Ireland looked bemused by my sister’s question, rolling her lips together before asking, “Do you tap?”
“Yeah, if you’re willing to teach me that, too, I will. I’ll tap so hard.”
Too?
“Do you have tap shoes?”
Delly scrunched her nose. “No.”
Ireland’s lips twitched in an inkling of a smile. “I’ll send you that link, too, then.”
Too?
“Yay!” Delly clapped her hands together. She’d been hyped up like a kid on Christmas morning all day, and I had a feeling she was going to crash like one too. I bet she’d be in bed by eight.
At least this was one hobby she couldn’t recruit me to try with her. No way would I be putting on any tap shoes—orshoe—right now.
But looking at the happiness on my sister’s face, I knew I would’ve been asking her to forward me that link if I had two functional ankles.
Patient is chronically uncool.
A big ole checkmark beside that one.
Our living room bubble disbanded then, and I tracked Ireland as she walked past me to grab her duffel and then came right back to stand beside me.
We stared at the hallway with the connected bedrooms in silence until she asked, “Right or left?”
I shrugged. “Your choice.”
She hoisted the strap of her bag up on her shoulder and looked over it at me. I’d be damned if my heart didn’t thump wildly at that, as if it wanted to leap out of my chest to get to her. “Right, then.”
I stayed rooted in the hallway as she made for the door on the right. As she opened it. As she disappeared behind it.
As I calculated how the hell I was going to share space with Ireland Sewell for an entire summer.
15
IRELAND
My duffel fell from my fingertips and landed with athunkby my feet.
I was alone.
Blessedly alone in a room of my own.
I rotated slowly, and my eyes fell on my salvation.
I didn’t care that he was low to the ground to minimize my risk of falling.
I didn’t care that he was covered by the ugliest pastel quilt known to man.
For this summer, he was mine.
Mybed.
I wasn’t sure how long I stared, caught in the indecision of showering or not before collapsing right on top of the bed.
Maybe I could cancel class just this once…
