I just stare at him, tears stinging my eyes.
Because he’s right. Those articles are what I want to say—?the words I can say, because I’m too scared and small to say other words. The right words.
“Greta took my place in Empower,” I tell him.
“What? Like, you quit?”
“Not exactly. More like . . . cajoled into leaving.”
“Oh. Wow. Can she do that?”
I shrug. “It was the right thing to do. For now.”
Realization dawns on his face. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
He nods and a beat passes before he speaks again. “It’s somebody’s fault, though.” His cheeks and lips twitch, his voice thick and low, and I realize he’s trying not to cry.
My heart feels thin and fragile in my chest, because we both know who that somebody is. I push up to my knees and cut through the few inches between us.
“Alex.” I slide my hands up his arms, his sweater soft and fuzzy under my fingers. He presses his eyes closed and inhales a ragged breath. I grip his shoulders, then move my hands to his neck, then to his face. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m scared and memories threaten to creep in and chew me up, but there’s something I need here. Something that needs me. Something about this feels right, and dammit if I don’t need something to feel right.
He lifts himself to his knees too and his arms come around me, slipping around my waist slowly as if he’s waiting for me to move away. I don’t. Instead, I pull his face to mine until our foreheads touch. Then our noses.
“Are you . . . are you sure?” he whispers, his breath warm over my mouth.
There’s a split second when I’m not, when I remember that my heart is miles away with a dark-haired guitar player and probably always will be. There’s another split second when all of my senses take in his expression, consider the press of his fingers, search for a threat. But I don’t find one, and all of those split seconds taper down to a deep pit of need in my gut.
I kiss him. A single sweep of my lips over his. The light scruff on his cheeks scrapes my skin and makes me crave a smoother face, but it’s also intoxicating. Different. I press my mouth to his, opening his lips with mine. He responds, sighing into my mouth and sliding one hand up to cup the back of my head. Everything starts so gently, but then our kiss grows fevered, desperate, hands in a mad rush for a kind of contact that I’ve almost never let myself have in the past four years unless it was with Charlie. There’s a sadness to this kiss, and that feels right too.
A glow of panic hovers on all of my edges, but it doesn’t sink in. That panic is me, it’s not him, and I really do want this. I want to be able to want it and, more than that, to actually have it. I press myself closer to him and his mouth moves from mine to just below my ear, trailing down my throat and igniting my skin, even with the cool air around us. The flat plane of his chest, the rasp of his jaw over my skin—?he feels incredible. I haven’t kissed a guy since sophomore year, when I went out with Mathias Dole for a few months. He was boring and safe, let me pick where we went on dates, let me initiate anything physical between us, which I almost never did. Nothing other than kissing. I haven’t even been out with another guy since.
I was too wrapped up in Charlie by then.
Alex’s hands move up my ribs and some part of me knows I still am. The larger part of me doesn’t care. I made my choice and she let me.
I press my face to his neck, inhaling his smell that reminds me of fall and camping and running. Gradually, our movements slow, our kisses fade, but I’m still curled around him and we stay like that for a long while, kneeling in the grass. My face tucked into his shoulder, his hands smoothing down my back, we create our own little warm pocket in the world. We don’t kiss again. We don’t need to. We just need this.
Here, there is no Owen. No twin brother. There’s not even a Charlie or a Tess. There’s only Alex and me. All of our confusion and hurt melting into comfort.
And for now, that’s enough.
Chapter Thirteen
BY THE TIME I DROP ALEX OFF and pull up to my house, it’s nearly nine o’clock. I check my phone for the first time all night after I park in the driveway. Mom has texted and called about five times, so I know I’m probably in deep shit with her.
Stepping out of the car, I have a sudden urge to talk to Charlie. There’s some feeling here in my chest I can’t parse—?part relief, part guilt. I know that last one has absolutely no reason to be there, but it continues to pick at me as I walk up the steps. Maybe if I just talk to her, tell her I’ve been hanging out with Alex for a couple hours, maybe even tell her that we kissed, because that’s what best friends do. I need her to tell me it’s okay.
Before I can second-guess myself, I tap her name on my screen. Charlie hates talking on the phone, but I need her voice. She’ll just have to get over the actual phone call. It rings several times before the telltale click sounds in my ear, but there’s no greeting on the other end, just some rustling sounds.
“Hello?” I say.
“Don’t . . .” I hear Charlie say, but it’s distant. Like she’s not the one holding the phone.
