Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
But I don't move. I sit there on the edge of the ancient mattress, watching the doorway, almost with the terror you usually feel when a serial killer is on his way to you next.
Heath has to duck to clear the frame—actually fold himself to fit through a doorway I've walked through my whole life without thinking about it. The room loses square footage the second he's in it, the sloped ceiling suddenly feeling lower, the space between the beds suddenly feeling like nothing at all.
Dark hair, shorter than it was at eighteen. Apparently, someone took clippers to the boy I remember and carved away everything soft. The jaw is harder now too, more defined, bone structure that photographs well and makes people stop talking when he walks into rooms.
His shoulders stretch his t-shirt, and they don't stop where shoulders are supposed to stop—they keep going, taking up space. Can someone really have shoulders that broad? It feels impossible. It should be impossible. Yet, here he is—the proof.
I'm holding three versions of him at once—the leaner boy from senior, all elbows and that ridiculous confidence that made everything look easy. Then there's the filtered version I've seen on screens and pretended I haven't. And finally, this. The actual breathing man who is worse than both because screens shrink people to something manageable and there is nothing manageable about Heath at this range.
The internet lied. My memory lied. Nothing prepared me for the reality of him filling up Gram's tiny loft like he was designed specifically to make me question every life choice that led me to this moment.
My control is fracturing beneath a pressure I do not recognize. Warmth pools low in my belly, and something pulses between my thighs.
I can't trust my own body … not around him.
Then he grins.
It's the same grin from when we were kids—the only part of him that hasn't changed at all, reaching back across decades. The grin that used to turn my coherent thoughts into ashes.
A bolt of heat sears through me.
Something that shouldn't throb throbs.
Something without a pulse pulses.
That grin is going to be the death of me.
And the worst part, the part that makes this bearable and unbearable at once, is that he probably doesn't even remember. That summer rewired my life, and he's standing there grinning like it never happened. Because for him, it didn't. Probably. Most likely.
2
HEATH
The last summer plays on a loop in my head. I could tell you what she wore, what the dock smelled like, the exact second I decided I was going to kiss her and the exact second I lost my nerve and my entire self-esteem disintegrated into dust.
Harriet. I thought I was ready for this. I had a plan.
Be cool, be normal, don't stare.
I am not cool, I don't feel normal, and I'm definitely staring.
Harriet's on the edge of that ancient twin bed, and every version of her I've been carrying around got deleted on contact, because not one of them comes close. No glasses, no braces. Not that it ever mattered. I thought she was the prettiest girl I have ever laid eyes on back when she had both.
This is just the same problem wearing a new face, and the problem is I've never once been able to look at her and think about anything else. If I'm the superstitious type, I would have thought she put me under a spell because that's the only way to explain things.
Her chocolate brown hair is longer now, wavy in a way that makes my hands want to reach for it and maybe wrap it around my knuckles. Those brown eyes—the ones I used to get lost in during Sunday dinners when we were kids—watch me carefully, almost politely.
There's something guarded behind that politeness that needles at me. I don't like it. That's how she used to look at my friends, and I don't want her to look at me like that.
The loft shrinks around us. The ceiling presses down, making the space smaller, tighter, charged with something I can't name but feel in my chest.
Gram's not fooling anyone with this "surprise" arrangement. The old woman knows exactly what she's doing, sticking the two of us up here.
Hell, she's probably downstairs right now cackling about how much of a clever fox she is. Can't say I'm mad about it, though. Not when it gets me Harriet alone.
Fuck, I'm pathetic. I knew that back in high school. I know that now.
I'm going to confess this weekend. I came here with my mind already made up. Whatever happened that last summer, whatever made her run, I'm not walking away from it again. Not this time. If she says no, then at least I won't need to spend all my nights playing the game of what-ifs.
The old insecurity tries to claw its way up. Back then, I was sure a girl that smart, going where she was going, saw me as a jock with good hands and nothing upstairs. She laughed at my jokes, yes, but I felt like she didn't deem me worthy to date.