I sigh. “These are ancient doors, Miles. It’s unlocked.”
The door gives way with the scraping of wood. I don’t look at him as he walks over to the side of the bed. I start sketching, letting my mood guide the familiar strokes of the pencil, pouring out my feelings onto the page. The bed sinks a little lower on his side when he sits down beside me.
“I’m sorry,” he starts. Which is a good place to begin when I’m mad at him, but I keep my eyes trained on the thick paper, afraid if I even look his way, he won’t finish what he couldn’t say to my face before. “My dad… he has diabetes. I found him collapsed at the store the other day because his blood sugar dipped too low.”
The tip of my pencil stops on the bridge of a nose forming in the center of the paper.
“I don’t like talking about it. For a lot of reasons. Especially not with you.”
I drop my pencil and sit up to look him in the eye this time.
“What do you mean,especially not with you. I thought we were friends, Miles.”
He reaches across the bed and grips my hand. The subtle shock of how much warmer his fingers are than mine sends a jolt of heat up my arm.
“You’re… important to me, Teddy. I don’t want to mess that up with my family’s problems.”
I want to rip my hand away when he says that, but the stroke of his thumb over my pointer finger is making me too dizzy to form a rational thought. The only part of me that is still fighting and driving for answers are my emotions.
“If I’m so important to you, then why am I always the last one to know. You tell Reed. Even my parents know before me.”
He drops his eyes to his lap. “Because… I didn’t want you to think less of me,” he lets out. “And I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“Think less of you because your dad has a condition out of his control? Do you hear how crazy that sounds?” Even I do, and it’s coming out of my own mouth.
He sighs, letting go of my hand. “You have this amazing family, Teddy, and I… mine’s dysfunctional. My mom left, my dad never puts his health first, I’m terrified he’ll collapse at any moment, and I’m barely holding it together. You deserve a summer of fun when you come here, not a summer of problems.” He looks up at me with the same tied-in-knots expression he had the day we sheltered from the rain in the bunkhouse as kids. Only this time it’s fear in his eyes, not sadness.
It hurts seeing him like this. He means so much to me and I’m struggling more than ever to keep those feelings inside. I’ve gone one and a half summers now without telling him how much I thought about him all the years we spent apart. I mean,reallytelling him. He’s worried he’ll scaremeaway?
If I wasn’t so afraid of losing him, maybe I would keep those feelings locked away. But they burst from me like a caged bird being set free.
“You’re important to me too, Miles. You’re my favorite person in the whole world. I’m here for you, and I’m not going anywhere.”
The fear vanishes from his eyes, and a deep longing replaces it. Even before he tips forward, I feel the distance between us start to close. The bed creaks when he leans in, and my heart fumbles to meet him halfway. When I can feel his breath dancing across my lips, my eyes flutter shut. We hover there, sharing each other’s air. I want to reach out and touch his shirt, feel the rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my hand to see if it’s racing like mine.
“Dinner’s ready!”
The sound of my mom’s voice calling from downstairs jerks us apart. Miles clears his throat, and I push a strand of hair behind my ears.
“We should go down,” he says, standing.
“Uh, yeah, okay.” I stumble over my words as Miles exits the room in a brisk trot.
I fight to keep up with the pace of my own heart.
The one that’s saying,I almost had my first kiss.
The one that’s galloping.
Almost. Almost. Almost.
Two days later, Shepard comes home. When it’s half past ten and I’m sure Miles is gone to open the shop, I fill a cheap paper plate full of chopped raw vegetables—Miles told me dessert was off-limits—and take them as a “welcome home” gift to the trailer. I’m hoping the quality of the food masks how flimsy the plate feels as it collapses in my hand from the weight.
I tiptoe across the grass barefoot, the dew from the morning sprinklers chilling my feet. As I lift my fist to knock, the door swings wide open. Shep is standing, healthy as a horse, framing the doorway.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Come in,” he says with his usual boisterous arm wave.
“Hey, Mr. Bishop. I just wanted to check up on you.”
