She blinks rapidly. I don’t know if she got something in her eye or she’s trying not to cry; the odds are pretty equal.
“I feel something, Andi. And I know you do too. But we get to decide what that is. It doesn’t have to be like this. Come outside.”
She shakes her head weakly. “I’m too—”
“Emotionally fragile?”
She glares at me. “No.”
“Cowardly?”
“No.”
“Then meet me outside in thirty seconds.”
Her jaw sets stubbornly. “If I do this, you’ll leave me alone for the rest of the holiday? And the rest of the school year? The rest of my life?”
The thought makes my stomach churn, but I nod. “Yes.”
She purses her lips. “Fine.” She lets go of the club and disappears from sight. I race downstairs, pull on my sneakers and reach the driveway just as Andi steps outside, quietly closing the door behind her so she doesn’t wake her mom.
She frowns as she takes in my T-shirt. “What are you wearing? Can you even breathe?”
“Come on.” I reach for her hand, but she pulls it away.
“We’re not going anywhere! It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“In Avilla. We’re probably the only people awake.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Not far. Just come with me.” I don’t try to take her hand again, just start down the driveway, relieved when I hear her reluctant footsteps start to follow.
We don’t speak for the next four blocks. The night is quiet and warm, the stars and moon out in full force. Christmas lights and ornaments have been shut off, leaving large, hulking figures lurking in the darkened yards. From the corner of my eye I see that Andi’s wearing shorts and a long-sleeve shirt, her bare legs gleaming in the street light. If I never get to feel them again I’m going to regret this more than I already regret everything else.
We stop in front of the elementary school. “What?” Andi mutters. “Why are we here?”
“Because.” I lead her inside, past the bike racks and the flag pole, to the playground at the side. It’s bigger and nicer than it was when we were kids, but the sandbox is still there, the seesaws, the jungle gym. “Have a seat,” I say, pointing to the swings. They’re child-sized and she has to wiggle to fit onto the wooden plank seat, but she does, her toes dragging in the sand.
I walk to the base of the slide a few feet away and sit down. The school’s emergency lights glow nearby, casting us in their pale shine.
Andi sighs. She looks tired, but she’s here. That’s a good sign. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“This is where we first met.”
She looks doubtful. “It is?”
“Yeah. You guys hadn’t moved in yet, so I’d never seen you before. Your mom brought you to the first day of school so you wouldn’t miss out. I was just here, minding my own business on the playground, when I came down the slide and there you were.”
“You were wearing that superhero shirt,” she says slowly.
I touch the collar. “Wearing the same shirt as you. My mom bought mine too big and said I’d grow into it.”
“And Felix Eisman saw us wearing the same shirt, said that meant it was for girls, and you were wearing a dress.”
“That’s right.”
“And you picked up a fistful of sand and threw it in my face, then ran away.”
I clear my throat. “Yeah. My bad.”
She pushes a piece of hair behind her ear and waits for me to get to the point.
“I took off the shirt and never wore it again. When I went home shirtless, my brothers joked that girls were already tearing off my clothes, and my dad warned me not to fall in love.”
She nods slowly. “Right.”
My heart is pounding so hard I’m lucky I’m sitting down. “But he was too late.”
She stops nodding, brows tugging together as she tries to comprehend.
“I was sitting on this slide, in this shirt, when I fell in love with you. I was five years old and I didn’t understand what was happening.”
Even in the dim light I can see the tears fill her eyes.
“It took me a long time to figure out what it was,” I continue. “And way too long to decide what to do about it. I just knew that if I told you, if I said it, it would change things. I knew how you felt—there was no going back if I put it out there. And I wanted to know what else was out there. I had to see.”
She nods, the tears spilling over and running down her cheeks in smooth tracks.
I keep going, unwilling to lie, wanting whatever comes of this to be built on the truth. “You know I looked a lot. But it was pointless. I always knew, under everything, that I’d already met the only girl I’d ever feel that way about.”
“But you kept looking,” she says, wiping a tear from her chin. “You liked looking just fine.”
“I had some good times, but none of them were real. Then you showed up and things got very real.”
She exhales, her breath shuddering.
“I didn’t want to admit that I’d missed you for the past two years, but I missed you in ways I can’t even explain. Then I didn’t want to admit that I liked you, because you didn’t want to be associated with me and I didn’t want to be desperate. Then I didn’t want to admit that I wanted you, because I’d had you before and I was still trying to recover from it.”
She swipes at her eyes with her sleeve.
“I’m sorry I threw sand in your face. The shirt looked better on you.”
She laughs, the sound watery but promising.
“If I could go back and be six years old again, I’d come down this slide and ignore Felix Eisman and do everything differently. If we could go back to the summer I propositioned you I wouldn’t tell you it was just practice, because it wasn’t. And if we could go back to that baseball game, I’d kiss you on camera, so everyone could see what I didn’t have the balls to say. I love you, Andi. I always have. I always will. I don’t want to pretend for another day. Give me chance and I’ll never break your heart again.”
She sniffles. “God, Kellan. That’s a lot of words.”
“It’s everything I should have said a long time ago. I’ll keep going if you want.”
“I don’t think I can’t take anymore right now.”
I wet my lips. “Take all the time you need. I’ll wait for you.”
“How long?”
“How long will I wait? How long do you need? An hour? A day? A week? Not past New Years. That’s too long.”
