I can see the TV just fine, actually. Not that I’m watching—I’m way too preoccupied to even process what’s flashing across the screen. But maybe he knew what I needed. An excuse. A reason to make myself walk the ten feet from my chair to his couch.
I get up and deposit myself on the couch next to him. Not too close, like someone who thinks they’re going to be kissed again, but not so far that it looks like I think he has something contagious. I am a very normal, not-enemies distance from him on the couch.Do Iwanthim to kiss me again?It’s the question that’s been going through my head all day. The short answer is yes. A million times yes. No one has kissed me like Asher kissed me, or made me feel the electric jolt that zips up my body when we touch. But kissing Asher isn’t that simple. Kissing Asher is, in one word, complicated.
Asher pushes himself up off of the couch and pauses. “I’m getting a drink, do you want something?”
“Can I trust you with my beverage?”
Asher looks down at me like I’m being ridiculous. As if last year he didn’t fill my Sprite with salt, and gleefully offer it to me right before a dinner with our parents, only to stare at me in shock as I sputtered and gagged.
“I’m good.” I swallow down the panic rising up in my throat.Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten how to say anything nice to me.“Thanks.”
The room is dark and it feels like we’re trapped in a tiny, suffocating little box, not the biggest room in the house. Now thathe’s gone, the empty space next to me doesn’t look big enough for Asher anymore; it looks more fitting for a toddler. A toddler I’m going to be on top of when he returns from the kitchen.Oh god.
Asher returns and sets his can on the little wooden end table. And when he sits, he fits, but the space between us is diminished even further.
“I’m not sure how to do this.” The words are almost a whisper, but I wonder if he hears them for what they really are: a scream for help.
He looks over at me, his brows pulled tight. “Do what?”
“This,” I say, waving my finger between us frantically. “Us.” I say the word a little too harshly, a little bit too much like it’s something dirty and unnatural. I’m still not sure that it isn’t.
“You’re overthinking this, Sid.” Asher lifts his arm up onto the back of the couch, and it takes me a minute to register the action. The invitation that lays there, under his arm. It would only take a few inches to close the gap between us, yet it feels like a monumental movement.
“I overthink everything,” I say, looking him right in the eyes, even though it makes me a little nauseous. “That’s what I do.”
He smiles. “I know. It’s why you’re so good at tormenting me. I bet you’ve got lists and shit.”
I laugh and it comes out more like a snort, and I’m ready to just die. Right here on this crowded little couch. Just kill me now.
I look back at the TV, and then to Asher, before leaning into him and settling against his shoulder. I don’t think I’m breathing. My neck feels stiff as I debate whether to rest my cheek against him. It feels like too much, but I’m in it now, and I can’t sit with my head cocked up for the rest of this movie, or TV show, or whatever it is we’re going to sit here and watch. Or can I? Maybe my neck muscles are stronger than I’m giving them credit for.
I let my head relax against him, and it’s done; there’s no going back now.I am snuggling with Asher Marin.And not in an undercover-agent-getting-close-to-her-mark kind of way. In a really sweet, comforting,normalkind of way. Like two people who haven’t spent eight weeks every summer tormenting each other. Like two people wholikeeach other. Is that who we are now? Or is this just how Asher is with people he’s not being horrible to? I don’t know Asher outside of summer vacation and this little town we both inhabit for two months—it’s totally possible that he’s the kind of guy who snuggles with all of his female friends.
“Stop thinking about it,” he says softly, his voice teasing but sweet.
Asher rests his hand on my arm, and as we watch the movie and then the next, his fingers trace an idle, mindless path on my skin. I can’t breathe.
And I don’t hate it.
Asher
It’s almost 2 a.m. and Sidney is still lying on me. My hand is numb, but if I’m the first to move from this position there’s a definite possibility that it will be the last time we’re ever in it. We haven’t said anything all night, but there’s a tangible current of anxiety rolling off of Sidney. We need to talk, so we don’t have another day like today, where she avoids me.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much are you panicking right now?”
The shoulder pressed against my ribs rises and falls as she takes a deep breath. “Something like a twelve.” I smile at her voice, because it sounds nervous but it doesn’t sound anything like a twelve. And she hasn’t moved away from me yet.
“I think we should go somewhere.” I sit up, and Sidney’s head slides down my chest a few inches before she catches herself.
“Now?”
“Now or never,” I say, standing up and pulling her to her feet. I need to show Sidney that we could be so much better together than we are apart.
It’s hard to believe only forty-eight hours have passed since the last time we stood here. I know technically each day holds exactly twenty-four hours, but in reality some days just take up so much more space in our lives. Jumping off of that swing feels like a lifetime ago. And standing next to Sidney now in the darkness of the trees, Nadine’s yard just beyond us, the minutes that pass in silence feel just as long.
“We’re a good team.” My words aren’t much more than a whisper. Silence stretches out as we stand side by side marveling at the white disaster that is Nadine’s yard. It’s not the mountains of fluffy potatoes I’d imagined in my mind, but it’s pretty gross looking; a white sludgy mess. There are dark spots crisscrossing the yard showing everywhere Nadine has walked. “I get the panic. I swear I do,” I say.
“But?”
