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Suddenly, I could hear my cell phone start to go off where I’d left it in my coat pocket. I stiffened immediately, turning toward the doorway, wondering who’d be calling me.
But when I glanced over my shoulder, I found Harry with his cell phone in his hand, and it lit up with a call being placed.
Everything in me froze.
“You gonna get that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows a bit expectantly. Recognition flared in his eyes now, blazing like a fire threatening to burn my cheeks.
Completely frozen. I didn’t even think I was breathing. “T-That’s not mine.”
Purposefully, Harry tapped his thumb on his phone screen. Instantly, my cell stopped ringing.
“And here I thought I was losing my mind,” he said with his normal teasing lilt, his expression still unreadable as he slid his phone into his pocket. “You should’ve seen me Saturday night. I almost couldn’t place the face, but you do have the prettiest eyes.”
Suddenly, it felt like a balloon popped inside me. That door I’d been shoving closed flung wide, knocking the wind right out of me. “I—I’ve heard that before.”
“By some handsome suave, no doubt.”
He’d said the words with a straight face, but a startled, nervous laugh burst out of me. “Hewaspretty cute.”
His blue eyes looked deeper, and embarrassment struck, itchy and warm in my veins, as if he were analyzing every part of me. I held still, waiting for the judgment. “Destelle,” Harry said, the name sounding like a delicate song on his lips. “Stella. I can see the connection.”
“I—It’s such a long story,” I hurried to say, certain I was moments away from him pulling back, moments away from him writing me off as some weirdo. “It really started as an outlet. Like, normal me wears pink, but Stella can wear black, that kind of thing. Margot calls her my alter ego, which sounds weird. But, I guess, in a way she is? I like her, though. Stella, I mean. I like that I can be whatever I want when I’m her, you know?”
Harry blinked at me for a moment before he bent down to place his paint roller in the tray, movements slow.
“I know. It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassing.”
“Not embarrassing,” Harry quickly contradicted, and finally a sliver of emotion slipped through: amusement. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a nervous fast-talker, but dang. I think a few of those words clocked eighty miles an hour.”
A part of me was relieved that he made a joke, but another part of me wondered if he was only trying to deflect the situation because it really freaked him out.
“So this…” he trailed off, taking a step toward me. “Thisis the real you?”
“I’m not as fascinating as Stella,” I told him, gripping my roller tightly, feeling like I wanted to blend into the wall. “Not edgy and cool. I’m not someone you’d be interested in.”
“I don’t know. That sheet’s pretty edgy and cool if you ask me.” Harry took another step until he stood right in front of me, those blue eyes peering into mine. Almost as if he looked into my soul, not seeing Destelle, not seeing Stella. Just seeing me. He reached out, and with a gentle finger, he traced the collar Pastor Liam carved into the sheet. “So dressing differently makes you Stella?”
“Stella’s a kind of mindset,” I said, swallowing hard. “She’s confident and fun. Destelle would never have gotten up onstage with you at Crushed Beanz. Destelle, she…she never would’ve gone up to you at Downtown. Destelle’s a chicken. The clothes…well, they help me get into character, so to speak.”
Okay, yeah, I guess it was super weird that I talked about myself in the third person. I didn’t know how else to explain it.
His finger moved up to touch my cheekbone, drawing a soft, invisible line along my skin. I fought back a shiver. “So, does Stella want to take the summer to travel, or is that Destelle?”
“Both,” I whispered. “But Stella made me want the freedom more.”
He nodded a little in thought, corners of his lips twitching. “And was it Stella or Destelle who thought I was cute?”
My parted lips twitched into the tiniest of smiles. “Both.”
Harry’s eyes coasted over me once more, slowly taking in every part of me. “Honestly, I have to admit, the wig makes you look pretty sexy.”
Sexy. He called me sexy. While I was holding a paint roller.
He called me sexy in achurch.
“Then again,” he went on, one corner of his lips lifting. He swiped his thumb along the top of my cheekbone, the touch a whisper of contact. “You look beautiful without the wig too.”
Something about the way he called Stella sexy and Destelle beautiful made the butterflies in my chest take flight. I wasn’t sure why the distinction felt so important, so immensely world-changing, but it did. “You don’t think I’m a weirdo?”