That earns me a tiny smile. “I mean, how long do you think this will last? I’m afraid of the same thing you are, but for different reasons. You worried that if we got together you’d be forced to stay, but I was worried that if we got together I’d spend my life in your shadow. Living your dreams, not mine.”
I lift my hands. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t have a plan. I declared my major and my feelings for you, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten. My options are open. I want to be where you are. Probably not in Avilla, but anywhere else.”
“I don’t want to stay in Avilla, either.”
“See? We’re very compatible. As for what happens next, I hope you say yes. Give me—give us—another chance. Then ideally we sneak into your basement and fool around until you remember why no one else is as great as me. Then tomorrow I’ll buy you a Christmas present, because I forgot to do that. Then the next day, you’ll open the present, and remember again why I’m so great. Then we’ll spend the next several days in your basement and my basement and my room and your room, and we’ll just fuck our brains out.”
She covers her face with her hands.
“Sorry. We’ll...make love?”
“No, we’ll fuck our brains out. It just seems wrong to say so at a playground.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
She uncovers her face, trying not to grin.
“Don’t hide it,” I say, standing up an
d moving close enough to brush my thumb over her bottom lip. “Let’s not hide anything anymore. We’ll just constantly announce whatever we’re thinking.”
“I’m wondering what ever happened to Felix Eisman.”
“He went to prison on drug charges.”
“Seriously?
“No. I don’t know. But I hope so. That’s not what I thought you were going to say.”
“What did you think I would say?”
“Something you’ve been dying to tell me your whole life, maybe?”
She sighs. “Fine. It was me who threw your sneakers on the power line. I’m sorry.”
“You’re killing me, Andi.”
She knots her lap, watching her fingers twist. Finally she looks up at me. “I love you, Kellan.”
I smile. It starts small and then it just grows until I’m grinning like an idiot. “Well it’s about time you said so.”
She laughs. “I’m thinking of my mom’s face when she hears about this. She’s going to know it was you who gave me a hickey that summer. She marched me off to get birth control the same day.”
I step in between her knees, nudging the swing back so she’s high enough to kiss when I duck my head. “I’m going to give you a lot more than a hickey, Andrea Walsh.”
“Yeah?” Our mouths are so close our lips touch when she speaks. “Like what?”
“You want me to tell you or show you?”
She curls her fingers in the hem of my shirt. “Show me.”
So I kiss her. Finally, permanently. I kiss her like she’s the first girl and the last girl and the only girl. Because she is. The first girl I fell for, the only girl I’ve fallen for, the last girl I’ll fall for. For all of the uncertainty in my life, the question marks about classes and jobs and the future, this is something I know for sure. I can feel it. I can do it. I can say it.
I love Andrea Walsh.
thank you!
Thank you for reading Undeclared. I hope you enjoyed it!
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If you’re so inclined, I’d love for you to write a review! Positive or negative, I appreciate them all and they help other readers find my books.
The Burnham College books are my first foray into New Adult romance. I also write contemporary romance that’s more adult, a little bit grittier, and a lot sexier. My standalone titles are Just Once and Going the Distance. I also write the Time Served series, which includes Time Served, In Her Defense and The Good Fight. They can all be read as standalones.
I’m not sure yet if there will be a third book in the Burnham College series. I have a few new non-Burnham ideas percolating that will probably come first. What do you think – do we need another Burnham book or would you like to see a brand new story? Let me know! You can reach me at any of the links above, or email me at [email protected].
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: THANK YOU!!!
about julianna keyes
Julianna Keyes is a Canadian writer who has lived on both coasts and several places in between. She’s been skydiving, bungee jumping and white water rafting, but nothing thrills—or terrifies—her as much as the blank page. She loves Chinese food, foreign languages, baseball and television, though not necessarily in that order, and writes sizzling stories with strong characters, plenty of conflict, and lots of making up.
In addition to the New Adult Burnham College books, Undecided and Undeclared, she is the author of five contemporary romances: Just Once, the story of a world weary socialite and a stubborn ranch foreman; Going the Distance, a love story set in China between a kindergarten ESL teacher and a former army interrogator; Time Served, the tale of an ambitious young lawyer whose perfect world is jeopardized when she reunites with her ex-con ex-boyfriend; In Her Defense, in which a ruthless young lawyer realizes there’s more to life than being the best...right?; and The Good Fight, in which a former fighter-turned-accountant gets the fight of his life when he meets a stubborn-but-sexy-as-hell neurosurgeon.
For more details on these and any upcoming books, visit her online at http://juliannakeyes.com, or sign up for her free newsletter here or at http://juliannakeyes.com/newsletter.html.
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acknowledgments
Enormous and endless thanks to Natalie Perret for her patience, thoroughness, and phenomenal support throughout this whole endeavor! It takes courage and stamina to read your friend’s books and give them honest feedback, and she kindly volunteers herself as tribute each time. I hope you can hear me shouting “THANK YOU!” across the ocean.
Significant and sincere gratitude to Khoi Le, friend and designer, for his very talented assistance with the cover. He works his magic to make a brunette a blond and a scruffy chin smooth, bringing to life some of my very specific visions. You live close so I don’t have to shout as loud, but I’ll do it anyway: THANKS, KHOI!!
Hearty and humbling thank yous to Naomi Hughes, a wonderful editor who once again helped me whip my back cover copy into excellent shape. I love efficiency almost more than I love chocolate, and Naomi’s fast and focused feedback fills my heart with a control freak’s joy. You can find her out more about her fabulous skill set at www.naomiedits.com
Undeclared (Burnham College #2) Page 29
