I took a second to appreciate this Hamlet quality of checking on me. He was good at honing in on my feelings, and right now it was guilt about my friends ruining his parents’ grand opening. My shoulder bumped his as I scooted closer. “Yeah, I’m all right. Did your mom pick a new grand opening date yet?”
He shrugged. “No, my parents have to figure out the lawsuit first.”
Shame seeped into me. After the accident, Hamlet’s mom had to decide whether to delay the grand opening since the accident was bad press—you know, “Teenagers Almost Die in Water Park.” Before she could figure that out, however, Felix’s parents were threatening to file a lawsuit against the park. Felix had reached out to me to apologize because his parents weren’t backing down. I cursed Past Clara for not endearing herself more to Felix’s parents when we’d dated.
And in the middle of all this, I couldn’t get Patrick’s voice out of my head:But you’re going to.Everyone around me seemed to be noticing some sort of shift in me that I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
Here I was spending a Friday night with my debate-club-president boyfriend at his grandparents’ house. My debate-club-president boyfriend. And I already knew my weekend plans: I was going to get Ethiopian food with Pai and Kody (my idea—an olive branch after naengmyeon-gone-wrong) andgo on a hikewith Hamlet. And then work the KoBra on Sunday.
Over the course of the summer, my life really had become unrecognizable.
“Why do you like me?” The words came out before my brain could stop them—its squishy brain arms reaching out frantically while its “Noooooooo!” became an echo as the words flew farther away from its grasp.
I expected silence, the normal reaction to such a random and naked question. But Hamlet just chuckled and said, “Because!”
“Because why?” I couldn’t stop. The need to see myself through Hamlet’s eyes was overwhelming. I didn’t feel like myself lately, and I needed someone else to confirm that I was, indeed, the same person. Or confirm that I wasn’t.
He pulled his knees up into his chest. “Well, you’re really funny.”
What else was new. “So you’re into clowns.”
The joke got a belly laugh from Hamlet that it did not deserve. “Actually, I’m scared of clowns.”
“Whoisn’t? The person who feels no fear in their heart when seeing a freaking clown in the flesh is probably a serial killer!”
Hamlet threw his head back and the laugh that came out ofhis body immediately made me crack up with him. When he finally calmed down, he was wiping away tears. Tears. I smiled at him, and the tenderness that flooded out of my chest and into all my extremities caught me off guard.
I don’t deserve him.
I blinked. “Okay, so what else?”
“Jeez. You’re being so bossy about this.”
“Your grandparents are going to take three hours making a fruit platter for us. We need to fill the time.”
His head was still leaning back on the edge of the sofa, his arm draped casually behind me. But when he looked over, not smiling for a second, his eyes were serious and intense. They cut through me, blazing hot, and I was completely disarmed.
Keeping his eyes on mine, his fingers grazed my bare shoulder. “I like your freckles. The way you chew on your lips when you’re annoyed.” I rubbed them together self-consciously and he smiled. “And I like… how you dress. Especially when you wear your Docs with your little shorts.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, pervo.” But I was pleased—I always felt so sloppy and unkempt next to Hamlet. Whenever I first saw Rose in her carefully coordinated outfits, I wished that I dressed more like her.
“But I think what I like most,” he said almost sleepily, his fingers playing with my tank-top strap, “is how you’re different from me.”
It should have been sweet, comforting—something like that. But instead, I could only think of how that chasm of differencebetween us had shrunk over the summer. How that bothered me for some reason. “Different how?” My needling knew no bounds.
“You know how. Everything! I like how sure of yourself you are. You don’t do things to please other people.”
“But you’re confident, too!”
He scoffed. “Kind of. I’m always worried about, I don’t know, being nice or something.” He seemed a little embarrassed by that admission. But it was one of the reasons I liked him so much, too.
“You’re kind,” I said quietly, resting my face on his hand. “I’m not.”
“What?”
I shrugged. “It’s fine, one human being cannot exemplify all the good things in the world.”
Instead of laughing, he frowned. “You are kind. You just don’t like to show it. Like a cranky old man in a village.”
