“Or she’ll be flattered,” he says.
I run my fingers through my bangs, pushing them to the left where they’re supposed to sit after years of combing to teach them to lie flat that way. I’m growing them out, and that’s final.
I like them the way they are, Neil said about my bangs earlier. It ricochets off the inside of my skull until it’s I like I like I like I like over and over and over again. When I catch him looking, he quickly glances away, and I feel myself flush.
Naturally, that’s when I spot her, sitting with another woman at a table a few feet away.
She’s flawless, laughing at something the other woman is saying in this full but quiet way. Her black hair is cut in a sleek bob, and she’s wearing a navy jumpsuit with white hearts all over it. Little heart decals even adorn her nails.
And of course I have what looks like shit staining the front of my dress.
“Say hi,” Neil whispers, placing a hand on the small of my back.
Somehow, I propel myself forward. “Sorry, but—are you, um, Delilah Park?”
Delilah and her tablemate turn to us. Her berry lips curve into a warm smile. “I am.” Ever polite, she gestures to the woman next to her, dressed in a fitted blazer and ignoring how often her phone lights up on the table in front of her. “This is my publicist, Grace. I’m so sorry, I just performed about twenty minutes ago.”
Cool, cool, I’ll just disappear now. I’m ready to turn and run when Neil taps my backpack.
Courage. I can do this.
“I love your books,” I blurt. “I mean, I’m sure you get that a lot. Because obviously if someone is going to one of your events, it’s because they love your books, unless they’re being dragged there by someone else, in which case they should still, like, be respectful and not outright tell you they don’t love your books? Not that I’m saying a bunch of the people who go to your events don’t love your books. I’m sure nearly all of them do. And I definitely do. Love your books, that is.”
Grace tries to suppress a grin.
“Thank you,” Delilah says, and she sounds genuine. “Did we meet at the bookstore earlier?”
I shake my head. “I missed the signing. It’s a long story that involves the zoo and a pot cookie and a really complicated game.”
“Um, that sounds like the best story,” she says, like we’re friends.
My shoulders dip with relief. Somehow, I am speaking to her. I’m having a conversation with Delilah Park, whose words I’ve admired for so many years.
“Is this the person who doesn’t love my books who you dragged with you?” she asks, gesturing to Neil.
I feel myself flush hotter, but there’s kindness in her voice. She isn’t making fun of me.
“I haven’t read any yet,” Neil admits, and then locks eyes with me before adding, “but I want to.”
I am floating. “I have some books with me, if you don’t mind signing them?”
“Absolutely,” she says. Grace is already handing her a pen. “Who should I sign them to?”
I spell my name for her. Grace has Delilah’s lip stamp, too, and when she presses it into the ink pad and then onto the page, I am shocked I’m still standing. It gives me a sense of déjà vu after what happened with Neil and my parents. I guess we can’t help it—we’re both book nerds.
“It was so great to meet you, Rowan,” she says, passing the books back to me. She gestures toward the stage. “Are you performing something?”
“Actually,” someone says, and with horror I realize that someone is me, “I was just going to sign up.”
Maybe she tells me good luck or that she’s looking forward to it or that I’m about to make the worst mistake of my life. This is when my brain temporarily shuts off, and Neil has to guide me to a table.
“You’re trying really hard not to smile, aren’t you?” he says.
I nod before letting my face split open. “Oh my God. She was so nice? I love her? Did I sound too ridiculous, or just a normal amount of ridiculous?”
“You were fine,” he says, grinning. “And you’re going to perform?”
Oh. Right. “I got caught up in the moment.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
And maybe it is, or at the very least, not a terrible one, because I, human-cloud Rowan Roth, am suddenly making my way over to the hipster at the counter holding a clipboard.
“It’s a light night,” the guy says when I ask if there are any open slots. He’s wearing Seattle’s official flag, a plaid flannel shirt. “You could go up next, if you want.”
