He stares at my mouth now. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am. That all it would take is an inch, maybe two, and there’d be no more pretending this is just friendship.
“Wyatt…”
The sound of his name doesn’t pull him out of the trance. I don’t think he’s drunk, and I only saw him smoke half a joint much earlier in the day. As he steps closer and exhales slightly, all I smell is the mint of his toothpaste and the scent of his shampoo.
My lips feel dry, so I lick them. The quick motion captures his attention. My heart takes off in a wild gallop when he rubs his thumb over my bottom lip before curling his hand around my jaw. He’s so much taller that I have to peek up at him.
I don’t know what he’s seeing, but he whispers, “Fucking beautiful.”
Our eyes lock. His rough fingertips stroke my cheek.
And then he jerks and releases me.
“Sorry,” he mumbles as my skin weeps from the loss of his touch. “I just… Your hair gave me an idea for a song.”
“My hair?” I echo weakly.
Wyatt visibly swallows. “You never know when inspiration will strike.” He clears his throat. “You going to bed now?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He grabs his notebook from the desk. “Cool. I’m gonna write on the dock for a while.”
“Don’t forget to set the alarm when you come back in,” I say.
He nods, and then he’s gone.
Description
A graphic depicting a torn sheet of white lined notebook paper with binder holes on the left. Handwritten text in black ink contains song lyrics with some words crossed out and corrected. The title is ‘Stop the World’. The lyrics describe feelings of falling in love and time stopping, with edits showing the creative process.
Description
A graphic of a lined notebook paper page with holes on the left. It features handwritten lyrics in black ink. The text includes phrases like ‘Before you’, ‘After you’, and lines about ‘losing control’ and the ‘world stops’. There is a crossed-out word ‘drop’ replaced with ‘forget’.
Chapter 13
BLAKE
WYATT
Come to the playing field.
THE TEXT APPEARS AS I’M pouring a cup of coffee at the counter. My heart stutters. He wants me to go outside and meet him?
This has to be about last night. The almost kiss.
Because that was totally an almost kiss.
I think.
I still can’t make sense of what happened in his bedroom. His fingers in my hair. His eyes boring into me like he was peering into my soul.
My palms are clammy from nerves as I carry my coffee outside and step off the front porch. A minute later, I find Wyatt standing in the grassy clearing on the far side of the house, staring at a net.
This was not what I expected when he texted to come to the playing field.
We call it the playing field because this is where all the dads gowhen their competitive instincts kick in, propelling them to play volleyball or croquet or lawn bowling or whatever else allows them to either high-five as teammates or shout obscenities as opponents.
