“You never know,” I say. “They’re a bunch of nosy assholes.”
The ring catches the light again as she fiddles with it, worrying it with her thumb, spinning it around her finger.
“It’s gonna be bad when we break up,” she says as we reach her car. She puts her leftovers on top of it and turns to me.
“Don’t leave those there, you’ll forget them when you drive off,” I say.
Charlie rolls her eyes at me, but she opens her door, sticks the leftovers on the passenger seat. Since I’ve watched her break at least three coffee mugs by driving off with them on the roof of her car, I feel justified.
“I’m serious,” she says, shutting her passenger door and moving her hair out of her face.
“I know.”
“Your mom just gave me her grandmother’s ring and told me she’d always hoped I would wear it,” she says, her voice lowering even further. She takes a step closer. “What happens when I give it back? We didn’t think this through very well.”
Her freckles look like stars, scattered across her cheeks, and I’m struck by the urge to take her face in my hands and run a thumb across them, see if they contain the same fire.
I settle for shoving my hands into my pockets.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” I say. “It’s months from now. Maybe something will happen that makes it all easier.”
Charlie gives me the world’s most skeptical look.
“Such as?”
I roll my lips together and glance toward the house, because I have no fucking clue.
“Maybe it’ll turn out that we’re actually second cousins,” I offer. “Actually, that one’s not bad. It could work.”
“For that to work we’d have to actually be second cousins,” she says. “That particular information is pretty verifiable.”
“Maybe I’m adopted,” I offer, and Charlie just snorts.
“Go look at those pictures again,” she says. “You’re not adopted.”
“We’ll think of something,” I say. “I’ll take the blame. I’ll tell my mom, I’ll tell everyone. I’ll say I got cold feet and I wasn’t ready. I’ll say—”
“You don’t have to,” she cuts in. “You’re right, we can figure this out later. I should head home.”
She’s still looking at me, the stars still scattered across her face and reflected in her eyes as she raises her left hand tentatively, the ring flashing and glimmering.
“They’re probably watching right now,” I murmur.
My hands are out of my pockets, one on her right hip, her warmth underneath her clothes flooding me.
“Because they’re nosy assholes?” she asks, a slight smile lighting up her face.
“Exactly,” I say.
My heartbeat is fast, hard, a frantic rhythm I’ve never felt before.
Correction: a rhythm I’ve only felt once.
Her eyes dart between mine. I move closer, her hand on my arm, her face tilting up slightly.
“Make it look good,” Charlie teases, and I lower my lips to hers.
It’s a quick, momentary kiss, over in a flash, but it makes my bones shake. It’s a lightning bolt of a kiss, over in a second but when I pull my lips away from hers, I can still feel it jolting through my veins.
I take her face in my hand, thumb gently stroking along the scattered freckles. The movement isn’t intentional, isn’t calculated for an audience. It just is, because the need to touch her again right now is more than I can deny.
Charlie tilts her head into my hand, hazel eyes watching me, guarded and curious and shocked and a thousand things at once.
I want to kiss her again. I want to kiss her properly, harder and longer. I want to push her up against the side of her car and feel her body against mine as she kisses me back.
It takes everything I have not to kiss her again.
Just friends, I remind myself. Just for show.
Stepping away from her feels like wading through concrete, but I do it. The ring flashes one more time as we separate, her hands lowering, and then suddenly it’s over, the spell broken. Charlie looks away, at the trees, at her car, glances over at the house.
“See you later?” she asks, already fiddling with the ring, turning it around her finger again and again, the movement unconscious.
“Of course,” I say.
Charlie looks like she’s about to say something else, but then she gives her head a little shake, smiles at me, gets in her car. I watch from the driveway as her taillights disappear toward the road, as she turns left, leaves.
Finally, I exhale, still rattled. Still shaken from half a second of touching my lips to hers, my mind racing.
I’m thinking that this is a worse idea than I knew. I’m thinking that we can never keep this up, that this lie will come out no matter what we do, that our inevitable breakup will tear everything we know into pieces.
But mostly, I’m thinking that I can’t wait until I see her again.