Voice trembling, I tell him my name before meeting Neil back at our table. He asks if he can get me water or a soda or anything, but I’m not sure my stomach would be able to handle it. As I remove my notebook from my backpack, my fingers graze my new signed books. I wrote the first few chapters by hand before typing them up, and I’d rather read off paper than a phone.
I can’t picture the best-case scenario, and so I don’t let myself brace for the worst, either. This doesn’t have to be scary. I let Neil read. Neil, my rival and nemesis, who used to tease me relentlessly about the books I love. And I’m proud of what I wrote. Why is that so hard to admit, even to myself?
“Give it up for Adina,” the emcee says, his boots making the floorboards bounce and squeak. “Always a treat to have her back here.”
The room applauds for the violist. I was so in my head, I hadn’t realized she’d finished. I clap along with everyone else, my stomach performing an impressive gymnastics routine.
Adina and I cross paths as she leaves the stage, long dark hair tumbling down her back, a swipe of red across her lips. Her cheeks are flushed from the performance. She might be the most beautiful person I’ve seen up close.
“That was amazing,” I tell her.
She does something strange then. Instead of brushing off the compliment the way someone else might, she gives me a half-smile, as though she knows exactly how amazing she was.
“Thank you. Have I seen you here before?”
“First time,” I say.
Her smile gets wider. There’s an ease to her, an effortlessness. “I’ve been coming here for a few years, mostly on breaks from school. It’s a good crowd.” She glances behind me toward the audience. “Your boyfriend seems really excited for you.”
“Oh, he’s not—” I start, but I’m not about to recite our history to this stranger, and the word “boyfriend” is doing strange things to my heart that I don’t want to think about before I get up on that stage.
“You’ll do great,” she assures me.
The emcee’s voice: “Next up, we have a newcomer, so let’s give an extra-special Bernadette’s welcome to Rowan!”
I make my way up to the stage, watching as Adina joins a short-haired girl at a table in the back.
“Hi,” I say into the microphone. “Thank you.” The lights are too bright. It takes me a few seconds to spot Neil, and then I wonder why he didn’t stand out to me right away because he’s grinning that genuine grin, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes in this adorable way. And damn it if it doesn’t soothe some of the nerves in my stomach.
And there’s Delilah, giving me her full attention, as though she’s truly interested in what I’m about to read.
“This is coffee, by the way,” I say, gesturing to my dress, realizing under the lights just how brown the stain must look. “A hazelnut latte, to be exact. Not, um. Something else. It’s been a very weird day.”
At this, the audience laughs.
“I’m going to read from the opening of a novel I’ve been working on. It’s short, and all you really need to know about it is that it’s… a romance novel.” A couple people whoop at this, and one person whistles. Maybe it’s Delilah. Maybe it’s Neil.
“Here it goes,” I say, and then it becomes easy.
* * *
Neil’s waiting for me outside, leaning against the brick building across the alley. When I finished, he held up his watch and s
tuck a thumb in the direction of the door. My heart is still pounding, my head buzzing. Woof, the adrenaline is wild.
“I fucking did it,” I say as I race over to him.
He’s beaming. “Yes you fucking did,” he says, matching my enthusiasm. “You were amazing.”
When I reach him, I fling my arms around his neck in a hug that clearly surprises him, given how his body jerks back at first. But then he relaxes, as though his body needed a moment to process what was happening, and his arms come around me, his hands resting against the small of my back. I’m grateful for the hoodie—I’m sweating like mad underneath it.
My face fits in the space below his ear, where his jaw meets his neck. Have we hugged before? This might actually be our first one. I move my hands to his shoulders, lingering on the soft fabric of his T-shirt. I wonder if he’s cold. If I should return his hoodie, the one I’m still wearing. He smells like a combination of rain and boy sweat—not entirely a bad thing—and underneath, something clean and comforting. I fight the urge to inhale deeply, to avoid sounding as though I am literally breathing him in.
“They didn’t hate it.”
His pulse shudders against my skin. “Because it was good.”
