I whirl on him, heart somewhere in my tonsils. “I’m not being weird.”
“You are. You’re beingsomething.”
“I just…” I stop. My throat is constricting, just waiting to close up on itself in self-preservation. To keep the wrong words from slipping out. It all feelsright there. Right on the tip of my tongue. “You don’t always have to be so…so nice.”
He sets the canoe down and turns back to me. He’s frowning, confusion pulling his dark brows low.
“I’ve always been nice to you. Why wouldn’t I be nice? What the hell?”
“Yeah, well…” I bite back whatever else I was about to say, looking away.
I can feel his eyes studying me.
Then he says quietly, “I don’t help because I think you need it, Kit. I help because you’reyou.” I see him rub at his head, trying to think of the words he wants to say. I hate that everything he does warms my chest. “Not in, like, a gay way or anything. Shit, that sounded bad. I mean, I…I just like helping, okay?”
“You don’t have to,” I croak.
Not in a gay way…
And then…then, he grabs the rolled-up towel I dropped earlier and drapes it over my shoulders. His fingers brush the back of my neck, and I flinch like he burned me worse than the sun did when he gives my hair a rustle before pulling away.
“Still helping,” he says, walking back towards the cabin.
I stand there for a long time, long enough for the lake water to stop running down my legs and my fingers to cramp from gripping the towel.
My heart feels wrecked.
Not. Gay.
Kit
Age 14
I’d just like to know how every other person my age manages to have multiple different crushes every week, and then there’s me. Over a year strong, pining for the impossible. Like, the worst possible option. I could say it gets easier, but I’d be lying.
I’ve just gotten better at hiding it.
Better at sneakily avoiding. Putting inches of distance between us.
I may be getting better at it, but Bowen doesn’t make it easy.
Sometimes, when he looks at me, I feel like I’m going to burst right open at the seams.
Like right now.
Today is the first day at the cabin for the summer. My parents and their mom headed to the grocery store to stock up, and it looked like Brett and Bowen were going. I used the excuse of wanting to rest. That trying to readon the drive here gave me a headache, and that's not even a lie. I had been trying to read in the car.
The headache came from trying to ignore how my body went full force into a rushing, sizzling sort of panic when Bowen rested his head against my shoulder in the backseat. I couldn't readanythingafter that.
And now he's here. Crawled onto the bottom bunk with me after making me sit up to take a pain pill and drink water. We're sharing the same pillow, and he's running his fingers through the hair on the side of my head, giving my temple a gentle rub with every few passes.
I can hardly breathe.
"Bowen, I'm fine," I mumble, trying to wiggle my head back. I know my face is reddening by the second, especially when he drops his hand to rub over my burning cheek.
"Boe," he says back, clearing his throat before taking his hand away completely. He tucks it under his cheek, leaving my skin to tingle where he touched me.
"What?"
