“I know.” She reaches up and brushes it away. Her touch is soft. Lingering. “You always have dirt somewhere. I think the earth just likes you.”
“The earth likes me?”
“You make things grow.” She shrugs, but her cheeks are pink. “That’s special.”
Something shifts in my chest. I set the lemonade down on the fence post.
“Cara—”
“You have more dirt,” she says. “On your cheek.”
I probably do. I always do. She’s reaching for my face again, and I catch her wrist, gently, carefully, and press my cheek against her palm.
She laughs. “Theo!”
“What?” I rub my face against her hand, smearing garden dirt across her fingers. “You said I had dirt.”
“Now I have dirt!”
“We match.”
She’s laughing harder now, trying to pull away but not really trying. I catch her other hand and press it to my other cheek, my muddy fingers leaving prints on her wrists.
“Theo Holt, you are the worst?—”
“The worst what?”
She stops laughing. We’re standing so close. Her hands on my face, my hands around her wrists, both of us breathing a little too fast.
“The worst distraction,” she whispers. “I can’t think when you’re around.”
“Good.” I lean down. Press my forehead to hers. “I can’t think when you’re around either.”
I kiss her. The way I’ve kissed her a dozen times now, but somehow this one feels different. Like we’re on the edge of something.
She kisses me back.
When we pull apart, she’s smiling. That real smile, the one that makes her whole face light up.
“I love you,” she says.
The world stops.
I’ve imagined her saying it. Dreamed about it. But hearing it out loud, standing in her grandmother’s garden with dirt on my hands and her taste on my lips?—
“I love you too.” My voice cracks on the words. I don’t care. “Cara, I love you so much it’s stupid.”
She laughs. Watery, happy. “Stupid?”
“The stupidest. I can’t even plant roses without thinking about you. That’s how bad it is.”
“That is pretty bad.”
“Told you.”
She pulls me down and kisses me again. Longer this time. Deeper. Her fingers in my hair, dirt and all. My arms around her waist, pulling her close.
When we finally break apart, I’m grinning like an idiot.
