“Relax. I’m just fucking with you. My sister loves movies. She kind of dragged me into being a film buff.”
She laughs, shakes her head, brings her hand up like she might rub it over her face, then drops it again. “Right, sorry.”
“You apologize a lot.”
Lara opens her mouth, pauses, then shuts it, and it draws another laugh from me.
I smile, bump my shoe into hers. “You were going to apologize again, weren’t you?”
She disolves into a fit of giggles, and I can’t take my eyes off her. Talking to her is so easy. How have we never interacted before? We really never had a single group assignment together?
I’m confident that if I’d had the chance to talk to her, I wouldn’t have just brushed it off. There’s no way, not with how easily we talk now about the latest Spiderman movie, about how many times someone almost spilled beer on her inside, about the fact that she’s only here because her friend, a guy I recognize from homeroom, basically forced her to come along.
We talk about Connor, about how weird it is that his parents are always out of town. What we don’t talk about is my dad, or the phone call I had under the tree house.
For the first time in a long time, I’m able to really, fully relax.
CHAPTER 3
LARA
“Iactually hate parties,” Jake admits, letting his head tip back against the tree house’s wall, exposing his throat. I stare at it, thinking about vampires and how soft his skin looks, the gentle spattering of stubble that runs over his chin and neck. Clasping my hands together, I order myself tostoplooking at him. I’m staring.
And I definitely need to stop wondering what that stubble would feel like under my fingertips.
Jake is wearing a pair of worn jeans, the white of the cotton showing around the knees, and a pair of scuffed sneakers. His sweatshirt has blocks of blue and white.
I shift and feel the hem of my dress digging into my thighs. Jake definitely didn’t have a friend shove him into something uncomfortable before this party. He looks like he could curl up and go to sleep at any moment, perfectly cozy.
Jake goes on about all the reasons he hates coming to parties, and my gaze falls to his chest, running the lines on his jacket, memorizing the way it falls over his pecs and shoulders. It feelslike an entirely new experience, like I’m a baby opening my eyes for the first time.
I have obviously seen boys at school wearing sweatshirts before. In fact, I have been to the theater with my mom and seen fully topless men withveryrefined muscles dancing and sword fighting. I’ve watched the sweat drip off them and land on the stage, and it never made me feel a thing.
So why, looking at Jake, does it feel like standing at the Grand Canyon with my parents, wonder blasting through me, unable to tear my gaze away from the sheer grandeur of the thing?
He isjusta boy.
But I can’t stop myself from thinking this might be what my mom feels when she writes her poetry — something itching under her skin, wanting to get out. Jake makes me feel like I’m too much for my body, like I might overflow just by watching him laugh.
“Is that allowed?” I finally manage to ask, when Jake falls silent and I realize it’s my turn to talk. I’m fully objectifying him here, finding it hard to pay attention to what he says each time he knocks his sneaker against mine.
Each second feels like an hour up here, but time is also moving faster than it ever has in my life. The sun could start coming up through the windows, washing us in pink and orange, and I wouldn’t even be all that surprised.
Time is warped in this tree house—maybe it’s the one from those kids’ books.
When Jake’s eyes meet mine, I find myself trying to find theperfectword to describe the color. Amber? Caramel? When have I ever thought about another person’s eyes like this before?
Even more important than the color is the way they crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and how they feel like they’re seeing right inside me. Do the heroines of books ever spend much time describing the space outside of the irises?
“Iswhatallowed?” He laughs, staring right back into my eyes without fear. He carries the kind of confidence that I could never dream of.
If it were me, and I’d climbed up here to find someone else inside, I probably would have let go and plummeted to my death as penance for bothering them.
But I guess that’s why Jake is captain of the hockey team. He’s a natural leader, charismatic. Even if he tries to downplay the role, I know he probably worked really hard for it.
“Being an athlete and not liking parties,” I say, waving my hand in his general direction. “I thought that was, like, your main hobby. Every weekend, there’s a football player throwing a pool party — even the golf kids were getting drunk on social media last week.”
“The 4H kids, passed out in a barn?” Jake laughs, his words halting as they come out, like he can barely breathe through his amusement. The idea of it is hilarious, and I fall into laughter with him, too.
