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“How long have you been here?”
“Maybe forty minutes now?”
“Forty fucking minutes?” I asked in fucking disbelief that this chick had been sitting here in the cold for nearly an hour for me. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
She shrugged shyly and looked at the concrete. “I didn’t want to bother you because you seemed to be having a good time. You always seem so pissed off that it was kinda nice, seeing you so … I don’t know … happy?”
After a couple moments, I clutched Vera’s wrist tighter and stepped closer to her. The heat from her skin was fucking contagious because my entire body warmed. “You’re really here for me?”
She shifted from foot to foot and glanced down at my hand circled around her smaller wrist. Once she slipped herself out of my hold, she teetered from foot to foot, her cheeks flaming red. “I was just, um …” She paused, then gulped. “Yeah, I’m here for you.”
Warmth spread through my chest, my heart racing. Part of me couldn’t believe that she was here, standing in front of me, because … she’d wanted to see me. Nobody ever really wanted to see me for me.
Every second that I didn’t respond to her, Vera blushed even harder. “Uh, are you here with someone else?” she said, glancing over my shoulder at my longboard and phone on the other side of the skatepark. “You have another board with you, and, uh, you were talking with a girl.”
My lips curled into a smirk.Is she jealous?
“I’m here alone,” I reassured, grabbing her hand again and walking around the bowl toward the bench with my board on the other side of the park. My stomach felt so light and fluttery—something I hadn’t ever experienced. “If you wanna ride, that’s a longboard. It’s easier than a skateboard. You’d probably have fun with it.”
When we reached my stuff, I turned off the recording on my phone and tucked it away into my jeans pocket. Then, I picked up the longer board and set it down in front of her. It must’ve been nearly twice the size of the skateboard that she had used the other night.
Staring down at it with wide eyes, she shook her head. “Maybe some other time. There are far too many people here. I’d probably run into someone.”
I placed my foot on the board. “We don’t have to ride it here. We can leave.”
Still, she seemed hesitant. “I have to work in a little bit. I should probably be going soon.”
But I didn’t want her to leave. Not yet. Literally moments ago, I’d found out that she was here because of me becauseshe’d wanted to see me. And while there was a small voice in my head that said she might’ve wanted something from me like everyone else did, I ignored it.
Vera tugged her jacket together and zipped it up as far as it could go. “It’s getting cold.”
“Let me drive you.”
She shook her head. “No, no. You’re having fun. Don’t let me stop you.”
“I was about to leave the park anyway.”Lie. “I’m driving you to work.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, stuffing her hands into her pockets.
Once I gathered my stuff, I grabbed her hand and led her to my car. She slipped into the passenger seat as I deposited my shit into the trunk. Vera rubbed her hands together when I started the car.
“So, were you recording your skateboarding tricks?” she asked on our drive toward the library. “You had your phone out.”
“Yeah.”
“For what?”
“I, uh”—I slid my palm across the wheel’s leather curve—“have a YouTube channel.”
“You run a YouTube channel for skateboarding?” she asked, eyes widening. She pulled out her phone and tapped on the YouTube app. “Really? What’s it called?”
I drew my tongue across my teeth and gripped the steering wheel tighter. I hadn’t shown anyone my YouTube channel. No family. No fake friends. Nobody at Redwood Academy. It was my thing that nobody knew about.
“Come on. Tell me,” Vera teased. “Or is Redwood’s bad boy embarrassed about it?”
When I pulled to a stop in front of the library, I grabbed her phone and typed in the name of my channel—because I didn’t want to ruin what was slowly forming between us. She barely trusted me as it was.
She stared at the screen with wide eyes. “You really do have one,” she whispered, scrolling through the hundred videos that I had posted. “And almost two hundred thousand followers. Jesus, Blaise.”
