We get onto the ice and she wobbles but somehow manages to stay upright. I have the urge to show off, skate lazy circles around her, but I repress it. Maybe later, when she’s more comfortable. Then I can tease her again.
“So you picked this place?” she asks.
“What, you think I can’t pick something you’d actually like?”
She pokes her cheek out with her tongue and shrugs. “No. I figured you heard about it from someone else.”
“Ouch.” I place a hand over my heart, pretending to be wounded. “That stings, Rustin. Just so you know, I set this up. I knew you’d like the stars. I think they’re being projected from a live telescope in New Mexico or something.”
She tilts her head up and stares at the projected sky, mouth dropping open. But because she’s so tragically bad at skating, she immediately trips and almost eats it.
I catch her by the arms and steady her. Then I shift, skating backward so she can cling to my hands.
She looks embarrassed. Extremely so. But honestly, it’s kind of awesome that she’s even trying. She sucks, yeah. But most Georgia girls would’ve tapped out by now.
“This feels like a setup,” Wren mutters.
I snort. “It’s not. You’re just awful at skating.”
“Rude,” she says, but she flashes me a quick grin.
We make slow loops around the rink, taking our time, watching the constellations shift above us. Every time she stumbles, I catch her. Our hands stay locked longer than they need to. Our faces hover too close.
God, this does feel like a date. I hate how easy it is to pretend. How natural it feels to hold her hands, to catch her when she stumbles, to want her to lean on me. It’s too real. That’s the problem.
It’s not a date. I’ve been explicit about that. If she were another girl, any other girl, it would be.
But she’s Jay’s little sister. God knows, every time we so much as bicker in front of him, he loses his shit. I can’t even imagine trying to tell him I was dating his baby sister.
It’s not even worth imagining.
Somewhere around the third lap, Wren points up. “Do you see that one?”
She points at a cluster of stars. “That’s Orion. The guy with the belt. Fun fact. He was super arrogant and said he could kill all the animals on earth. So the gods sent a giant scorpion to murder him.”
I grin. “That’s morbid.”
Her eyes sparkle. “Greek myths are all chaos and consequences.”
“You love them.”
“Oh yeah.” She lights up, launching into a story about Cassiopeia, who bragged too much and got thrown into the sky upside down. Then about her daughter Andromeda, who was so beautiful that her mother boasted she was more gorgeous than Poseidon’s sea nymphs.
“So Andromeda got chained to a rock in the middle of the sea as a sacrifice to a sea monster named Cetus,” she explains. “Then, somehow, the story turns into Perseus riding a flying horse and accidentally killing people with Medusa’s head.”
I can’t interrupt her. Or maybe I don’t want to. Her eyes are glowing, her face animated. Her words tumble out faster than her mouth can keep up.
I realize I’ve never seen her like this.
In all the years I’ve known her, I’ve been more interested in embarrassing her than actually paying attention to what lights her up.
The problem is, it’s not just hot.
It’s adorable.
Wren’s talking about the stars, telling their stories. She forgets to be defensive. She forgets to glare.
She just… glows. I’ve spent years giving her hell, keeping her at arm’s length, pretending she’s nothing but a nuisance. But right now, I want to bottle this version of her. The one who forgets to hate me. The one who smiles like she’s not afraid of being seen.
