Even the good days vibrated with apprehension like the moments before an earthquake. I was always aware that the ground could shift under my feet. Being safe and stable and cared for wasn’t compatible with my family’s rootless existence. They could bend for me a little, but my parents’ resentment would always be in the room with us like a family pet.
“You make me feel like that, you know,” he said, pulling me out of the past as we approached the minivan.
“Insecure?”
“No.” He stretched the vowel in a way that sounded suspiciously like “duh” and set the gas cans on the street. “Like every day is bound to be different.”
“I thought I was a clock,” I whined.
But then he did something wholly unexpected. He twistedme around by the arm until we settled into holding hands, like a magic trick.
Tada.
He swung our hands between us. “I like how easy it is to read you. Everything’s on your face. All the time.”
My breath quickened. “Okay. What’s on my face right now?”
He stared at me with eyes that bored through me. My chest rose and fell as I anticipated whatever it was he was about to say next.
“Chocolate. Or caramel, maybe?” He pointed at my chin.
Something sank through my body from my head to my feet. Relief, I thought. And a healthy dose of embarrassment, because no woman wanted a guy commenting on the mixture of chocolate and/or caramel hardening on her cheek. Even if said guy was just a friend.
I wiped at my face with my free hand. “Snickers,” I explained, scratching at the messy hunk with my pinkie nail.
“No worries,” he said, giving my palm a squeeze. “Now you’re perfect.”
“Cool,” I said.
Cool?
But then my phone beeped, and beeped again and again, until the littleperfectbubble between us popped like a balloon.
“Is it the undertaker?” he asked. I scrolled my phone screen, blinking fast.
Study group finally ended. Leaving library now.
There was an alumni mixer in the atrium and I stole us turkey burgers on pretzel buns.
Can I stop by your dorm, even if it’s only to say hi?
Owen Twombley was gone for me—or at least a more datable, baseball-loving facsimile of me—four days ahead of schedule. This was the best part. Feeling that crush from someone new. Being possessed by the warm glow of whatcouldturn out to be unending affection. Believing that we might be magic together because we were still fresh enough to be anything.
“The actuary,” I said, correcting him. “He stole me a pretzel bun.”
“Contraband buns, huh?” He let his hand drop to pick up a canister of gasoline. “Could never be me.”
He’d uttered that sentence to me a million times before, but tonight it sounded like a dare.
Chapter 14
Wet Ted Is a Certified Hot Person
Sunday, Now
The pile ofLincoln Logs comprising Wet Ted’s is just as I imagined it. Ted himself is a different story. Ted is a certified hot person. If this tall, tan man in a T-shirt three sizes too small and with a face chiseled by the gods told me he was actually a supermodel who angered a vengeful witch while posing in a woodsy aftershave campaign and was now trapped in the Minnesota wilderness through some sort of hot, male equivalent of a Rapunzel scenario, I’d believe him.
Beyond his looks, Ted has the kind of capable charisma you join a cult to follow, and after two hours in the van—where I was very busy not having deep, carnal feelings for my most unattainable friend—such explosive sex appeal is the last thing I need to be facing.
