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“B-because I’ve got a crush on you,” I blurt out.
I don’t know why I said that.
But then again, what else could I have said?
Plus I don’t think he’s going to let it go. So the best course of action is to just tell him — a very mild version of the truth — and leave.
Although my answer has only managed to tighten his grip on me and bring him closer as he murmurs, “Is that right?”
Something about his eyes and the way he’s watching me makes goosebumps rise on my skin, and with trembling breaths, I say, “B-but I can see that my following you around — I’m still not calling it stalking, no matter what you say — has caused you distress. So I won’t do it anymore. And if you —”
“You won’t anymore,” he says, his eyes narrowed now.
“No, I won’t,” I say, promising that to myself as well.
Because honestly, that way only lies betrayal of my brother and heartbreak. So it’s best that I quit now before it goes any further. And God forbid he finds out who I really am.
“So if you just let me go, I can get out of here and —”
“No.”
“What?”
“Not letting you go.”
I look at his fingers on my bicep again before going back to him. “But you just said that you would.”
“I lied.”
My heart’s pounding in my chest. “Ledger, let me go or —”
“Not yet.” He squeezes my flesh. “Krista.”
“I swear —”
“Not until I tell you that I’ve been watching you too.”
I freeze. “What?”
For the third time tonight, his gaze sweeps over my features. He takes me in but this time it feels lazier, his perusal. Slow and deliberate. As if he’s cataloging things about me and my face.
“Especially your eyes,” he says a few moments later.
“M-my eyes.”
“Yeah.” Then, squinting his own as he looks into mine, he continues, “Which I thought were gray, but they’re not.”
“They… They’re not?”
“Not all the time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sometimes,” he tells me, still looking into my eyes, “they are blue.”
“I don’t think that’s true. My eyes have always been g-gray.”
Something that I share with my brother.
Along with our dark hair.
“Mostly in the sunlight,” he says though, breaking into my thoughts.
“Oh,” I breathe out.
“Or when you laugh.”
“I —”
“Which is pretty much all the time, isn’t it?”
“Well, uh, I-I think so?” It comes out as a question but I don’t know what else to say.
He hums. “Especially when you’re eating cotton candy.”
“You know that?” I say, again stupidly because hasn’t he just admitted to watching me?
“Which again is pretty much all the time, isn’t it?”
“I l-love cotton candy.”
I love you.
Do you also love me?
Is that why he’s been watching me?
Oh my God he’s been watching me.
Me.
All this time.
All this freaking time, and oh my fucking God, please tell me it means what I think it means.
Please tell me it means that he’s…
“And then there’s your dark freckle,” he says, dropping his eyes down to the side of my neck. “Siting right at your pulse. Beating like a heart.”
“What about it?”
“Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not.”
“How’s that possible? How —”
“Sometimes your long, thick, endless hair hides it. But then sometimes you’ll flip your hair or the breeze will whip it back, like right now, and there it is. Like a hidden fucking diamond that I can’t look away from. Can’t look away from you. From how fast your heart is beating.”
Since he’s still looking at that spot, I know that he knows.
Exactly how fast my heart’s beating.
The answer to which is very fast.
Extremely fast.
My heart is going supersonic in this moment.
It’s going so fast through time and space that it may disappear at any moment.
That I may disappear at any moment.
So without volition, my hands go to his t-shirt — a faded navy thing that makes you think more of punk rock and electric guitars than of soccer players, but I guess that’s why it looks so good on him — and hold on lest I vanish from this surreal moment.
“L-Ledger,” I whisper on a broken breath when he doesn’t say anything.
It makes him snap his eyes up.
As if waking up from a dream.
As if he didn’t like that I woke him up.
He wanted to keep staring at my mole, my hair. He wanted to keep sleeping and dreaming.
“And then,” he continues, picking up the thread of conversation. “Then there’s you.”
“Me.”
“And your tight-as-fuck dresses and sky-high heels.”
He says it so violently, so angrily that I can’t help but reply, “There’s nothing wrong with my dresses or my heels.”
“No,” he says with clenched teeth. “Except your dresses can barely contain your tight ass and your heels make it look even tighter. And when you strut down the street in something that can barely contain you and makes you look twice as juicy, the entire town has to stop what they’re doing and watch you. The entire town has to stop and hear you go click-click-click down the street. They have to nail their eyes on your curvy little body, watching it bounce and jiggle as you pass them by. Watching that gap between your thighs, probably placing bets on who gets to stick their hand up there first. Or maybe stick it down from the top. Because it’s not as if your dresses are doing a better job of hiding your tits either. In fact, if anything,” his eyes go down to my chest, “your dresses lift them and offer them up like candies for every hungry motherfucker out there.”
