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“I don’t like you,” she said, against his mouth. “You know that.”

“Can’t stand you,” he said, and kissed her again.

It went on. She didn’t know how long. Long enough that her hands had learned his back and his hand had learned her hip, long enough that she’d have gone anywhere he took her, and then somewhere over their heads a board creaked, the way a board creaks in an old house at midnight for no reason, and they both went still.

Nothing. The house was asleep. But they’d both heard it, and she felt him remember where they were at the same second she did, and they stepped back.

Both of them, at once, a full step each, so there were four feet between them instead of none, and she had her hand at her own mouth and he had his hat still in his hand, somehow, crushed, and they stood there breathing on his father’s porch and looked at each other.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I —”

“I’m the one who —”

“You didn’t do anything, I was the one who —”

“Brody, I had your shirt in my hand.”

He looked at his shirt. It was half out of his jeans. He looked at her, with her mouth swollen and her hair down where he’d had his hand in it, and she looked at him, and something happened to his face, and to hers, and she laughed.

She couldn’t help it. It came up out of her, the big one, and she put her hand over her mouth to keep the house asleep and it didn’t work, and he was laughing too, quiet, with his head down and his hat against his chest, and the two of them stood four feet apart on a dark porch at midnight and laughed, because they’d both jumped back the same second, and they both knew exactly why, and it was the same reason.

“Go to bed,” he said, when he could.

“You go to bed.”

“I’m locking up.”

“Then lock up.” She picked the white bag off the rail. She held it against her chest with both arms the way she’d held the coffee outside Pearl’s, and went past him to the door, close, not touching, the way he’d gone past her the first night, and she felt him not touch her all the way to the screen.

“Sunny.”

She stopped with her hand on the door.

“Thank you for going,” he said. “For Lara. Nobody asked you to.”

“Somebody had to,” she said, and went in.

She got as far as the hall.

The house was dark and warm and asleep, and she stood at the bottom of the stairs with the bag against her chest and her fingers on her own mouth, and she didn't go up.

I don't like you. She'd said it with his lip between her teeth. He'd said it back with his hand on her hip, and they'd both laughed, because it was the kind of lie you could only tell somebody who already knew.

Wanting him she'd known about. She'd known about that in a truck outside the feed store with her thighs pressed together, and she'd managed it, the way you manage weather. This was the other thing. She liked him. She liked that he'd come around the front of the truck into the light, and that he hadn't asked, and that he'd stood on the porch with his hat crushed against his chest laughing at the two of them. She liked him so much it had put her hand over her own mouth, and that wasn't weather, and she didn't have the first idea how to manage it.

She heard him come in behind her and lock the door, and stop, and she didn't turn around, and after a second he went past her up the stairs without a word, and she stood there and listened to his door shut, twenty feet from hers.

Then she went up to bed, and lay down, and knew it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Why’s Sunny’s face red,” Levi said.

“It’s hot,” said Sunny, at the stove.