My chest swells from the praise. I think so too, but I’m biased. Hearing that from her lips brings me immense pleasure. “We get along well now, but it was a different story when we were kids. You saw how competitive they can get.”
“It’s a lot.”
“Add that to capture the flag or football. There’s a reason I chose to hide out and read most of the time instead.”
“It wasn’t because of the dragons?”
“Those too.” I narrow my gaze on her gorgeous green eyes. “How did you know I liked fantasy?”
“Because that’s what you started writing. The book in your bio that will never see the light of day.”
“Ah. That probably needs to be replaced.”
“I don’t know, I think it explains a lot.” She gives me a strange look. “I get why I found you hiding in your house at graduation.”
My stomach drops. I didn’t think she’d bring that up. Most of us who started in that house together freshman year stayed all four years and graduated together, thanks to Charlie’s rich dad and Charlie renting out the rooms. So naturally that was where we’d held our last hurrah. Charlie had told me the girls were coming over, and I’d talked myself into telling Piper I liked her.
What did I have to lose? We were going our separate ways after that.
But Piper had found me in the basement, where we had a broken foosball table and Xbox console, before I was ready for her. We were alone, so I went for it.
Only my mouth didn’t connect with my brain. I’d told her that Ididlike her, which she took to mean as a friend, and I insisted we hug it out.
She ran from me after that, and I didn’t try again.
“It was quite the hug,” she says now. “Electrically charged, you know?”
“You felt that too? From the way you ran, I thought you were freaked out.”
Piper blinks. “You weren’t making any sense. I hovered after the hug, but you didn’t try to stop me. You let me go.”
Yeah, I guess I did. I’m good at that, right? Knowing she felt the electric currents like I had doesn’t really make me feel better now, though. It only adds to my regret. Things could have been so different if I wasn’t so painfully shy.
“So,” Piper says brightly, “what made you switch to thrillers?”
I lean my head on the back of the couch, considering the question. If she wants a change in subject, I’ll give it to her. “It wasn’t really a switch. In Leon’s class, do you remember that project where we had to write those scenes from the perspective of a villain?”
“Yeah, I loved those. It was so interesting to dive into their heads. But, like, creepy.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “The exercise unlocked something for me. Figuring out my villain’s motives snowballed into plotting an entire thriller centered around him. The next thing I knew, I was creating his antithesis—my hero.”
“You worked backward.”
“Essentially. It wasn’t on purpose, but it came together that way, and I started working on the novel that year.”
Piper looks up. “We were…sophomores.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes dart to mine. She is so close. If I lean forward, our foreheads could touch. The fact that she isn’t moving away when we have an entire empty couch—an entire emptyroom—is a good sign, right?
“How many books did you have finished by the time we graduated?” she asks.
“Just two.”
“There’s nojustanything, Dorian.” She shakes her head. “That’s crazy. You were so young.”
“I was also learning that I had ADHD, so getting that under control made it easier to focus on writing. Before that, my process was significantly slower.”
