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“Joel, for God’s sake, stop! What’s wrong with you?”
Anna really chased me all this way? She’s panting for breath too but she looks like less of a wreck than I do. Maybe she works out for real. I can imagine that. I can see her in her home gym, following her own personal routine, carefully paying attention to her body and how to tune it to perfection.
That’s how I know this has driven me loopy because I promised myself I wouldn’t think about her body. I wouldn’t imagine her in less than she’s wearing. I won’t.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, wiping sweat out of my eyes. They sting like crazy. “I’m sorry, I just. Cameras. Reporters. Didn’t want to be seen.”
“It wasn’t reporters, Joel!” she yells, angrier than I’ve ever seen her. Or maybe it’s concern? I can’t think straight. My head’s such a mess so I hold it in my hands because that’s the only thing I can think to do.
“The cameras! Didn’t you hear them? They were coming for us.”
“You fucking idiot.” She marches right up to me and says sharply, “It. Wasn’t. Reporters.”
“They want me,” I moan. “They want us. They’ll get you too.”
Anna sighs hard, still out of breath from our run. Then she gets really close to me and I think for a second that she’s about to slap me. But her voice is gentler now, more worried. “Listen to me, okay? It wasn’t reporters. We were on Jubilee Boulevard, there’s like seven fancy hotels down there with those big balconies, yeah? People get married there all the time. It was a wedding photoshoot. That’s what the cameras were.”
Her words both make sense and swim right through me like an unintelligible fog. She doesn’t know what they’re like. She doesn’t need to get caught up in gossip columns and intrusive exposés. I don’t want them to ruin her life like they ruin mine.
She stares hard at me, seeing that she isn’t getting through. She places her hand on my shoulder and that’s like fire too, except good fire, a kind of warm blaze that feels like sitting on a beach on a summer evening, like roasted marshmallows and camp songs. “Joel, are you okay?”
All I can do is shake my head and breathe ragged gasps. I hate that she’s seeing me like this. It’s pathetic. That’s all she’s seen of me, a pathetic, stupid, selfish loser who takes every damn thing for granted and believed the best in me when no one else has and is going to go and leave just like everyone else. She’s going to leave me even though she’s the best thing that’s happened to me in years. Her friendship has fixed something in me, made me feel like I’m more than just my father’s disappointment.
Now she’s seeing me as I truly am again — that scared idiot who falls on the floor and screams when someone challenges him for assuming he has a right to be there. What right do I even have to call myself her friend? What chance is there that she’s going to want anything to do with me at all once she leaves? What hope is there for me?
And then she does the thing I’m least expecting.
She rolls her eyes at me — which is pretty standard by now — then squares herself up like she’s going to hit me. I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing for the impact, but instead she grabs my coat and drags me towards her until her lips crash into mine and she’s kissing me.
She’s kissing me.
She’skissingme?
I snap back to reality to make sure this isn’t imaginary because it’s definitely the kind of figment my imagination would cook up just to taunt me. But no, it isn’t. It’s incredibly real. Anna Romero is kissing me.
So I do the only thing that makes sense as soon as the shock wears off and I can move my limbs again. I wrap my arms around her back, hug her tight to me and kiss her back. She tastes of chocolate and smells like sweat and it’s the sweetest combination I’ve ever experienced. It’s raw. Unfiltered. There’s no pretending.
It’s just her lips on mine and my tongue in her mouth and our hands in each other’s hair and my heart exploding in my chest and I think I might be moaning an embarrassing amount because of how much I like the way we’re kissing, like we’re fifteen and we’ve just learned what making out is.
I don’t ever, ever want this moment to end. I’m glad I’m stone cold sober because it means I won’t forget. Even if this is it, I won’t forget it.
I don’t want it to end but it has to because we both need air to live.
She pulls away from me, her lips shining and her eyes wide, breathing hard. She’s so gorgeous and I want to kiss her again. I want to kiss her forever.
But we don’t.
We don’t say a word, frozen by what just happened, what it might mean.
Eventually, we both pull ourselves together, and walk in silent agreement to the nearest subway station where we sit on the train and leave a deliberate pocket of air between our legs and hands, staring forward, listening to the screeching of metal wheels on the tracks, to the people nearby chattering words I can’t understand, to the crackling automated announcement counting down the stops to the one we need.
I’ve never taken a ride that felt so long.
When we get home, she unlocks the door and doesn’t look at me or hesitate as she rushes towards her room and slams the door behind her, leaving me standing in the middle of the floor, alone.
CHAPTER18
ANNA
