His brows rose. “I missed those parts.”
“In the original fairy tale, it felt like a thousand knives stabbed the little mermaid’s feet every time she took a step.” I gave him my most beatific smile. “Her sisters tell her to murder the prince to save herself. She can’t bear to, so she winds up dying.”
He swayed nearer. “Unfortunate.”
“Wait until I tell you what happened to Cinderella’s stepsisters and Snow White’s stepmother.” I tapped his chest. “Disney churns out the sanitized versions. There’s always undercurrents of violence and tragedy.”
“Always?”
“Always.” Our faces were a whisper apart and I wanted him to kiss me. I wantedhim. We weren’t the little mermaid and her prince. We were a new story, and maybe there didn’t need to be any tragedy here at all. We weren’t our grandparents. We could work.
What are we doing?
Four simple words. Why couldn’t I make them trip off my tongue? Why did I find it so difficult to talk to Noah about us? Was it my damnable pride, my fear of rejection? Because if he said we were just hooking up, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’d have to break this off immediately, because it would hurt my heart too much otherwise.
And he would say we were only hooking up, because he was off to school next month, and who wanted to go to college with a girlfriend in high school? He’d broken up with anactualgirlfriend when she went to college because he thought having a long-distance partner was such a bad idea.
Maybe it didn’t matter what we were doing, if we were happywhile doing it. Maybe we didn’t need to talk about expectations. Ariel hadn’t talked, after all, and—well. It’d worked out for her in the Disney version.
Just not the original one.
What are we doing?I said in my head, the words held in my mouth. I should force them out, propel them into the world with my breath and my tongue and my vocal cords. Because I did need to know what the expectations here were, on both of our sides. I needed us to be on the same page.
“I like your captain’s hat,” I said instead.
“Do you?” His other hand rose past my waist and my throat went dry. “I like your...” His forefinger brushed my cheekbone. “Everything.”
What was I supposed to say to that?
Nothing. I couldn’t say anything, because anything I said would ruin things, and this was too precious to ruin. I was incapable of anything other than throwing my arms around him and kissing him, so that’s exactly what I did.
Twenty-Three
The next morning, I woke to find Jane staring at me from her bed. I yawned and scrubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Morning. Why are you being so creepy?”
“I’m not looking at you, I’m staring into the middle distance. But. Since you’re up—” She turned her phone to face me, as though I had good enough sight to read it without my glasses on or contacts in. “Evan asked me out.”
Thatwoke me up more than a splash of cold water. I gaped at her. “Evan?Our Evan?”
“What do I do?” She pulled at the braids on either side of her head.
“Oh my god. What happened?” I propped myself up on my elbow, all sleepiness burned away. When I’d checked in last night, she’d told me to go off with Noah, and she’d be fine getting home on her own. She’d been in bed and asleep when I got back. “Walk me through this.”
“We hung out at the party yesterday, and...”
“Did something happen?”
“No! Nothing. Except I guess we flirted. Or—I mentioned Pranav, and he got mad, so I told him about Mason to prove I wasn’t hung up on Pranav, and he was—I don’t know, he was sort of snarky,veryunlike him, but also he was giving me vibes? But obviously he’sEvan. Now he’s texting and he wants to hang out.”
“Like a date?”
“No. He literally said, ‘Want to hang out?’” She handed her phone over.
I put on my glasses, Sherlock on the case. “These textsdosound a little flirty. And it’s barely ten, which is an aggressively early time to text if you’re not into someone.”
“Right? Unless you’resonot into someone you aren’t worried about the timing of your texts.”
“Hm. Well. Do youwantit to be a thing? Do you like him?”
