“Yeah, but Poppy is our age. It’s weird when a thirty-six-year-old man asks that kind of stuff about teenage girls.”
“He’s not just any man, though.” I feel the instant need to defend him, even as the panic squeezes my throat. Not just for him, but for myself. For all the answers I’ve given him, the stories I’ve told him, unquestioningly. “He’s … he’s Sol. He’s our family. Our sun, our light, our—”
“I know, I know,” Rose says, shaking her head. “But I still find it creepy, Iris. He’s also been asking me questions about what you say to me. About him and the other girls.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I told him you’ve only ever said good things about him, and that you love the other girls. Which is all pretty much true.”
“And … what did you say about us?”
Rose cocks her head, staring at me through the darkness, likeshe’s searching for something. After a moment, she moves from her mattress and crawls over to sit on mine. And I can’t explain it, but the instant she’s next to me—the second her arm brushes against mine—the dread begins to recede.
“I told him there’s nothing going on between us,” she whispers. “I told him that we’re just good friends.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Is that true?” she asks.
The air around us feels electric, charged and buzzing. Her voice has set off that pleasant tingling in my scalp again. Moonlight from the window illuminates her face in a silver glow, and I’m hyperaware of the way her knee is resting against mine.
“What do you mean?” My voice has gone breathy. The sound of it warms my cheeks with embarrassment. But I can’t look away from her face.
“Was I telling him the truth?” she asks. “Is there really nothing between us?”
“Oh. I … um …”
Rose bites her lip, still stained from the scarlet lipstick she’s recently scrubbed off. “I like you, Iris,” she admits. “I think you like me, too. But if I’m wrong—”
“You’re not,” I say quickly. “You’re not wrong.”
Shesmiles at that, green eyes shining even in the dark. I shake my head, though.
“But we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re not supposed to date,” I tell her. “It’s against the rules.”
Rose is still smiling, and she’s closer now. I’m not sure if she’s leaned in or if I have. Maybe both of us. The magnets that have been pulling us to each other ever since the day she arrived inch us closer and closer now, until there’s hardly more than a thin slice of air between us.
“You know I’m bad at rules,” she murmurs, her breath dancing across my lips.
And then that distance between us is closed, both of us breaching that invisible line that was drawn between us as we meet in a kiss.
CAELA
Thefinal straw for Caela’s mother was the night her daughter came home in a police car.
It was the Saturday night after Thanksgiving break, and Caela and Bonnie had just finished their shifts at Ricci’s. They’d decided to go for a walk around town to see who had already put up Christmas lights and avoid going home for as long as possible.
“What’re your plans for New Year’s?” Bonnie asked as they walked past the bank, long since closed for the night. There were hardly any cars on the road at this hour, even on a Saturday night. Anyone who wanted to be enjoying a night out had driven to the next town over, where there were actually places open past nine o’clock.
“I don’t have any,” Caela said. “So … hanging out with you?”
“Good answer.”
“AssumingI’m around, at least. My parents talked about wanting to take a trip down to Gatlinburg, but the idea of being stuck in a cabin in the mountains with them, in the middle of winter, makes me want to shrivel up and die.”
