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“This.” Andrew stretches behind me, reaching over my shoulder for something on the top shelf. I have no idea what he’s getting, and frankly, who cares. His hips press against my backside and I feel him. I mean—wow. He is very, very hard. My brain melts.
Miles must be focused on what Andrew’s reaching for, and thank God because I am entirely focused on the feeling of Andrew pressed against my butt. I did that.
I want that.
He pulls the object down and hands it to Miles, somehow managing to turn me in the process so I’m facing Miles and still standing in front of Andrew. Covering him. I remember he’s wearing sweatpants, and from the feel of things down there, his status would be difficult to hide.
Miles studies the object in his hands. “You were getting this . . . ceramic sombrero?”
At my brother’s words, I actually look at what Andrew’s handed him. The chips-and-salsa dish is ancient. It is absolutely covered in dust. I haven’t seen this thing in at least a decade.
“Yeah, Mae was feeling snacky.”
Andrew gently pinches my waist when I don’t immediately play along. “I was!”
“You can’t eat some chips and salsa from a regular bowl?”
Miles, just let this go!
“I was feeling festive?” I try.
He blinks, and grimaces. “You’re all red.”
“I am?”
“She is?” Andrew asks with restrained laughter as he turns back to the shelves. “I’ll grab the chips, Maisie.”
We’re so busted. Oh God, poor Miles. First the ketchup-mouthed boyfriend, and now this.
When I emerge from the pantry, Miles pulls me to the side. “Were you two kissing in there?”
“Of course not!” Seriously, this is mortifying. Why won’t my brother just read the room and leave? “We were doing dishes, and I got the munchies. Just—go back to bed.”
With a final skeptical glance into the pantry, Miles grabs a cup of water and shuffles back down to the basement.
Once I’m sure he’s gone, I look over to Andrew, who’s adjusting his sweats and grinning at me. “Well, that was awkward.”
“The most awkward that has ever existed.”
There’s something in his expression: like a curtain has been drawn open, revealing the next phase of our night of adventures.
“Oh.” I point at him and grin. “I sense a transition.”
He leans in conspiratorially. “I was thinking—”
“A very dangerous thing to do.”
“—that instead of hanging out in the kitchen and getting busted by our siblings, perhaps the lady would like to return with me to the Boathouse for a nightcap.”
“By ‘nightcap,’” I whisper back, “do you mean kissing with shirts off?”
He nods with playful gravitas. “Correct. And in the interest of transparency, I should tell you I don’t actually have any interesting nightcap options out there.”
I pretend to think this over, but inside I am doing a thousand backflips. “I want to go out there, on one condition.”
Immediately his expression shifts. “We don’t have to do anything you don—”
“You walk me back here afterward,” I interrupt, voice low. “There’s no way we would survive our mothers’ inquisition if I got busted sleeping out there, but I don’t want to walk back alone.”
A knowing gleam sparkles in his eyes. “Silence of the Lambs flashbacks?”
“One hundred percent.”
chapter nineteen
Outside, the sky is full, a deep ocean blue overrun with tiny, glimmering silver fish. The air is so sharp it takes a few breaths for my body to adapt, to clear out the dry indoor air. Two steps off the back porch, and Andrew’s hand comes over mine, fingers threading between as if he’s done it a thousand times.
“We never get skies like this at home,” I say.
“I forget how much I love it up here until I’m outside at night, and then it’s like whoa, yeah, it would be hard to give this up.”
A tiny strangled noise escapes me, and I turn it into a cough. “Maybe try to convince your parents to keep it?”
His quiet pause tells me that he probably won’t do that. “I just want them to do what works for them, you know?”
I reach up, running my free hand through my hair. The strands that come away are wound around and around, and I finger-flutter them away.
“You have so much hair,” he says quietly. “It’s so pretty.”
“It’s a pain. You should see my brushes.” The deep brown is all Mom, but its sheer density is from Dad’s side of the family.
“Think of all the birds’ nests you’ve helped build out here,” Andrew jokes.
I laugh, but as we move forward through the darkness, over snow that is illuminated blue and so cold we can walk across it without sinking in, a fear hits me like a brick of ice.
“I just want to say,” I begin, “before we get to the Boathouse, that if this ever feels weird or wrong, please just don’t stop talking to me. I promise I’ll be okay if you decide this isn’t what you want to do, but I wouldn’t be okay if you ignored me.”
