“How’d the bull riding go?” Will asks.
“Oh, tragic. The longest any of us lasted was six seconds, but at least we all wore pants.”
“Perverts everywhere are wiping their eyes.”
I burst into a laugh, and Will’s eyes flash triumphant. I settle against the brick wall ten feet from the dark club door.
Will moves in front of me. “Well,” he says.
“Well. I’d better head in.”
His eyes jump around my face. “You’d better.”
I do not move a muscle.
“Your mom was really nice to me,” I say.
He bites the inside of his cheek. “That’s because you were always really nice to her. She simply treated you the way you deserve to be treated.”
After a moment I whisper, “I’m not positive that’s true.”
His head tilts. “Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
He studies me with a frown, something clicking behind his eyes. “I owe you so many apologies, Josephine.”
I laugh brittlely to push past the ache of his words. “What now?”
Will looks sideways. His jaw rolls. “It would be okay if you resented me.”
My stomach lurches. “For what?”
“Exactly. For what?” he parrots, a challenge in his eyes.
With his permission, I say what we’re both thinking. “For calling me a surface-level girl that one time?”
He nods. “You’d be justified in resenting me for that. I resent myself for saying it. I hated myself when I realized you’d heard it.”
I pause and consider my next course of action. “It would be okay if you resented me, too. You tried to clear the air after we kissed, but I told you it wasn’t a good idea for us to speak.”
“I understood why you felt that way,” Will says. “I was just trying to help. I could have tried harder, but I was…” He closes his eyes, gulping. “Wanting you. And that confused my priorities. I didn’t know how to help you repair your friendship with Zoe without acknowledging how much I…” Again, he drifts off.
Every pore across my skin tightens. My breath locks inside my lungs. “Why?” I ask. “Why on earth did you want me?”
His voice slips out of him, the words seamless. “Because you are not and never have been a surface-level girl, Josephine. You’re just a girl who loves things you have every right to love. And if I’m the boy who once convinced you that can’t be true, then I will become the man who convinces you it absolutely is.”
My heart seems to skitter instead of beating.
“You deserve to be treated with kindness,” Will goes on, “because you are kind to everyone. You made yourself late to give me a ride when you could have left me on the side of that road and been totally grounded in doing so. You worked yourself into a fit when Andalo double-booked you because you wanted to make Camila happy.” He laughs lowly. “You complimented my mom’s necklace even though you would never wear it yourself.”
“How did you know that?” I cry.
“You’ve got a tell,” he says.
I noticed his tell; he noticed mine.
One of Will’s hands comes to my temple, his thumb brushing my skin, just barely. My body overreacts, my muscles locking still.
