* * *
“Does Mom know?”I hiss, cornered in the bathroom I share with Sky. The plastic rings slide across the rod as I shove the teal shower curtain out of my way.
“No,” Sky whispers, “but only because I swore up and down I remembered the girl you were spending the night with, and that you weren’t going to prom, even though you have a boyfriend.” She crosses her arms and stares at me, her mouth a thin, angry line.
“Thank you,” I say in an insistent voice. “I mean it. She would’ve killed me if she knew where I really was.”
“Where were you?” Sky asks. Only one of her eyebrows rises on her forehead. I really wish I could do that. My only cool trick is to roll one eye while the other stays still.
“I went to the coast with Noah. His parents have a place.”
“Did you—?” I nod before she can finish, and her eyes grow wide.
Sky hates that she’s a virgin. In her moments of outrage, she threatens to go out to a bar and lose it in a bathroom to a random guy. In her next breath, she’s hyperventilating about germs.
“What was it like?” She pinches her lower lip and twists it as she waits for my response. Her eyes look wistful. In a world where Sky’s anxiety didn’t debilitate her, our roles would be reversed and I would’ve asked this question of her.
“It was…” I purse my lips, trying to come up with a word that can hold the weight of everything I felt.
Magic, I think. “Incredible,” I say out loud.
“I need more than that.” She bugs out her eyes and looks at me in irritation.
“Sorry, sorry.” I laugh. “It was worth waiting for. I can see how it would suck to do it with someone I was ‘meh’ about. With Noah, it was… Wow.” The way he pushed the hair from my face, his soft kisses in the space under my ear, his palm running up the length of my thigh. I can’t say all that to Sky, because I want to keep some things to myself. I don’t want to share it.
“Maybe…one day…” She intertwines her fingers and lifts them, only to drop them immediately.
My hands go to her shoulders, squeezing, as if I could possibly wring out the pain her anxiety causes her. “You can do it, Sky. You can go to college, you can meet someone, you can have a normal life.”
“I’ve been thinking about college. I checked out those scholarships you wrote down.” There’s a tug on her lips, her face is turning up into a hopeful smile, and I don’t even think she knows it. It makes my heart happy. “There’s one I think might work. Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. It probably won’t.”
As if she’s a balloon, I watch her deflate in front of me. Her smile slips away, but my hope hasn’t left. Sky just took a step, however fleeting, in the right direction.
“Sky, sometimes you have to do things that scare you, just to show yourself you’re capable of recovering from the experience.” I’m saying the right words to her, trying to put just one tiny hole in the walls her anxiety constructs, but the words hit home for me too.
I wish Noah didn’t scare me, but he does. I wish there weren’t any reason to fear him, to fear this love, to fear these feelings. I might be a free spirit, but I have eyes. Difficulties lie ahead of us, like roadblocks on the path to bliss.
I’m terrified.
13
Noah
Ember seesthings I don’t see.
We will find a way to go to college together. Even if we have to go to community college for two years before we get to a big university. I don’t know how it’s going work, only that it is.
“Do you want anything to eat?” Ember asks me, grabbing an apple from a bag on her kitchen counter.
“I’m good. I’m saving myself for the wing challenge.” Eating a dozen blazing hot wings sounded like a good idea when Brody called yesterday and told me he wanted me to do it with him. Now I’m not so sure having my picture on the wall at some stupid restaurant is that big of a deal.
Ember bites into her apple and chews. “How likely are you to make it through all of them?” she asks, swallowing.
“I’m a sure bet,” I say, grabbing her waist and pulling her into me. It’s not that I like spicy food, but I love a challenge, and I hate losing enough to push myself through almost anything.
“Are you ready to meet Alyssa?” Ember snuggles her head against me, snapping off another bite of apple.
“Brody talks about her so much, I feel like I don’t even need to meet her.” Every time the guy is home, he won’t shut up about his girlfriend. It’s as if he’s never met a girl before. Odd, all things considered.
