“I have an Xbox,” he replied proudly. “Maybe we could rent a few, and watch them. Because it seems like you clearly need an education on quotable movies.”
My heart was running away like it had before. I was a runner, but not a chaser, and I didn’t want to be chasing my heart every time I hung out with him. And like with running, I needed to build my Brooklyn Keller stamina up.
“AndIthink you severely undervalue the early 2000s rom-com.”
He draped his arm around my shoulder and lowered his head to mine. “So, is that a yes?”
Wasit? There was no time for me to work out the pros and cons, not with how close he was and how that alone made my stomach go into a spin cycle.
I’d only ever had one real boyfriend before. Connor Halsey had sat in front of me in math class sophomore year, and on the first day he asked me for a pencil. On the fourteenth day, he asked me to go see a movie. He was nice, and he played trumpet in the marching band. We’d dated for five months but he never made me feel the way Brooklyn had in only one day of properly hanging out.
This feeling now—whateverit was—was a foreign object in my body, unsure of whether it should defend me or not.
Luckily Brooklyn’s phone rang, providing a welcome distraction from the fact that I could have passed out from human contact. He frowned when he looked at the screen.
“Sorry, I gotta take this.” He cleared his throat before answering. “Hey.”
I tried to occupy myself with my surroundings—the group of teenagers kicking a soccer ball around and sending sand spraying up into the air, the two girls with longboards hoisted above their heads laughing as they made their way down to the water—but when he spoke, he drew my attention to him like a compass to magnetic north.
“I’m literally, like, five minutes away,” he grumbled, keeping his voice low. “Sure, but—”
His scowl deepened as whoever was on the other end clearly didn’t like his response.
“All right, all right.” He groaned. Brooklyn’s face twisted into an odd, almost hurt expression, and I felt a pang in my chest as his eyes darkened. It was gone as quickly as it had come as he hung up the phone and slid the sunglasses back over his eyes to no doubt hide the storm brewing in them, and I felt him tense up beside me before he spoke.
“I may have neglected to tell my mother I was leaving the house.” He scratched the back of his head as he slowed to a stop. “Since her default assumption is I’m getting myself into trouble, I should probably go home.”
“It’s fine, really,” I assured him. “It’s no big deal.”
“I promise we won’t be long.”
I let out a sharp exhale. “Wait, you want me to come with you?”
“Please.” Brooklyn pouted and pressed his hands together in front of him.Sogoddamn endearing. “You’re like living, breathing proof that I wasn’t actually doing anything I wasn’t supposed to be doing.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Sure.”
Going back to Brooklyn’s house and meeting other people was not on my agenda, but I spun around to follow him back to his car anyway. The magnetic north also pulled me in whatever direction he went, and I would willingly go if that meant helping him out. Those cracks were starting to show, and here I was, pulling out the patches.
“You’re the best,” he said when we were both back in the Wrangler. He reached across the center console and put his hand on mine. “Seriously. I owe you . . . again.”
Six
I found it increasingly difficult not to stare at Brooklyn as he drove us through the tiny center of town to the bridge that took us through the shallow marshes and toward his neighborhood.
His thumbs drummed against the steering wheel, in sync perfectly with every beat, and he knew every word to every song that came on, silently mouthing along. I found myself counting the freckles that trailed down the side of his cheek, creating made-up constellations on his face.
We rolled to a stop at a red light, and it felt like one of those movie moments in which everything slowed down, and he turned his head to look at me, already looking at him.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked with a grin.
My insides fluttered like I’d swallowed a thousand butterflies, and I had to force myself to look away from him.
“Taking in the town, you know? You grew up here, huh?” I leaned forward to fiddle with the air vents on the dashboard, trying to casually keep my attention elsewhere.
“Yep, born and raised and never left.” Brooklyn nodded. “Most people don’t leave. Everyone just grows up, marries someone else from town, and the cycle continues. It’s like geographical inbreeding.”
I laughed a little too aggressively, but it must have seemed endearing to him as he lit up with a smile once again.