Slowly, we pull back from the hug, and I can’t believe I just did that, and I can’t believe Neil McNair was here to see it and that he’s happy for me. If we’d been friends instead of competitors, I wonder how many more hugs we’d have had.
It was a rush unlike anything I’ve experienced, getting to read my words in front of people. It might have been even better than hearing Delilah read. She listened to me, a complete nobody hoping to one day become a somebody.
“And Delilah’s following me on Twitter now,” I say, in part to distract myself from how badly I want to hug him again. “She flagged me down before I left, and she just took out her phone and asked for my handle, and oh my God, what am I supposed to tweet? She’s going to see everything. Maybe I should delete my account.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Is this what I was like when I met your parents?”
“No. You were worse.” I grab his arm to look at his watch. “What time is it?”
I have a phone I am perfectly capable of removing from my pocket, but there’s something adorable about the anachronistic way Neil checks his watch.
“Just past eleven,” he says. “We got the next safe zone message while you were up there.”
We read it together.
SENIOR WOLF PACK, LISTEN UP
HOW’RE YOU FEELING? HAD ENOUGH?
IT’S TIME FOR US TO GOLF WITH YOU
SEE YOU AT SAFE ZONE NUMBER TWO
The message links to a mini-golf course that isn’t too far away and asks us to meet there at 11:30.
“I need to sit down first,” I say, still shaky with adrenaline.
Since we have some extra time, we make our way over to a bench in the adjacent park. The cold seems to hit me all at once.
“Do you want your hoodie back?” I ask.
“You keep it.” He shifts until his hip is a couple inches from mine. I could fit two paperbacks in the space between his jeans and my dress. “It’s only fair, given that coffee stain.”
I’m not sure even a dry cleaner could save my dress after all the suffering it’s been through today, but I don’t know if I could throw it out. It’ll be a trophy from this night, a reminder of all the things I did but thought I couldn’t.
“Thank you so much,” I tell him. “For—for helping me realize I could do it.”
Ever so slightly, I scoot closer to him on the bench. I tell myself it’s because of the cold.
I am a big fucking liar.
In the moonlight, his hair looks bronze, as though he’s the bust I teased him about earlier today. I can’t quite believe that was only hours ago.
“I… don’t know if you realize how much you’ve helped me.” He says it to the frayed knees of his jeans instead of to me. “All of these years. I couldn’t afford not to step up my game. It wasn’t just that you kept me on my toes or made me better. Competing with you, you in general… You helped me stay focused. Helped keep me from letting everything with my dad get too overwhelming. I just… I could have so easily drowned in that. And you did it without even trying.”
It breaks my heart all over again.
“Neil,” I say quietly. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“You’re welcome?” he suggests, and I laugh, nudging him with my elbow. There’s barely any space between us now, and when he tilts his head to look at me, his eyes pull me into something thrilling, something intense. I don’t know how I missed it before.
“You’re welcome. And thank you. Again,” I say, then charge forward with the secret I’ve been keeping since his house. “So I’ve been thinking. If we win, you should keep the money.”
“Rowan—”
I knew he’d protest, so I cut him off immediately. “And you should one hundred percent not use it for your dad. He did something horrible not just to that kid, but to your whole family. To you.” The words tumble out smoothly now. “You should use it for yourself. For some nice things. Change your last name, and maybe you could study abroad, or you could get a suit at… wherever they sell nice suits.”
He’s quiet for a few moments. I’d be positive I said completely the wrong thing if he weren’t still nearly touching me, a whisper of space between his hip and mine.
“Now I don’t know what to say,” he says, and forces a laugh. “Which, as you know, is unusual for me. I don’t know if I could accept all of it, but thank you. That… sounds really wonderful.” He heaves a sigh, and then speaks again. “I’m scared,” he says, and the words are so soft. I could tuck myself in with a blanket made of I’m scared. “I’ve never said that to anyone before, but I’m really fucking scared of what happens when I leave. I want to leave so badly, and yet… I get worried that I’m not as independent as I think I am. I’ll get to school and I won’t know how to work the laundry machine, even though I’ve been doing my own laundry for years. Or I won’t know how to get around the city, and I’ll get lost. My mom seems happy with Christopher, but I’m worried she’ll overwork herself. I’m worried my sister won’t be able to outrun it all. Or that wherever I am, I won’t be able to get away from my father.
