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“He wasn’t supposed to be riding.” He pulls at the rip in his pants with the hand that isn’t around me. “I told him to wait. I said I’d watch him. He didn’t listen.” He lowers his head and rubs his eyebrows. “And then I heard you yelling.”
I grab his hand to silence him. I know what happened. I don’t want to hear it again. My hand feels cold on his.
“If you’re trying to blame yourself for this whole thing,” I say, making up the words as I go along, hoping they come out right. “You can’t. It’s not your fault.”
He’s silent for a while. My cheek gets sticky pressed against his bare skin. I peel my face off him and sit back. He moves his arm from around me and stretches it. “Hey while you’re at it,” I ask, staring at the outline of his six-pack abs, “Can you put on a shirt?”
He laughs, and pulls a shirt off a hanger in his closet. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He slips the black T-shirt over his head. “You have a boyfriend. That was totally inappropriate of me.”
“Huh?” I blurt out, like the idiot that I am. Of course he thinks I have a boyfriend. I pretty much told him that the other day.
Fully-Dressed Ash is much easier to look at than Half-Naked Ash. Now I can think without that clouded fuzz in my mind that only allows me to see muscles and smirky half-smiles. And right now Ash looks at me from across his room, hand behind his head. He probably wants
to know why I just yelped “huh?” like some ghastly Scooby-Doo impersonator.
I confess while staring at his floor. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” His carpet is dark blue with a bleach stain under the window. “I never really did.”
The wall creaks as he leans against it. I steal a glance at him. He doesn’t look upset. If anything, he’s amused. “Okay,” he says, the cynical amusement still on his face.
“That day,” I begin, the day you asked me on a date…I shake the thought away. “I wasn’t officially dating anyone. I mean, not yet.”
“What about now? What are you officially now?” He’s like a cop interrogating me. I look right in his eyes, hoping it proves my good character.
“Nothing.”
He doesn’t say anything. Why won’t he say anything? I blew my chance of dating Ash a few days ago, and now I just humiliated myself for nothing. He’s going laugh any second now, tell me it’s too bad I didn’t choose him and then give me the finger and say see you in hell.
Okay, it probably won’t be that dramatic.
My heartbeat quickens. I don’t want to be rejected by him, in his own room. My fingers twist into knots. “I should go.” I don’t mean it, but I say it anyway. I’m pretty sure no one ever means those words in situations like this.
“Maybe I’ll ask again one day.” Ash leaves the wall and stands in front of me. “When my brother is better.” He holds out his hand and helps me to my feet. “Once I find a way to pick up the pieces of my shattered ego and all.”
If I say anything it will come out the wrong way, so I keep silent and let him walk me down the hallway and out the front door. Shelby is still in her room, and Mrs. Carter is no longer in the kitchen.
He takes me to my truck where I’m finally able to find my voice.
“I’d like that,” I say. We’re face to face now. Well, I’m face to chest. A bright yellow-green light flutters past my face and disappears. “Did you see that?”
He nods. “Fireflies.”
Several more fly all around us, lighting up for a brief instant then turning dark once more. The one by my head lights up again, but this time it’s in front of Ash. He swoops it his hand and catches it. He cups his other hand around it, encasing it in a little ball. We watch it light up, go dark, then light up again in the circle between his thumbs. The little glowing light only lasts for a few seconds, but those few seconds are mesmerizing.
“They’re romantic,” I say.
Ash nods. “We used to squish off their tails right as they started glowing-”
My lip curls. “Ew.”
“-and then we’d smear the goo on our arms and it would keep glowing for a few hours while we played ninjas.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not romantic.”
He releases the little bug and brushes dreadlocks out of his face. We’re only inches away now, close enough for him to do something sweet like kiss my forehead. He opens the truck door for me. I climb in, still grasping onto hope that he may do something, anything sweet. He glances back at his house and the pain returns to his eyes. He isn’t thinking about forehead kisses or whispering romantic nothings in my ear. He’s thinking about his brother who, at this moment, is in a coma at the local hospital.
“Drive safely, Hana.”
Chapter 11
