“Yeah.” I hated that I couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses. I really hated that he didn’t sound half as indifferent about his upcoming trip as he was trying to. I wanted to ask him more, but everything about his body language said he’d already told me more than he wanted.
I reached for the door, but it didn’t budge.
Daniel leaned around me, lifting the handle just right so that it opened. “It sticks a little. Guess I should have asked you to fix that too.”
The warmth from his body pressed into my side. It was as close as we’d been since… I half turned to see his face. Bruised.
I felt exactly the same way.
He didn’t pull back. “That night at my house. I don’t want you to think about me kissing you like that…” His eyes dipped to my mouth and a forgotten butterfly fluttered to life in my stomach. And then, before I think he even realized he was going to, Daniel bent and brushed his lips against mine. The pressure was so light that I barely felt the warmth from his mouth until it was gone…until I could miss it.
It was just the one kiss, no more than a second or two. A kiss that you’d miss if you blinked.
Nothing like my dream.
Nothing like that night.
I didn’t have to push him away. It didn’t last long enough for me to even have to make that decision.
“I’m sorry for so much, Jill.”
“I know.” And I did.
CHAPTER 34
The rest of the week passed in a ricochet of emotions. Everything with Dad and the Spitfire was a dream that I never wanted to wake from. Everything outside the shop was…not a nightmare, but the constant threat of one.
By the time Wednesday rolled around, Claire had sufficiently recovered from her sunburn to run again. Sean had been MIA since the fight with Daniel. He’d stopped calling me, and when Claire finally got ahold of him after her sunburn healed, he hadn’t said much. She and I had been talking all week, so she knew what had happened and the way I’d left things. I knew it was bad when even Claire couldn’t offer a hopeful outlook.
I’d also told her about Mom and her nuclear bomb. It helped more than I’d thought possible, telling her about all that stuff. It was different than talking with Daniel. Sometimes Claire couldn’t school her reactions fast enough, and the switch on her friend brain broke at some point. But it was…okay. We were okay.
We were sitting on the grass at the school track in the early-morning light, when Claire suddenly blurted out a confession.
“I gained two pounds,” she told me, somewhere between ashamed and triumphant. “My mom was worried that I was getting too skinny—can you believe that? Anyway, I promised her I would, so I did. She was really happy.” Claire’s chin dropped to her chest. “Only I feel kind of sick about it. I know it’s stupid. I know it.” She tapped her head. “But I can’t stop thinking about those two pounds, like I can feel them. When I was fat I didn’t care.” She sighed and squinted at the rising sun that was just high enough to stretch glowing ribbons across the field as it pierced the trees around us. “I can’t remember how I did it. How do you?”
“Not care? I don’t know. I never thought about it. It’s like me with Sean. You never had to learn not to think about him. I’m still working on that.” And a million other things, but I knew my audience.
Claire nodded like my answer was the one she was looking for. “Makes you kind of wish we could trade, huh? Fix each other’s problems?”
“That’d be awesome.” It had been a week and a half since the fight on my porch and I was going quietly mad wondering how Sean was. I knew he was okay physically. Claire had found out that much. Apparently he’d told his parents he broke his nose catching an elbow playing basketball. He had a really good relationship with them, and it only made me feel worse that he’d had to lie to them. For me.
“Okay, I may have done something you’re not going to like.” Claire uprooted a small pile of grass.
“What did you—” I started, but turned to the parking lot when I heard another car pull in.
“I sort of tried to fix one of your problems for you by telling someone that cross-country training was starting again today.”
The “someone” needed no further explanation as Sean got out of his car.
* * *
We started stretching in silence, Claire looking back and forth between Sean and me with a cautious optimism that I wasn’t sure I shared. She greeted him with the same bright smile she’d given me earlier.
“Pretty great that we’re all back together, isn’t it?” Not even crickets answered her. “Earth to Sean. What’s up?”
I caught Sean’s eye as he stood. “What’s up is that it’s hot and I’m pretty sure it’s still last night, so let’s do this so I can go to bed.” Which was the exact perfect grumpy Sean thing to say. Claire rolled her eyes at him and got to her feet.
I rediscovered something that day. Running was not my thing, I knew that, but running without Sean to complain with—and it didn’t feel like he was there when he was silent—was the absolute worst activity ever. He didn’t pantomime strangling Claire when she tried to motivate us to speed up. He didn’t lean his shoulder into mine and gradually move me off the trail until I had to grab ahold of him or end up swimming—not that he’d ever let me get that close to falling in the canal, but it was his stupid game that I thought I hated until he no longer wanted to play.
