Rules for Being a Girl

“Kind of boring,” Gray says, though I’m not entirely sure if he means the potluck or Hurley’s; either way, he leaves out the part about Jacob and the algae pond. “We’re gonna get some food and go upstairs.”

“Door open!” Heather calls after us, and Gray makes a face for my benefit.

“Noted!” he calls back. Then, more quietly, “Jesus Christ, Mom.”

“We heard that!” Heather yells.

We head into the kitchen, which looks like it was recently redone, with stainless appliances and a big window above the sink overlooking the yard.

“Can I ask you something?” I say, hopping up onto a stool. “Do you call both your moms ‘Mom’?”

That makes him smile. “I mean, yeah,” he says, opening a box of Cheez-Its and digging out a bright-orange handful. “What else would I call them?”

“No, I just mean, how do you keep them straight?”

Gray gives me a weird look, like possibly he’s never stopped to think about it before. “Well, I mean, there’s only two of them,” he says. “And my sister always just kind of . . . knows which one I’m talking about? I don’t know. I didn’t think it was weird until right this minute, so thanks for that, I guess.”

“You’re welcome,” I say with a smile, taking the box of crackers from his outstretched hand. “Also, I gotta say—obviously I don’t know them, but those guys don’t seem like the type to get super worked up over whether you play lacrosse in college.”

Gray’s eyes narrow. “In the five minutes you talked to them?” he asks pointedly, and I can tell I’ve hit a nerve.

“Okay, fine,” I say, “Fair enough.”

“They just . . . want me to be a college guy, that’s all.” Gray shrugs. “And if I can’t get in on my grades, then . . .” He trails off. “I don’t know,” he says, picking the box of Cheez-Its up off the counter and using it to usher me out of the kitchen. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You will,” I promise, and follow him up the stairs.

Gray’s room is less of a surprise than the rest of the house, with white walls and bluish carpet and a signed Tom Brady jersey hanging in a poster frame above the desk. The bed is unmade, with rumpled flannel sheets melting off the edge of it. Gray scoops a pair of boxers off the floor and chucks them into the closet, looking goofily embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he says. “If I knew you were coming—” He breaks off, seeming to think about it for a moment. “Well, no, honestly. I probably still would have been a total slob.”

“Monster,” I tease, glancing around the room at the half-empty water glasses clustered on every available surface, paperbacks for book club stacked haphazardly on the desk. On the dresser is a photo of his moms standing on either side of a little boy with a slightly uneven bowl cut, his front teeth bucked like a cartoon character’s.

“Oh my gosh,” I say, reaching for it before I can stop myself. “Is this you?”

“Nah,” Gray says immediately, “it’s just some other little kid I keep pictures of in my bedroom.”

“Shut up,” I tell him, completely unable to keep the grin off my face. “You were cute.”

“I was . . . desperately in need of a haircut and twelve thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontia,” Gray counters, sitting down on the edge of the bed and leaning back on his palms. “That picture keeps me humble.”

“Oh, right,” I say seriously, crossing the carpet to stand between his knees, his shoulders warm and broad and solid underneath my hands. “Because otherwise your ego would just explode all over the place, huh?”

“Oh, totally out of control,” Gray confirms with a smile. “I mean, what with my athletic achievements, my outstanding academic record—”

“Your legendary prowess with the ladies,” I put in.

“I’m also tall,” he says, curling his fingers around my waist and pulling me closer. “Don’t forget about that.”

“I would never,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around his neck and angling my face down until he gets the message and kisses me. I breathe a tiny sigh against his mouth. We’ve done this enough over the last few weeks that it’s starting to feel normal, which isn’t to say the thrill of it has worn off—the opposite, actually. Kissing Gray isn’t like anything else I’ve ever done. It’s not that I never enjoyed myself, fooling around with Jacob, but the truth is I never totally got what the big deal was. Half the time in my head I’d be somewhere else entirely—worrying over a missed problem on that morning’s calc test, replaying an argument with my mom—and I don’t think he ever actually noticed.

With Gray I feel achingly, deliciously alert.

Eventually he eases us back onto the mattress, the smell of detergent and sleep and boy all around me. The door is still open, but his room is far enough from the top of the stairs that the effect is the same as if we were the only ones in the house. Gray’s fingertips creep up under the hem of my T-shirt, touching the sensitive skin of my waist and tracing the very bottom of my rib cage. I shiver, and Gray’s eyes fly open.

“This okay?” he asks, gaze searching.

I pull back and look at him for a moment, hit by that sudden zing of recognition I never felt before.