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“I can’t breathe, but I’m not letting go,” she mumbled into the mattress. “Actually, I like this. I think I’ll stay here all night.”
Unfortunately for her, holding on to me from beneath wasn’t quite as easy, especially when she had to be getting weak from oxygen deprivation, so I managed to kick free and roll to the other side of the bed. I sat up against the headboard, catching my breath and eyeing her warily. “Stay back, demon.”
Growling, she pushed up on her hands and knees, crawling to sit a good two feet away from me against the headboard. Cheeks pink with righteous indignation, hair wild from our wrestling match, eyes narrowed with fury, Yael had never looked prettier.
So I told her. “You’ve never looked prettier than you do right now.”
Her eyes rolled. “I do not accept your compliment.”
Laughing, I let my head fall back with a clunk. “You have to. I won’t take it back.”
She crossed her arms and stared at me, the thoughts in her head clearly churning.
“What?” I shifted toward her. “Speak. Lay it on me.”
She pulled her knees up to her chin, her fingers curling around her toes. “A couple weeks after we first met, Mo showed you and a few guys from school old pictures of me. They said unkind things, but I waited for you to defend me.”
My heart screeched to a halt in my chest, then the bottom dropped out. “I laughed. You heard that?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I fucking hated that she heard that.
“I did hear.” She reached up and undid her hair, pulling it over one shoulder. As she methodically braided it, her eyes lifted to mine. “You broke my heart, Alex. Up until then, I thought we were new friends, destined to bebestfriends. Not after that, though. I could barely look at myself, much less you.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry. That’s why you stopped speaking to me and hung out with those dirtbags once school started?”
She wrapped her hairband around the end of the braid. “I didn’t speak to Moses for a week after that and he’s mybrother. It was awful of him to do that to me just to chase away his new friends who thought his little sister was pretty.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “I didn’t care what they thought. But you? It hurt me terribly. I suppose I haven’t quite let go of it.”
“I was sixteen, Yael. I had next to no friends and you and your brother burst into my life. It was like an embarrassment of riches. I hardly knew how to handle it. Mo collected a group of friends within days of moving to town, and he swooped me up into his collection.”
I rubbed at my forehead, bringing back those lonely summer days and the way my world changed when the Aronsons arrived.
“When he showed us those pictures of you, I was shocked you’d ever been anything less than perfect. My shock came out as laughter. And maybe I wanted to fit in for once in my damn life.” I grazed my knuckles across her knee. “I was an idiot.”
She nodded in agreement. “You chose Mo, just like I knew you would.”
I thought about it for a second, but I knew she was right. “I guess I did. I regret hurting you, and yeah, I’m hella wistful for what might have been, but Mo is my brother. How could I regret that?”
“If you’d been my high school boyfriend, we would have fizzled out and never seen each other again. Instead, I seem to be stuck with you for life.” She tried to sound disgruntled, but the curve of her mouth gave her away.
I ran the tip of my index finger down her perfectly straight nose. “I liked your old nose too.”
She tried to bite my finger, so I yanked it away, laughing. “Demon.”
“Dickpickle,” she countered.
“That sounds like a Haven insult.”
“It is and I love it.” She ran her own finger along her nose. “I liked it too, but getting a nose job at sixteen was like a rite of passage for our area of Long Island. My mom had hers done then, and she couldn’t have been more excited to take me for my surgery. I’m happy with the result, and I barely think about it anymore, but sometimes when I’ve had too many drinks, I pour one out for my bump.”
I gave a solemn nod. “RIP Yael’s old nose.”
She laughed. “You’re such a dick.”
“I know.” I shook my head, clearing it. “I gotta say I’m sorry again. Sixteen was a fucking rough age. The last thing you needed was a guy you trusted laughing at you. That tears me up inside.”
Fatigue wove through her sigh. “I think I forgive you.” She slid down in the bed, lying on her side. I did the same, facing in her direction.
A little bit of the light from the bathroom shone on her face, enough for me to see she wasn’t quite back to herself.
