When Jordy’s eyes fluttered open, he immediately clocked that I was staring at him, and he gave me this gorgeous, infatuated smile as he lazily stretched his body out, tapping my thigh with his forehead.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he said. “It just feels so nice out here.”
“I can’t believe you evencouldfall asleep,” I remarked back, my hand automatically raising from my side to drop onto the crown of his head. “It’s so damn noisy.”
“I don’t know, I guess I just feel safe with you.”
He said it so casually, with no hesitation or embarrassment or any of the wild emotions that suddenly roared to life inside me that I had to bite down to keep from showing on my face.
“That’s good.” Because I kind of desperately didn’t want him to elaborate on that statement and make me feel even weirder than I already did, I went on. “So you think you’re going to be hanging out at the beach a lot during the school year?”
“Sometimes,” he answered. “Because Dani really wants to. But I have a pretty heavy course load, so I don’t think I’m going to have a ton of free time.”
I wasn’t sure if I was glad he wouldn’t be out and about too much without me around, or if I felt bad that he wasn’t going to get to have as much fun as he maybe wanted to have.
“Plus I’ll want to come home a lot of weekends,” he added. “I’m going to try to convince my dad to help me get a car.”
“That’s a lot of driving.”
“Well, I’d say we could trade off but you wouldn’t have anywhere to stay if you came up here.”
My throat was suddenly dry and cracked like gritty sandpaper, my stomach burning and thrashing. He was saying it, the thing I wanted so badly. And he hadn’t even made a big deal out of it. Like it was just preordained.
“What?” He asked, giving me an odd look after a long span of silence passed. “You didn’t seriously think I was going to go weeks at a time without seeing you? It’s only an hour drive.”
“I didn’t know,” I managed. “I thought you were excited to go away.”
“I’m excited to start college,” he corrected me gently. “I’m not excited togo away. Is that really what you thought?”
I shook my head, only because I didn’t know what else to do or say. “No. I don’t know. I didn’t really want to think about it.”
He heaved himself up from his sprawled position, and settled between my legs, with his back pressed to my chest. When I reached around him, he gripped my arms closer to his body.
“You worry too much. It’s supposed to be easy, you know?”
“What is?”
“This. Us.”
I scoffed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No!” He insisted. “I know it sucks because of our parents but it’ll work out. The college thing is, like, nothing. We’ll see each other as often as we can and then in a couple of years it’ll be over.”
“You act like we’re actually a couple,” I pointed out.
The whole conversation was starting to make my head spin. I felt like I was in some alternate universe, the one he’d once described when he’d asked if I would press a magic button so we could be together. But he was so matter-of-fact about it, like it wasn’t even a question anymore.
He shifted, leaning back against me so the back of his head was resting on my shoulder. I couldn’t help but inhale all of his sugary sweet essence, breathing him in like a healing tonic.
“You want to be, right?”
“A couple?” I asked, but I was really just stalling. I didn’t know why. It’s not like I thought if I said yes that he would suddenly laugh in my face and tell me he’d been messing with me this whole time. I was almost definitely sure he wouldn’t.
“Yeah.”
“Do you… seriously think that’s an option for us?”
“Kieran,” he started, wriggling into a more comfortable position against me, where he was resting more of his weight on me. “At this point, what exactly do you think would change between us if I said yes? We’re fucking, we’re not seeing other people, and we basically spend all our free time together.”
