Page 101 of Love Felt Like This

“Oh, all the time. There’s a lake nearby that’s pretty nice in the summer.”

“Why weren’t you invited?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Like I said, always working. Also…it felt risky.”

“Says the girl getting caught in the theater.”

“It’s different,” she says.

“Don’t see how.”

She raises her chin, singsonging, “Well, you and I are very different people, then.”

“Maybe. But I like your kind of person.”

“The person who can’t even take a risky swim?” she asks.

“What makes it so risky? Truly?”

“Well, if we got caught—”

“We?” I tease.

Her face goes the deepest red.

“N-not you and me,” she corrects. “Just…the bigger…universal we.”

“Uh-huh. Beverly, are you considering that we go skinny-dipping?”

“You are such a—”

“Butt?”

She laughs and reaches out to push my shoulder. I’m chuckling, too, grabbing Beverly’s arm mid-swing and holding it at a distance. But then both our laughs fade into silence as we sit side by side with her arm held in my palm.

I think we realize at the same time just how close we are.

Our eyes trace over each other. Her flushed cheeks, pink in little patches across her smooth skin. That little freckle beside her eye, slightly darker than the rest. They’re intricate details of her face that I haven’t had the privilege of seeing before, now being digested intimately.

I notice for the first time how her green eyes swirl with color. Character is traced through every circle—rings of a tree, years of life embedded in every shade and tint of pine and moss, like the forest outside.

We both lower our arms at the same time, shifting her skin under my palm, leaving behind brushes of silk. I trace my thumb up to her wrist and over her pulse. It’s absolutely racing. Instinctively, my fingers start tapping out a beat erratically. I’m keeping time with her heart. It’s a rushing, rhythmic need.

I swallow, watching her lips part. They shimmer with something glossy. It smells like berries. I let out a low involuntary hum, and my small sound makes us both raise our eyebrows. It says everything I don’t realize I’m thinking.

I want to kiss Beverly Lark.

Deeply.

Desperately.

Hopelessly.

I want to curl my palm against the nape of her neck and capture her for myself—to feel her smooth hair in my hand and the heat of her breath against my lips. I want to consume that laughter and devour those smiles. I want her light to radiate through me in a bursting sunbeam that rips through my dull clouds and pulls me to heaven.

I like Beverly Lark. I like her eccentricities and her ’70s fashion. I like her silly character voices. Her kindness. Her smile. Her laugh.

She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met.