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“Ah, the wrong twin.” He didn’t sound upset as he gave me another well-placed shove, tone more thoughtful. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
I couldn’t come up with an answer that was actually okay to say aloud, so instead, I answered his question with one of my own. “Do you sneak away to the park often at night?” The air was colder as he pushed me forward again, goosebumps beginning to dot along my legs. “Rachel says you take walks at night. I saw you once, you know.”
“And you didn’t follow me?”
“Hey, I didn’t know what you were sneaking off to do. I wasn’t sure if it was worth the risk to find out.”
Reed stepped to the side of the swing to peer at me, corners of his eyes crinkling. “What was one of your theories?”
Going over to Cindy’s late at night.“I thought you might’ve joined a demonic cult that only met when the sun went down. I was afraid I’d be a human sacrifice.”
“We only meet on full moons.”
I stared up at the half-circle in the sky. “Phew.”
“I do come here sometimes, though,” he answered after a moment, coming around in front of me. He was in the direct path for the moonlight to illuminate the high points of his face, eyes bright. “Or walk the block. It helps me unwind, I guess.”
“I’m surprised no one’s called the cops on you yet.” I lifted my thumb to my ear and put my pinky to my mouth. “‘Hello, officer? There’s a random man sitting on the swing set across the street.’”
Reed pushed his palms against my knees, shoving me backward with a shake of his head. “You’re such a dweeb, you know that?”
Even though the conversation was light, something about it didn’t feel right—like we were dancing around a serious topic. One that I couldn’t pick up on. “So why are you so wound up at night? Why do you have to leave the house?”
There was something unguarded about him, like this was a new side of himself I’d yet to see. It was then that I realized somethingwasn’tright, especially once he opened his mouth. “My thoughts don’t really shut down at night. I can’t stop thinking. Usually when I walk, I can calm down enough to fall asleep.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“A lot of things.” Reed watched as my pendulum slowed down, tracing the movement. “My mom, my dad, football, school…other stuff.”
“Cindy,” I supplied.
He didn’t deny it. “And you.”
Don’t let it get to you, I scolded my fluttering heart. “How many times do I have to tell you not to worry about me?”
Reed caught the chains of my swing and broke my momentum mid-swing, and for a moment, he did nothing but grip me close. “I’ll always worry about you.”
I wanted to tell him that I hated the idea of him worrying about me. Thinking about me in that way. When Reed Manning thought of me, I wanted it to be because hewantedto, not because he was worried about how I was handling my life drama. I didn’t want him to think about me the way he’d worry about Rachel. I wanted to fit into a different category of his life. And I hated myself for wanting it.
Reed brought me forward and eased me back once more, simultaneously saying, “I’m the one that caught my dad cheating.”
At once, I slammed my feet down into the sand, my foam flip-flops bending and filling with granules that scraped into my skin. I ground to a halt, inches from Reed, staring up into his eyes. “What?”
“I found them,” he repeated, reaching out and trailing his fingers down the cold chain. “Last summer. Football practice ended early when it started raining, and I came home to see that my dad had a woman over. Mom was at work and Rachel was with you. They were in the living room.” The emotionless way he recited it made me worry, especially pairing with the distant look in his eye. “He tried to lie about it at first, but they were… Well, they were how we were in the kitchen that night, I guess. Obvious.”
It was the first time that bringing up that night didn’t give me butterflies; they were too stunned by his story.Obvious.“Rachel said that he came clean on his own.”
“She doesn’t know I found them. Neither does my mom. I told him to tell Mom or I would, and he did.” Reed didn’t look at me, almost as if he wasn’t allowed to. “Sometimes at night, I think about it. Thinking about him. That’s why I need to get out of the house sometimes. Just to forget everything.”
I laid my hand down on top of his, the warmth of his fingers seeping into the coolness of mine. Desperately, I wanted nothing more than to say the right thing. The thing that would make him smile, make him laugh, that would take this heavy situation off of him. I’d been the shoulder Rachel had to cry on, but did Reed have one?
When had he become someone I didn’t want to see in pain? When had he added himself to my collection of special people?
It was a painful moment when Reed pulled his hand away. Almost like he was sheering off a layer of skin. I curled my fingers inward, trying to savor as much of the heat as I could. “Should we head back?” he asked, slipping his phone from his pocket to check the time. “It’s getting close to eleven.”
“Five more minutes,” I said, digging my feet into the sand and propelling myself backward. “Swing with me. Let’s see who can go higher.”
Reed did not have to be told twice. He fell into the swing beside me and started to build the momentum to hit a higher apex than me. We both pumped our legs, trying to outdo the other, our amusement echoing in the dark air. The swings trembled with the weight of two grown teenagers on it, but we didn’t care. We were two kids in that moment, stealing a moment of anonymity that came in the cover of night. He wasn’t Rachel’s brother in that moment, or the boy who’d asked someone else to homecoming, or even the boy that lived across the street my entire life—he was Reed Manning, and for this moment, he was mine.
