Chapter 22
Week9–Friday
Isabella
Liam and I were making a mess. He stood back and surveyed the room. As I watched him look at our homemade fort, he frowned.
“We need more pillows.”
Laughing, I hit him with one.
“We have like eighteen pillows in there already.”
Building a fort was one of the five things I had always wanted to do with Marco, but honestly, I knew there was no way I would have had this much fun with anyone other than Liam. We had completely converted one of his guest rooms into a ridiculous and spectacular fort. He, of course, made us go to an outlandish level with it.
We used everything a ten-year-old would have. Liam had used clothespins to hang like… twelve different sets of sheets to form walls and a ceiling. I spread pillows all over the ground for comfortable seating, and we even fashioned a little table out of a cardboard box. It was brilliant. Liam snapped his fingers.
“I know what’s missing.”
He rushed out of the room, so I secretly added a few more pillows. It couldn’t hurt, right? As I tweaked a few more little things, Liam returned with a tangled string of colored Christmas lights trailing behind him. Tossing me an end, he motioned to the wall.
“There is a plug over there.”
Laughing, I plugged them in and we clipped the lights in random places where there would be enough support. They made zero sense and barely lit half our fortress, but I loved them. He shut the lights off and the room was suddenly transformed into our own secret hideaway. Liam grabbed my hand and we tumbled into the pillows, laughing. As we lay side by side, looking at the twinkling lights and holding hands, I smiled.
“You realize you can never take this down, right? This guest room is officially off limits.”
Liam laughed.
“As long as it doesn’t fall on its own, I’m completely okay with that.”
We sat there just enjoying the atmosphere for a few minutes before I turned on my side to stare at him. He raised an eyebrow.
“Are you just going to stare at me now? It’s a little creepy.”
“No, I was just thinking, we need to get back to step one. It’s been two days and I need my next song.”
He matched my pose and studied me.
“Are you sure?”
Nodding, I reached around him and pulled his phone from his back pocket. I knew he had his reasons for the no-kissing rule, but I thought by now there would at least be something when we touched. Some sign that we’d work. But even when I wrapped myself around him and felt his breath against my neck as I grabbed his phone, the butterflies hadn’t shown up. We were still broken somehow. I was starting to get discouraged.
I flopped down on my back again, a little deflated. Liam looked at me with a sympathetic smile.
“Questo fa schifo.”
Liam smiled.
“I’m thinking I should just leave that one a mystery.”
“Probably for the best. So, what’s my song?”
Focusing on his phone, Liam found what he was looking for. Before he played it, I craned my neck to see the album cover.
“What’s your obsession with Taylor Swift?”
He shrugged.
