He slipped a piece of wet hair behind my ear, fingers lingering there for a moment. Another raindrop slipped off his pointed nose, and it fell onto my cheek like a kiss. “Deal.”
CHAPTER 16
“Your droopy eyelids do not bode well for an all-nighter,” Jamie mused from the driver’s seat. “It’s not even midnight, Daze.”
My eyes snapped wide. I hadn’t even realized they’d started drooping, which was a very bad thing, because if I’d fallen asleep, I would’ve dropped my slushie into my lap. “I’m awake,” I said, as if trying to convince myself. “I’m awake.” I took a long pull from my slushie.
It was… meh. Partly because I hadn’t wanted it in the first place. We’d gone into a local gas station for their crappy instant coffee, but the machine had been broken. Slushies were the next best alternative, but sans the caffeine that I needed to make my all-nighter dreams a reality.
“I remember it being easier,” I muttered sadly, the words sounding like defeat. The drive had been too cozy, and his passenger’s seat was too comfortable. I wasn’t going to last much longer. “I used to pull all-nighters withPenn when we were little. It used to not be until, like,fourwhen we got tired.”
“And youhadn’tbeen spending all your energy dancing at a club.”
I stirred my slushie, staring into the blue, watery depths. “Touché.”
Jamie and I hadn’t immediately left the club after our brief break outside, but instead I’d danced a bit more with Nellie to shake off whatever weirdness that’d surfaced from dancing with her brother. When my legs had started to feel like Jell-O, I’d gone back to find Jamie leaning against a wall—with Raelynn at his side.
“What were you and Raelynn even talking about, anyway?” I asked him now, biting my straw. “I could barely hear anything over the music.”
“We weren’t really talking. She just stood by me. I think she was just uncomfortable.”
I let out a little scoff. “More like she just wanted to be close to you.”
“See?” He reached over and patted my knee. “I told you I’m cool.”
My bare knee. His fingers were cold and long, and though the touch was quick, it shot through me. Without thinking, I snatched his hand up. “Why are your fingers always so cold?” I asked him. I laid the backs of them against my cheek.
My skin wasn’t nearly as flaming hot as earlier, but it was still warm, and the direct contact with his icicle-like skin made me shiver. After a moment of soaking up theheat from one cheek, I slid his hand around to my other, now pressing his palm there.
Sleep deprivation. Later, that was what I’d say came over me.
The sides of his fingers had small callouses, like he’d been holding a pencil too often, which was strange, because Jamie was a reader, not a writer. He sometimes carried his notebook, but there was almost always a book in his hands.
It was a long, long beat before I realized how weird this was. My eyes slid to the side, peeking at Jamie, who stared straight ahead through the windshield. He was… tense. Something about his gaze was tight, and though his fingers were gentle on my skin, his arm was stiff, too.
I dropped his hand. “S-Sorry.”
Jamie didn’t reply. He just placed his hand back on the steering wheel, knuckles flexing.
He flipped his blinker on, and after stopping at a four-way—that was dead, because no one in this neighborhood went out past ten on a weekday—he turned onto my street. The houses were dark and sleepy as we passed them, and it made my eyelids even heavier.
“I think Dalton got the memo tonight,” I said, leaning my head against the window and staring at the dark world outside it. “I like dancing with you. You’re not like Dalton. You don’t have an ulterior motive.”
Again, Jamie said nothing.
A weird feeling began trickling through me. The slushie tasted sour on my tongue. “Did you not have fun?”
He came up to another four-way and stopped. “Didyou dance with him like that? Like… how you danced with me?”
“No.” He’dtried, but even if I hadn’t been able to get his hand off my hip, I would’ve just stopped dancing entirely. “I wouldn’t have danced with anyone else like that. Just you.”
Just you, because you’re my fake boyfriend, I meant, but the words also touched on a different truth.Because you’re the only one I want to dance with like that.
Jamie didn’t immediately pull away from the stop sign. He hadn’t had fun. That must’ve been it. It might’ve looked like he was having an okay time, but I’d pushed his comfort zone tonight. He didn’t want to pretend with me anymore. That was what he was about to tell me; that was my Bestie Telepathy at work?—
“You have me wrapped around your finger, Daisy.” The words were quiet, as if more for himself, the same exact way he’d done before.The things I do for you, Daisy Carmichael. “You know that?”
The thought of me pushing Jamie to do things he didn’t want to made my stomach turn further. Maybe the slushiewasbad. “Do you not want to do an all-nighter?”
