His brows rose. “Suddenly you’re going all polite on me?”
“Fine.” I felt a shivery type of pleasure. “You can drive me the two minutes home.”
We said goodbye to his parents, and in barely any time we were in front of Golden Doors. I could feel my nerves buildingback up on the short drive over. Now what? I’d run over and told him I wanted to kiss him, but what did that mean for the next few days? What did that mean for us? Should we talk about this? We should talk about this.
But instead what came out of my mouth was “Good night.”
“Good night,” he said, blue gaze sharp and bright.
What the hell. I leaned forward and he met me halfway, lips firm and warm under mine. The heat surged back up within me. Was it depletable, this heat, or did it last forever?
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Tyler asked when I pulled back, his voice a murmur.
“Tomorrow?” I echoed, hazy. “I don’t know. I’m not doing anything.”
“Want to hang out?”
Yes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Shira!” Mom called through my bedroom door the next morning. “Can I come in?”
I raised my head from the pillow, sleepy and confused. “Um...”
Then I saw Abby’s bed, unruffled. “Quick,” I hissed at Miriam. “Mess up her sheets.”
Miriam leaped from our bed and threw back Abby’s covers, then punched the pillow down with impressive foresight. She threw herself onto the vanity’s bench just as my mom pushed in the door.
Mom didn’t even glance at Abby’s bed, her face flushed with righteous determination. “We’re making chocolate babka.”
“Are we?” I asked warily. My family did pretty well on the cooking front, but baking had never been our strong suit.
“Yes. And it’s a fourteen-step two-day process, so we need to get started.”
“We...?”
“Get dressed,” she said. “I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes.”
“It takes me an hour to shower and get ready!” I shouted after her, but she was already on her way out.
Miriam and I exchanged alarmed looks. “Twodays?” my cousin echoed. “Have you done this before?”
I shook my head. “Never. But you know Mom. When she gets an idea in her head...”
I got dressed, memories of the night before blazing through my mind. I’d gone to bed high on shimmery excitement, but now uncertainty rippled beneath my skin, making me as jumpy as a deer. Yesterday had been amazing, but what had it meant? Tyler said he wanted to hang out today, which I assumed meant make out. But did it mean anything else?
I was getting ahead of myself. Best to enjoy the day and not go digging up any problems before they happened.
Downstairs, I tried to keep my head down, afraid anyone would be able to read what had happened by glancing at my face. Unfortunately, Mom called me over. “There you are. How hot do you think one hundred and ten degrees is?”
I studied her cautiously. “Hot...?”
“Put your finger in here,” she said, sliding a Pyrex measuring cup filled with milk toward me.
“This can’t be sanitary.” I stuck my finger in. “That feels warm, not hot.”
“We killed the last round of yeast,” Aunt Rachel, Noah’s mom, said. She sounded woeful. “Google says if your milk is too hot, the yeast will die.”
