“I, um. Need a moment,” he says, glancing down sheepishly. Heat rushes to my cheeks, and I can’t help grinning again.
With some effort, we untangle ourselves and reach for our phones. No Howl updates, meaning no one’s won yet. Slowly, I feel myself slide back into competitive mode. Westview is less than fifteen minutes away. Howl is nearly ours.
We weave our way out of the museum, hiding our flushed faces from the woman at the front desk. When I glance back, I swear I see her smile.
* * *
I’m not sure if I reach for his hand first or if he reaches for mine, but it immediately feels natural. He brushes his thumb across my knuckles on the way to my car, and when we get there, he pushes me up against the driver’s side door like a bad boy in a teen movie.
“We have a whole summer to do this,” I say, even as I’m grabbing his T-shirt and tugging his mouth to mine. “I mean—if you want to.”
And although his yearbook confession is stamped behind my lids whenever I blink, his response sends sparks down to my toes.
“Do I want to kiss you all summer?” He raises his eyebrows, mouth quirking to one side. “Is Nora Roberts prolific?”
“More than two hundred books,” I say. Then, with some reluctance: “But we’re so close. We’ll come back to this.”
One long kiss, and then he groans. “Fine, fine. You win.”
“Can you say that again? I like the way it sounds.”
“Shameless,” he says, but there’s that lazy-sweet-sly smile again, the one I’d never seen before tonight. The one I know now is solely mine.
But something tightens in my throat. A whole summer. Suddenly, it doesn’t sound very long at all.
“Hey, lovebirds. You guys finally figured it out, huh?”
Across the street, Brady Becker is unlocking a little white Toyota, pausing to wave at us. The paper with his name on it burns hot in my pocket.
Stronger than the shock of star quarterback Brady Becker realizing we’re together is the sense of dread creeping up my spine.
Neil blinks a few times, as though trying to process what Brady’s doing here. “Hey,” he says quietly, voice laced with uncertainty. We haven’t talked about how to announce ourselves to the rest of our graduating class, if that’s something we even want to do. I twine my fingers through Neil’s, showing him exactly how I feel about that. His features relax, and he wraps his fingers around mine again. “Yeah, we, um… yeah. We did.”
His nerves are too adorable.
“Cool museum,” Brady says, and I force my oxytocin-addled brain to remember where Brady was in the most recent blast of Howl standings.
Fourteen.
He had fourteen, just like we did. And if he’s leaving the museum, that must mean—
“See you back at school,” he says. “I’ll be the one with the five-thousand-dollar check.”
DRAFT: (no subject)
Rowan Roth
to: [email protected],
[email protected]
Saved Saturday, June 13, at 12:32 a.m.
Dearest Mom and Dad,
This is scary, but here are the first few chapters. Be gentle with me.
Love,