“You’re going to third-wheel constantly,” I tell her.
“Constantly,” she agrees. “But for the record, if you hold hands in front of me, I’m physically inserting myself between you.”
“We would expect nothing less,” Rowan says.
We end up back on Ivy’s blanket, and Ivy puts herself in the middle. “And this is how it will be for the rest of our natural lives, because otherwise… ick,” she says.
“That seems sustainable,” Rowan says.
As we talk and watch the rest of the soccer game, which has degraded into a four-on-six and pulled in the Frisbee guys and somebody’s golden retriever in on it, I can’t help looking at Rowan.
He’s sitting at his corner of the blanket, one knee up, and the sun is doing something obscene to the lines of his shoulders. He’s still shirtless because nobody told him to put a shirt back on and I’m certainly not going to be the one.
His hair is messy from the game, and every time he laughs at something Ivy says, something stupid and warm turns over in me. He catches me looking once and doesn’t say anything, just smiles and then goes back to listening to Ivy.
Ivy shifts, lying on her back with her head on my stomach. “Stop it,” she says.
“What?” I say.
“I can feel you ogling my brother,” she says.
“I am not ogling.”
“Your stomach got tense.”
“That’s because your skull is on my diaphragm.”
“Mm.”
She doesn’t move. After a minute her hand finds my hand on the blanket and squeezes it. I squeeze back, and she hums once, satisfied, and that’s the whole conversation. It’s the quietest and most meaningful conversation I’ve had at Halden yet.
Rowan’s hand finds the edge of my knee — just his fingertips, light enough that Ivy doesn’t notice or pretends not to. I turn toward it, and we stay like that while the shadows get longer.
Only then does it sink in fully that I’m lying on a blanket in public in September with a boy I chose in front of everyone and my best friend’s head warm on my stomach, and the world didn’t end.
I’m here.
I’m visible.
I’m alright.
Then Ivy says, “If you guys break up I’m keeping her.”
“Fair,” Rowan says.
fifteen
ROWAN
I’min the best mood I’ve been in since I got to Halden.
Sitting in the locker room, I’ve got a smile on my face, the way I have for most of the last four days since Sloane walked across fifty yards of open grass and kissed my cheek in front of everyone.
And nobody has let me forget it.
“Rowan Hale’s girlfriend,” Luca announced at dinner at Ironwood House on Monday, pulling out Sloane’s chair, “may I interest you in tonight’s special?”
“Is it pasta again?” Sloane had said, sitting down and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Has it improved?”
