“I’m so glad you moved here,” I tell him. “I go on dates with you that you don’t know about, too. Probably going to have one tonight, and visit you in a dream.”
He hits me with a big, beautiful smile that I feel like a meteorite to the chest. “I’ll be waiting.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
PERIWINKLE:
My heart was mine until we met.
I used to believe that I’d picked up a magical flower as a girl like in “The Bird and the Flower,” a story fromAs Evening Falls. That the first boy I ever loved flew away with it, preventing me from giving it to its rightful owner. I thought he had cursed me. But I’m starting to wonder, as the weeks go by: Who else, in all the world, could I imagine gathering up my heart and giving it exactly what it needed?
Alex moves into my every waking thought and redecorates. He paints the walls summer-sky blue with rings of green-yellow, a reflection of his eyes. He furnishes it with pictures in large gold frames: the tiny dragon I added to his fairy garden to surprise Miles, which Alex said destroyed him emotionally; the two of us sitting on the curb, sharing a funnel cake; a picture he texted late one night, of the two of us dancing at the wedding. In it, my eyes are closed, and his are bright, glistening with unshed tears. He’s whispering in my ear. The radio station is RT and Me FM, and in the breaks between songs it plays recordings of his voice:I’m coming for you. I moved to Oreton because it hurt tobreathe, being here. Why did you have to be so pretty? I dreamed this up. Fifty-one.
We’re inseparable for the two first weeks of June. Weekdays, we don’t go more than a day without seeing each other; weekends, we talk on the phone. It’s a careful peek into his life, listening to Miles and Bert Handsome in the background, the crickets that sing on both ends of the line. I leave surprises in his mailbox: a Rubik’s Cube, a book of riddles. Gifts that will please his busy hummingbird brain.
After he finds the book of riddles, he texts a picture of himself and Miles side by side, Alex filling in the answers. Miles is a portrait of his father in miniature, with an ad-libs book across his lap.Movie night?
Biting my lip, I reply:On Monday, maybe? I’ll look up showtimes.
I know he wasn’t talking about going to an actual theater. The idea of hanging out on his couch with him and Miles makes me panicky. What if Miles doesn’t like me?
If he notices I’m suggesting Monday because that’s when Miles will be at Kelsey’s, he doesn’t say anything. After we go to the movies the following Monday, he brings up plans to take Miles to Kings Island, an amusement park in Mason, and asks if I want to join them. I make an excuse, citing the night market.
Most of our dates are local adventures—bingo night at the town hall, watching a community play, rolling around on the trampoline that we bought at a yard sale. He pushes me on the tire swing in his backyard, chatting about work, both of us rapidly filling each other in on what we missed, until it’s so late that dew rises up the grass. Then we run to Pit Stop for Late Nite Sundaes—if you stop in at 8:59 p.m. exactly, you get an extrascoop of rainbow chocolate chip ice cream—which we lug back to my place to share with Luna, Zelda, and Aisling. We join my sisters on a tour of all the quilt barns in the county, and he buys me the softest blanket in the world at Bear Hollow Gifts N More.
We’ve been having so much fun together that I forget we were ever at odds.
“Come inside,” Alex murmurs against my jaw on a hot June evening, while we’re sitting on his porch swing. I’m straddling him, my mind consumed with kissing, never able to get enough. His hands are on my waist. Lighting up skin wherever his touch roams.
So consumed with kissing, in fact, that I hear myself say, “All right.”
He pulls away, dazed and happy.“Finally.”
“Wait.” My lust fog begins to dissipate. “No, I heard you wrong. Never mind.”
He strokes a lock of hair away from my face, expression meaningful. “Come on. Let me make you something to eat? We can put a movie on and then not watch any of it.”
I try for a smile. “It’s getting late. I think I should be heading home, actually.”
Alex watches me for a few moments, then slumps back. “The house doesn’t have asbestos.”
“I never...? I never said it did?”
“Or lead paint.”
“Alex, I’m sure your house is lovely—”
“Then why? Don’t tell meit’s getting late, because you always come up with an excuse. You’ve been to my house twenty times but you’ve never once stepped footinsidemy house. We don’t have to do anything physical in there, you know. But Imoved here so we could be closer together, and it’s like... maybe you don’t want this as badly as I do. Or at least, that’s how it feels when you won’t even come inside to get a drink of water after admitting you’re thirsty.”
My stomach drops. I climb off of his lap, hugging myself. “I want to be with you, Alex. It’s not that I don’t want to do anything physical, either—I do—it’s just... It’s hard to explain.”
“Listen.” He takes my hand but doesn’t look at me.
Something between us shifts. A draft of cold air, and a deep, dark dread.
He’s breaking up with me, I think, abruptly light-headed. I need to escape. I have to run.
“I know you’re scared,” Alex says. “But I am, too. I’m scared that you’re not all-in. That you want me, but not the rest of the package. Which is Miles. He isn’t even here right now, but you still won’t step foot in my house. I’m not saying I want you to jump right into being his stepmom or anything, but if this is going to work out between us, youdohave to develop a relationship with him at some point. It’s integral. We can’t really move forward without it.”
