And then heactuallygotouthispenand hisnotepad.
“For fuck’s sake, Seth, don’t write it down when I’m directly in front of you.”
“But you’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want to talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you aboutordinary things. But when what you need to say is about harrowing, incredible supernatural nonsense that might make me accidentally turn the world inside out, then please. For the love of god. Feel free to disregard those instructions. Disregard themto the maximum degree possible,” she burst out, and oh thank god, thank god, she could see it sinking in.
Though it seemed to take him a long time to come up with an answer. She could practically see him doing conversational algebra in his head.
“Okay, so I should just go hard on this one particular topic,” he finally said.
And though she didn’t want to mentally bless him, she could feel the blessing happening anyway. It made her give him two thumbs-up as she answered. “You bet. Really swing for the fences. Say seventy thousand words.”
“I don’t know, Cassie. Seventy thousand fence swings might be a lot for you.”
“They won’t be. I need to hear them. I want to hear them. Please go for it,” she said.
Only then he just started lifting his jacket and his jersey, for some reason.
“Oh thank god, now I can just show you,” he said, and when he did she got this little frisson of fear. And it doubled when he added, “I mean seriously, look at this.”
Because it sounded as if there was something terrible there.
She almost didn’t look. And when she finally forced herself to, she went about it whip quick. One turn of her head, one narrowed eye, and there it was. His torso, all honey-gold and smooth and perfectly normal. Nothing wrong with it at all, it looked like.
Yet somehow, she didn’t relax on seeing it. Instead, her body seemed to tense harder. Like it had that time they had gone swimming together as newly minted teenagers. And he had stripped off, like all the other times he’d done it before.
But, weirdly, it hadn’t felt like all the other times.
It had felt different, very different. Suddenly she had found herself staring at a lot of things—like how smooth his skin was, and how big his chest looked, and how hairy he was getting. And not just hairy on his upper body, either. But lower down. Close to the waistband of his shorts. That little trail, leading down down down to things she never, ever thought about.
But she had started thinking about them, then.
And she was definitely thinking about them now.
He was a lot thicker and furrier, at this point. And his jeans were very, very low slung. She could almost make out the start of something more, something that made her go all hot and weird and embarrassed. Just like she had that heated summer day.
Only this time it was much, much worse.
Because back then, he had gone all hot and weird and embarrassed too. He had clocked her suddenly much bigger chest, and gone bright red. She remembered him whipping his head away, fast, and then looking at almost anything but her for the rest of the swim.
Like they were in this thing together, somehow.
But of course that wasn’t the case now.
She was fully dressed. And even if she hadn’t been, he clearly didn’t care about whatever her boobs looked like. His eyes almost never left her face. They stayed there no matter what she was doing—and that was good. It was fine by her. She didn’t need his approval, his desire, his gawping at her body like he had back then.
But it did make her gawping at him more mortifying.
Never let him know that you like a single thing about him, she told herself, firmly.
Then she put her shoulders back, and lifted her head, and responded. “Yeah, okay, Seth. I get that you have a six-pack now,” she said, and rolled her eyes. Though it didn’t exactly have the intended effect. He just glanced down at his own stomach with this pleased look on his face.
“You really think I still have a six-pack? I thought I kind of lost it when all this madness made me want to eat everything all the time, and sleep so long it feels like a coma, and also—just generally being this way makes you a lot thicker and burlier, you know?” he said, all affable and blasé about it. While she carried on floundering in this sea of weird feelings.
First there had been that flush and the urge to stare, and now here was another fucking rush of concern.Your entire body and metabolism and sleep cycle changed, she wanted to say. But even after she managed to fight that down, nothing good took its place.
“Well, even if it has, it’s definitely still there,” she blurted out.
