We made our way into the stands and found a mostly empty row near the visitor’s end zone. Gennie, fueled by the sugar in that lemonade, didn’t want to sit. Instead, she stood next to Shay and danced in place without the benefit of music.
Shay positioned herself as close to me as she could get without sitting in my lap. Not that I would’ve complained about having her in my lap. She reached for one of the half-moon foil packets, saying, “We’re going to talk about how much we love quesadillas now. We’re going to be very cute. Sickeningly cute. At one point, I’m going to wipe a crumb off your cheek. Bonus points if you suck it off my thumb.”
Suck it off my thumb.
Either she had no clue what she was doing to me or she was evil through and through. There was no in-between on this one.
“I think we’ll be all right without,” I managed, “the sucking. From your thumb.”
I bit a huge chunk from my half of the quesadilla to prevent me from saying anything more. I didn’t know whether it was chicken or egg roll or a handful of dirt smashed between a tortilla. I couldn’t taste a damn thing.
Suck it off my thumb.
“Try this one,” she said, handing me another wedge.
I was careful to take it without touching her. Not that it made much difference since we were pressed right up against each other and I had a distinct awareness of the side of her breast on my arm, but I required that inch of distance. I couldn’t hear those words in my head without wanting her fingers in my mouth, and even if she was evil incarnate, she never asked for me to defile her in my mind. She was helping me out—or so I’d led her to believe—and I was repaying her by growing a garden of the most filthy thoughts I’d had in years. What the fuck was wrong with me?
“I think I like the egg roll best,” she said, nodding to herself as she balled the foil between her palms. “You were right though. The barbeque chicken is a highly reliable choice. Always delivers. And I’d get it again. But there’s something unexpected about the veggie egg roll. It checked all the boxes.”
I grumbled out some noise of agreement and Shay chose that moment to twist toward me. It was no longer a simple awareness of her breast. It was as thorough a comprehension as possible without her clothes hitting the floor.
“Let me just get,” she murmured, lifting her hand to my face. She ran her thumb over my top lip, to the corner of my mouth. “Perfect.”
“All the boxes checked?”
“Here’s what you need to do.” She dropped her hand on my thigh, just high enough for me to wonder if the pressure in my chest was pleasure or the early signs of a heart attack. “Put your arm around me. Let me snuggle right into that shoulder. Yep. That’s it. Your friend is a couple of rows down, a few sections over. Close to the middle. And she keeps looking this way.”
“For fuck’s sake, why?” I grumbled.
“Probably because you’re hot.”
I’d misheard. The crowd, the game. Too much noise. “What?”
“You are very attractive, Noah. I’m sorry no one’s broken the news to you.” She reached up, ran her knuckles along my jaw. “Hot enough that this woman has decided your kids being mortal enemies isn’t even close to a disqualifier.”
I pinched a few strands of her hair between my fingers, sliding down to the ends and starting over again. “Do I have to tell you to shut up again?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
I arched a brow. “Are you sure about that?”
She dropped her gaze to my lips. “Mmhmm. I’m sure. Either way, I’m just telling you the truth.”
The toughest part about growing out of my teenage body was thatIhadn’t changed. The exterior looked different now but I was the same person. Getting taller, losing weight, clearing up my skin—all of that brought me confidence but those changes came to me gradually and they didn’t override the fact that I’d been the furthest thing from attractive as a teenager, when it had seemed more important than anything else. And I’d lived a long time with that knowledge. It didn’t go away overnight.
I shifted my hand from her hip to her waist, slipped just beneath her shirt. Her skin was warm, a bit humid from the heat. I dragged the tips of my fingers back and forth because I could, because I didn’t want to keep talking about Christiane or all the ways in which our worlds had changed. And because this wasn’t part of the show. Christiane couldn’t see this. If the handful of people seated on the rows above us could see what I was doing, I was certain they didn’t care.
This was for Shay and it was for me. No one else.
For the entirety of the first half, I divided my focus between Gennie, who realized piece by piece that high school football wasn’t nearly as exciting as I’d made it out to be, and the way Shay’s body relaxed into mine. It was a mess of contradictions. I hated everything about this. It was torture. It fucking hurt. And I didn’t want it to stop.
There was a very significant possibility I was going to injure myself when I finally got behind closed doors tonight and gave my thoughts—and left hand—the freedom to run wild.
Gennie hit the wall not long after the halftime performance. When she shuffled over, sat down beside me, and dropped her head against my arm, I knew she was down for the count. “Had enough?” I asked.
She bobbed her head.
I carried Gennie to the parking lot, her head heavy on my shoulder. I kept a hand on Shay’s waist. No one was watching us anymore but that didn’t matter. I had her for tonight.
