Page 67
I wonder if there’s a scientific reason that people get butterflies near their crush.
Because I might be sick if they keep batting around in my chest.
The bathroom door opens. Daniel comes out with his face a little damp, like he washed it, and he doesn’t come back to my bed. He crosses to his own bed and hops up on the edge, picking up the book he just slammed shut.
I look at the indent where he sat on my comforter and then at him.
Something is wrong.
Did I sit too close? I shifted back because my back was getting stiff and then my knee was resting on his leg, and I left it there because it felt good. Granted, I didn’t ask. I just did it. But now he’s over there and I’m over here.
It has to be something I did.
I put my pen in the middle of my book, rolling it across the page, before rolling it to the outside again.
“Is the material hard?” I ask, because homework is a safe subject.
“What?”
“You slammed it shut.”
“Oh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “No. I just—needed a second. Headache.”
His voice doesn’t sound like a headache voice. That’s the avoiding-me voice. I’ve heard it once before, when he left at six and said he was practicing with Blue.
My stomach drops in a way that makes the butterflies feel like they are dying one by one.
“Did I do something?”
“No.”
Well, that reply was too fast.
I stare at my page and don’t read it. Silence stretches between us. He turns a page and scoots farther onto his bed, his legs straight out in front of him, knee crooked up, and a single foot propped on the blanket beneath him. I count to sixty. Then ninety. The butterflies are gone. In their place is the old tight feeling, the one I get when a room has too many people in it, and the exit isn’t close enough.
I should really let it go. He said no. I chew on my lower lip and keep my eyes on the book in my lap. Nerves swirl in my stomach at the thought of opening my mouth and asking again. Or insisting I know something is wrong.
“Daniel.”
He looks up.
“Uh, yeah.” He glances at the space between us like he’s only just noticed it. “You were really into your reading. I didn’t want to crowd you.”
“You weren’t crowding me.” I swallow. My entire face feels hot. “If my knee on your leg was too much, I can not do that. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
His face does something complicated. “Quinn. You didn’t make me move.”
“You left.”
He huffs a breath that isn’t quite a laugh and sets the book down. “Okay. Fair. I left. It wasn’t because you did anything wrong.”
“Then why are you all the way over there?”
He looks at me for a long second. It’s the careful look, the same one from the morning after tequila, when he said I was perfectly sane and his eyes didn’t agree.
“Because if I sit next to you right now I’m going to stop caring about homework,” he says.
Oh. Oh.
