Chapter 9
Ellie
May, Age 15
I’m staring up at the sky, trying to find shapes in the clouds, when Griffin flops down next to me on the hammock, nearly tipping us both backwards. “I swear to God if you knock me out of this thing I’m never inviting you over again, Griffin.”
He doesn’t say anything in reply, but his large fist suddenly obscures my view, so close to my face it makes me go cross-eyed when I try to focus on it. Smacking his hand away, I push myself up onto my elbows so I can face him, and find a thousand-watt smile lighting up his face.
My body may not have flipped over a few moments ago, but my heart sure is now.
“What?”
He still doesn’t answer, but holds his fist up again at a more reasonable distance, and I see a singular sunflower held in his grasp. “Got you this,” he says, grinning even wider.
I can’t decide where to focus– the flower, or the smile.
“Would have picked you a bluebonnet, but that’s illegal.”
I have no idea how to respond, so I blurt out, “No it’s not, that’s actually a common misconception.” My curiosity outweighs my fear of being perceived, so I ask him, “Why?”
“Because it reminded me of you. I wanted you to have it.”
I take it from him slowly, dropping my gaze to the petals as I twirl it softly between my fingers. I should be used to it by now, but every time he does something so simple yet so sweet, it knocks the wind out of me.
Shoving those feelings down, I ask, “Why does it remind you of me?”
He shrugs. “It’s bright like you.” He lies back, putting his hands behind head, his legs long enough that he can stretch them out and still have the heels of his boots dug into the ground.
“And you turn your face up to the sun for a few seconds every time we step outside, without fail,” he says matter-of-factly. In a much quieter voice, he adds, “And, it’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen all day. Well, besides you.”
He jolts slightly, a surprised look on his face, like healsowasn’t expecting the words to come out.
My heart doesn’t just flip this time, it soars.
***
“You’re quiet today.”
Abby points it out in a way that leaves it up to me to choose whether to respond, and I love her for it. She knows that sometimes I don’t want to talk about things, I just want her to know that there is athing, and sit with me in silence while I work through it.
But I do want to talk about mythingtoday though–and thatthingis Griffin Hart.
With summer break rapidly approaching, two things are happening. One, Abby and I have resumed our summer tradition of eating pickle flavored sno-cones by Larkspur Lake (which isn’t really a lake, but a hole the mayor decided to dig in the 70s to give the town a “water feature”).
Two, I need to figure out what to do about Griffin. Or rather, what to do about my feelings for him. Whatever it is I’m even feeling. My chest tightens as I replay the last few weeks on a loop in my head. We’ve been spending a lot of time together recently–not only with Jack and David, but just the two of us.
I don’t even know if they know we’ve been doing that. I certainly haven’t told them. I can’t imagine David would be happy about it. That boy has the most severe case of FOMO known to man. I think Jack might already have his suspicions that something’s going on, and him asking questions would be worse than any tantrum David might throw about being left out.
Plus, I wouldn’t know how to answer any questions he has about my feelings for Griffin. All I know is I’m feeling a lot more than friendship these days, and it scares the hell out of me.
“Yeah,” I say, taking a bite of sno-cone to give myself time before I elaborate. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Griffin.”
Abby and I have been friends for so long that it feels like we’ve talked about everything under the sun–so why does it feel so weird to talk to her about this?
Probably because we never talk about boys. We seem to somehow have managed to skip over that part of girlhood. I’ve never really done the whole “crush” thing. I’m an only child, fiercely independent by default. I’ve also never slowed down long enough to have time to develop a crush. My life has always felt so full of love and adventure that I never bothered to consider adding something else.
And there’s always that thought lurking in the depths of my brain telling me to get as far away from Larkspur as I can, to see the world. I’ve never had any intentions of tying myself to this town–or to anyone in it.
