Why? Because the fantasy of how it will play out between us lives in my chest like a second heartbeat. Someday soon, Mina will look at me the way those other girls look at me. She’ll blush when our eyes meet. She’ll stammer when I stand close. She’ll stare at my mouth like she’s wondering what my kiss would taste like.
She’ll need me.
She’ll want me.
She’ll rely on me for everything.
And I’ll give her everything. I’ll be the only boy to touch her and love her and protect her. She’ll sneak down from her room at the top of the Montoni mansion into my room after dark, and I’ll pull her into my arms and into my bed, and we’ll kiss and whisper and touch until she’s mine.
Completely, irrevocably mine.
I just have to wait. I just have to be patient. One day soon she’ll realize what’s been in front of her all along. She’ll understand what I’ve known since I was eight years old and she was seven.
Mina and I are meant for each other.
But I’ve been waiting seven years, and my impatience is turning into an agony that I can’t control and can’t think through. It gnaws at my chest like something with teeth. Every day the pain grows sharper and the hunger gets worse.
Dark. Desperate. Demanding.
“You know what I think?” Mina says, interrupting my thoughts.
“What?”
“I think you’re too picky.” She’s grinning, enjoying herself. “You need to lower your standards. Not everyone can be perfect like you.”
“My standards are fine.”
“Your standards are impossible. Name one girl you’ve ever been interested in.”
You.
You.
You.
“I don’t really think about it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer you’re getting.”
She sighs dramatically, throwing her head back. “I worry about you. You’re going to end up alone in that big empty mansion with seventeen cats.”
“I don’t like cats.”
“Seventeen dogs, then.”
“I don’t like dogs either.”
“Seventeen…lizards?”
“Mina.”
“I’m just saying.” She bumps her shoulder against my arm, because she’s too short to reach my actual shoulder. “You could have anyone you wanted. It’s a waste to just…not want anyone.”
I look down at her. At her bright eyes and her teasing smile and the ink stain on her jaw that I want to lick away.
“Maybe I’m waiting,” I say.
