And isn’t it the path of least resistance that solves most problems? If this is the source of my angst, then through it, notaround it, is the only way to the other side. There, in a post-Sloane world, things won’t be complicated and I won’t be putting everything at risk.
“I’m not sure,” I mumble to Josiah, taking the path that brings me closest to the woman who, unintentionally, has become the most beautiful bane of my existence, only halfway committed to snuffing out this feeling between us. Suddenly, I’m close enough that her citrus and sugar and woodsmoke lap against me, a taunt only I can feel.
“Hey, man,” Ryan chuckles, offering me a fist to bump while his other hand still clings to her waist.
Adrenaline rushes through my veins like waves pummeling the sea shore when I give him a quick hey in return, when Sloane hears me, spins in Ryan’s hold, and gazes up at me as her hips grind into him.
“Hey, you,” she shouts above the music, still moving. I grind my teeth, willing myself not to care.
“You know Grant’s sister?” Ryan says, his grin toothy and dumb while he shakes his head in disbelief.
Envy sticks to every inch of my skin and this close to her, it threatens to pull me under. My pulse taps erratically as I shift my gaze downward, locking with those deep sea eyes. And I can’t do it, can’t utter a single thing that would make sense because all Ineedto know is if she’s talked to some fucking reporter, but all Iwantto ask is if she’d go out with me sometime. If she’d look past all the assumptions she, rightly, made about me and take a chance because I can’t shake her out of my damn mind.
Instead, I muster a crooked smile and brush past the two of them, like the coward I am.
“Andy,” she calls after me, her finger tips brushing my wrist and I pause in the empty space of a doorway, cracked open tolet the cool October breeze filter into the foggy house. “I didn’t get to say thank you.”
The bridge of her nose, her cheekbones—they glisten with sweat. Her chest rises and falls and my heart pulses loudly in my ear drums, every other sound in the room warping until it’s really just us and the night air that softly whispers.
“It’s fine,” I manage to mutter. “I owed you.”
She narrows her eyes. “Did I do somethin’?”
I can see the way her cheeks pulls inward, get clamped between her teeth. Her usual breeziness recedes, and I can see the thin resolve in her gaze. Like me, of all people, could break the invisible dam I’m just now realizing is probably always there.
She asked if I would be fine and now I, in the midst of this damp room, need to know if she is. Her eyes silently beg me to explain my sudden indifference but I can’t without telling it all. So I just recoil at myself, internally, far beneath the surface, and keep my real questions there.
“Why would I be mad at you?” I feel my eyes crinkle at the corners when I force a subtle smile. It disarms her like I hoped it would and she sucks her teeth, purses her lips the way she does before she toys with you, and I wait for it. Hungry for it.
“Oh, I have no idea.” She pushes her hip out, letting her head fall the opposite way as she studies me, the confident steel in eyes reassembling itself. “I’ve really been sweet as pie. Offered to make you a sad boy mix CD…” She shakes her head.
“That I would have no way of playing…” I muse, dipping my head against my better judgment. A blush wisps across her cheeks.
“My car’s got a real fancy receiver. Installed it myself.”
“Look at you. Generousandhandy…sweet as pie,” I joke, counting off, ignoring the easy feeling. “Heart of gold.”
“Exactly. Which is why for the life of me, I can’t figureout why you’re actin’ like you didn’t try to jump my bones the moment you met me.” The dimples in both cheeks deepen, her blush turning rosy, like the mention of that night embarrasses her too.
I bite back a smile. A real one. “Is that what you want, Sloane? For me to make a fool of myself for you?”Because I would.
She rolls those lips together, the corners tugging upward. “Maybe I do.”
Her gaze dips to my lips as hers part, and the pull is heavy. It’s a hot, suffocating press; it’s gravity, the laws of physics, and ignoring it feels wrong in a way nothing ever has. It’s bone deep and painful…that ache again, but worse. When she lifts her gaze to mine, she doesn’t know she’s twisting the knife intended for her, deep between my ribs. I’d rather it this way—where she never knows who I am and it’s just me bleeding out the lie in silence.
A wide backed man—football, most likely—wedges himself between us because we’re blocking the door to the patio, and the spell shatters. Sloane looks away, clearing her throat as his jersey chafes against her shirt when he passes.
“I found the roof,” she finally says, looking up at me with all this good will and friendship, and I want to tell her to give it to someone else but, selfishly, I want it. “Should we?” she asks, brows raised as she tips her head toward the staircase. She looks like she’s invested in my answer. Thenois right there, on the tip of my tongue, but doesn’t make it out.
Even though I know this is how I sully our waters enough that there’s no return to innocence—by saying yes instead of no.
“Yeah. Sure.” I watch the easy swish of her hips as we ascend the stairs, tracking the silence of her authority, the one that forces my walls to retreat. I wonder if she knows she doesthat, or if it’s a force of nature thing. A consequence of who she is, such an integral part of her makeup and how she moves in the world that it doesn’t mean anything that it affects me, specifically.
We escape into a room peppered with Polaroids fastened to the wall with thumbtacks, before Sloane pushes up on a wide but narrow window frame.
“I used to do this all the time when I was younger, in Atlanta,” she says, glancing back at me like a kid in a candy store. I step through the window, shocked by the intensity of the slope, looking at her with brief alarm. “Come on, Spellman. Don’t be a pussy.”
I drop down onto the roof and lay back, sensing my hand just a few inches away from hers. She doesn’t move it, just turns her head to the side so she’s facing me, an unrushed smile settling on her lips when I do the same. From her other side, she pulls out a joint.
