Chasing Ivy (Oak Hill 1)

“You don’t?”

Shadows from the night sky imprinted themselves along his chiseled face, the same face that I’d always turn to when I was upset about something. The same face that made me laugh and gave me comfort, and maybe a little something else, to

o.

“Not really. I thought I did, but I realized that he doesn’t really give me all those swoony butterflies that girls always feel when they’re around a boy they truly like.” You know, like I feel when I’m with you sometimes. I laughed again, turning my attention to the ever-expanding trees in front of us. “Like, every girl who’s ever around you probably has those butterflies.”

“Do you?”

I paused. My entire body stilled. Even my breathing. Can he read minds?!

“Why are you asking me that?” I whispered, heartrate accelerating to an alarming rate. What the heck is going on!

He let out a raspy chuckle. “I don’t know, never mind.”

And…just like that, my heartrate decreased dramatically.

“So what’s really wrong?”

He answered, “Nothin’.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know you way better than that, idiot. What’s wrong, Peanut?” He chuckled at my nickname for him.

One time, my dad had called us Peanut Butter and Jelly because we were literally stuck together all summer, the summer after my eighth grade year. We’d spend most of our days in my backyard, fixing up the old treehouse that my dad had built Mia and I when we were in grade school. It was the summer that all of our friends had told us we were weird for being so close – no one ever quite understood our friendship. Sometimes even I didn’t. It’s not often that girls and guys can be best friends like us, so yeah, we were like one in a million.

After I giggled, taunting him with the name Peanut again, I paused and pulled my phone out of my hoodie pocket. I scrolled down to the last tweet I’d seen before coming to the party, knowing that it was more than likely what was troubling him. “Is it because of this?”

I shoved my phone up to his face, illuminating his blue eyes.

They scanned it for only a second before he turned his head away.

“Yeah.”

I whispered, taking my phone back. “Things bad?”

I knew that his brother was into some rough stuff and that his parents weren’t really… the caring type. They were the polar opposite of my parents, that’s for sure. We didn’t talk about his family much, especially since Emmett had to go away to military school, but I knew it bothered him. He was pretty upset about it when Emmett had left; in fact, in an attempt to make him feel better, I had gone to the video store and rented all 10 seasons of BattleBots (the bane of my existence- I can only watch robot-like things obliterating one another for so long until I want one to actually come through the TV to obliterate me). We watched them all day long, in the privacy of my finished basement…that is before my dad came down and joined in on the fun. I was basically nonexistent at that point.

Dawson’s voice tore me from silently cursing BattleBots. “No worse than usual, but he’s just being such a dipshit and it’s pissing me off. He’s just… being stupid.”

I jutted out my lip and nodded. Then he started talking again.

“I don’t feel like being here tonight. I feel off.”

I pursed my mouth, letting out a held breath and ignoring the replay of the near-kiss from earlier scratching the inner walls of my brain. “Then let’s get out of here.”

He pulled back, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes. “What about Andy? You can’t leave your date.”

I giggled. “Says who? My best friend needs me tonight, he can eff off.”

That had him laughing out loud, then he abruptly stopped when I asked the same about Jess.

“I need my best friend so she can eff off.”

Then we both laughed together. He shot up onto his feet, the ground loudly crunching beneath his football player’s build. He extended his hand down to mine and I eagerly placed my hand in his, letting him pull me upward.

We didn’t go back to the party.

We didn’t even say goodbye to our “dates.” We walked hand in hand to his Camaro and drove off, together.