“That I’m a slut. You said as much after the train.”
I cringe. I did say that, more or less. “Can boys even be sluts?”
“If girls can be, guys should too.”
“In a perfect world,” I joke as I slip my socks off with my toes. I nudge up the bottom of his sweatpants and press my icy toes against his calf. It’s something I would never, ever do in my normal life, but I’m beginning to think we left normal back in Gilbert and entered some bizarre dreamworld where it’s okay to snuggle under a blanket next to your best friend.
He hisses at the contact and grabs my waist, his face threatening. “I’ll tickle you.” His fingers sear the skin under my shirt.
“Only if you want me to wake up—everyone.” I almost said Molly. But then I didn’t. Because I don’t want him thinking about her when he’s under a blanket with me.
He narrows his eyes and slowly relaxes his grip, but he doesn’t move his hands.
His hands.
My waist.
I can’t think about anything else.
Bash snores loudly. Fitz’s expression clears and his hands fall away from my skin. “You surprised me tonight,” he says.
“Because I’m so boring?”
“Because you’ve been in love,” he says, less accusation than invitation. “Why don’t I know about this guy?”
“Why didn’t I know about Bernie?”
Fitz’s brow creases. “Because I wasn’t in love with her. She was an older girl who I kissed one time. It was years ago, and it meant literally nothing.”
“Was Bash right?” I ask quickly in an effort to defuse the tension. “When you’re making a decision, is it as simple as deciding what you want and then doing it?”
He’s quiet for a long time. Too long. I’m worried I’ve said the wrong thing. When he finally speaks, he chooses his words carefully. “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.”
“But it’s easy for you to decide, right? You don’t struggle the way I do?”
Fitz goes very still. “Not usually,” he whispers.
“Does that mean something is wrong with me? Like, with my brain?” If I had a dollar for every time I wondered that, I’d have enough to spend the rest of my life flying around the world.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. But maybe—” He hesitates.
I fill in the blank for him. “Maybe I’m crazy, right? Don’t pretend you haven’t thought it.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. You’ve been doing that all weekend, and it’s not fair.”
He’s right and I know it. I swallow the iceberg-sized lump in my throat and try not to cry.
“Are you warm enough?” Fitz asks finally, his voice sad and tired and exasperated.
I’ve mostly stopped shivering, my thumping heart and deep regret heating me through. But I don’t want that to be the truth, so I lie.
“No,” I whisper. At first, I don’t think he hears me. But then he closes his eyes with a sigh and loops his arm around my waist again. I flip over and let him pull me to his chest, resting my head on his other arm. His body is warm and steady and solid against mine. A few feet away, Molly sleeps peacefully, her hair fanned out across her pillow, her skin smooth and worry free. My promise to her comes rushing back to me, and I know that when the sun comes up, I’ll have to help the two of them get back together.