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“Road trip. Two games.”

My stomach sinks. “Where?”

“Fairborn. It’s like six hours.”

“Six hours away?”

“It’s a bus,” he says, like that explains anything.

“When do you get back?”

“Sunday. Late.”

There’s a drop in my stomach, which is ridiculous, and I try to keep my face completely normal. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I’ve been alive for eighteen years and spent all but about seven weeks of them not knowing Nash Kennebeck existed.

“What time do you leave?”

He looks at me for a second. “Noon. Thursday.”

“Okay.”

He eats another Dorito and says he has a skate at six-thirty tomorrow, so he should go. At the door, he takes my chin and kisses me, and then he goes down the hall to his own room.

At ten, I’m at the sink with my toothbrush in my mouth. Tessa’s asleep. There’s a ring of light under the bathroom door from the hall, and I’m thinking about nothing, honestly, about my paper and whether I have clean leggings.

Then I’m counting. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I don’t want him to go.

I spit. No. Absolutely not. It’s four days. It’s hockey. I have a paper due Friday, a midterm, and a life. I have friends and plans. I went all this time not knowing him. I keep reminding myself of that like it’s going to help. This is getting extremely inconvenient. I rinse my brush, put it in the cup, and turn off the light.

My phone is lighting up the ceiling from my bed.

Nash: Come here.

My whole chest fills with butterflies, and I can’t hide my smile. I don’t even put my hair up. I’m already out the door.

34

Bananas for You

Nash

Kylie knocks once and comes in without waiting. “You summoned me.”

“Yeah.”

She smiles. “Very demanding.”

I lift the blanket, and she gets in without saying anything else about it, climbing over my legs because the bed’s against the wall and there’s no other way. Her knee goes straight into my thigh on the way past. Rafe’s at Barnes’s. I’ve got a hockey game playing on the laptop at the end of the bed.

She puts her head on my shoulder and starts telling me about Kenzie and Tessa and people in her classes. None of it has anything to do with me, and I lie there and listen to every word.

At some point, she’s moved down and over until her cheek is on my chest and one leg is across mine. My hand ends up under the back of the hoodie where it’s ridden up, and I run my fingers over the warm skin low on her back while she keeps going. The game’s still playing at the end of the bed. I haven’t looked at it since she got here. I couldn’t tell you the score.

She picks her head up. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”