“Sometimes I worry I’ll turn out like him. I wonder if that kind of thing is genetic. If I’m doomed to fuck up as much as he did, if there’s this violent streak inside me.”
“That’s fucking terrifying,” I say, tapping his shoe with mine, letting him know he’s wrong, that he’s not doomed. “And you are nothing like that.”
This boy is gentle to his core. He spars with his words, not his fists. He is so close that I could use the tip of my nose to connect each freckle on his cheeks. Forget counting. His mouth looks soft, and I wonder how he’d kiss—slow and deliberate or hard and desperate, if he’d grip my waist or my hips. Would he be measured, each motion of his lips plotted out beforehand? Or would he turn off his mind, let his body take over?
The thought of him losing control like that is almost too much for my poor brain to handle.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I say. “If you don’t want to.”
“That’s the thing. I think I do. I’ve not talked about it for so long, and with you… for some reason, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.”
“I want to make a dirty joke right now, but I don’t want to embarrass you.”
He nudges my shoulder with his. It’s a friendly teasing kind of gesture that makes me think thoroughly unfriendly thoughts. And our legs—still almost touching. It feels somehow more intimate than our dance in the library. I have never been so aware of every nerve on my outer thigh.
A car honks a few streets away, and when I turn my head on instinct, I realize a bit of my hair is stuck between the slats of the bench. Just in case I wasn’t enough of a mess tonight. I reach up to my messy bun that is more mess than bun at this point and tug-tug-t
ug it out of its elastic and pins.
“It might be a lost cause,” I say by way of explanation. “I sealed its fate when I showered in the dark this morning and couldn’t dry it, and it’s been getting exponentially worse by the hour.”
Neil watches me comb my fingers through it. “It, uh. It doesn’t look bad, you know. You’ve been playing with it all day, but. It always looks nice.”
And then he does something that maybe shocks us both: he reaches for one of my curls loosed by the pins, grazing it with a fingertip. As though to say, This. This is the hair that always looks nice. It’s so light, that touch. The gentleness decimates me, the way he’s uncertain but brave at the same time. The fingertip is gone before I can lean into him, even as I’m imagining what it would feel like for him to slide both of his hands into my hair.
It always looks nice.
“And I don’t actually hate your suits,” I tell him. “I mean, don’t get cocky about it or anything. It’s still a supremely dorky thing to wear in high school, but… you don’t look terrible in them.”
“We’re not the best at compliments, are we?”
“I’m better,” I say, and he laughs. His laugh sounds like that first gooey indie pop song he played for me in Doo Wop Records, the Free Puppies! one. Behind his glasses, his dark eyes light up, turning amber. Again I’m convinced I’ve never paid enough attention to him when he laughs. Maybe he hasn’t done it enough in my presence. Maybe he has looked at me only through narrowed eyes, his brows slashed in annoyance. But tonight I want to make him laugh again and again.
Heart hammering, I shift my leg until it’s finally right up against his, closing the distance between us. I couldn’t take it anymore, not touching him.
His breath catches in his throat. God, that is a great sound. “You cold?” he asks, and it makes me feel slightly guilty, given I’m wearing his hoodie.
“A little,” I say, surprised by the sudden scratchiness of my voice. If being cold makes him inch closer, then I am fucking Antarctica.
Then I hear, feel the rustle of fabric as he moves his leg against mine too, this pressure that confirms what’s happening is absolutely deliberate, and we are hip to hip and thigh to thigh and knee to knee. He brushes my knee once with his thumb, a quick little swipe.
Today Tonight Tomorrow Page 21
