I wear my best outfit, put on my favorite perfume, apply my best makeup, and pull myself together. I look in the mirror and put on the face.
It's time.
Chapter 41: Theo
Caramel.
That's what I keep coming back to. Her lips tasted like caramel — the Chapstick, the gloss over it, the specific sweetness of her mouth when she finally stopped fighting what she wanted and just kissed me back.
Serena is in my bed, saying my name, and I am thinking about caramel.
"Theo."
"I heard you."
"You're not here."
"I'm right here."
She makes a sound that tells me she knows the difference and resents it. I look at the ceiling and wait for her to decide what she's going to do about it, which is nothing, because Serena always decides nothing when the alternative is leaving.
I got what I needed from her. The information, the confirmation, the relief of knowing she hasn't given me up to Cody yet. What she gets from me in return is this — proximity. The idea of me. The version of Theo Rhodes she's constructed has nothing to do with who I actually am and everything to do with what she wants me to be.
It's a fair enough trade.
It just isn't interesting.
"I have a game tonight," I say.
She stills. Then sits up. She knows a dismissal when she hears one. I've never had to say it twice. She finds her clothes without drama, and I watch the ceiling and think about Sunday morning.
She agreed because she wanted to. That's the part I keep returning to. Not because I pushed, maneuvered, or gave her something she needed in exchange. She said okay because she wanted to be there.
I felt her holding back when I kissed her. The tension. But I also felt the moment her brakes slipped. That sound she made. The way her hands found my jacket like she needed something to hold onto.
Her confession that she'd been imagining it.
She told me that directly, which she didn't have to do. Which means she's further gone than she knows.
The bedroom door closes.
I sit up.
I reach under the bed — not far, just past the edge of the frame where the floor meets the wall — and pull out the book. And with it, her note, folded once, the forward-leaning handwriting pressed hard into the page.
You took the book.
I know it was you.
Bring it back.
I look at it and feel the smile come before I can stop it. Not the controlled almost-movement I allow in public. An actual smile, which she has apparently decided to make a habit of making me produce without permission.
Cody has a photograph of this note on his phone right now. He's probably trying to build a picture of a tall, dark, serious man who isn't on the team. Running it through every possible permutation and coming up with nothing useful.
He has no idea his girlfriend is demanding things from the person who put him in a hospital bed.
I fold the note and put it back inside the cover.
