by Beth Reekles
‘You’d have better luck counting all those freckles,’ he teases, dragging a fingertip lightly across the bridge of my nose and cheek. I laugh, and push his hand away. After a while, it gets too cold to stay out on the hood of the car any longer, and we get back inside, letting the heater warm us before we go anywhere.
He gets the guitar pick out again and starts tapping it in a steady rhythm on the dashboard. The object is like his security blanket, but it’s also his nervous tick. I wait to see what he has to say.
‘I’ve driven up here a couple of times, since we moved. If I missed home, and my granddad, and if playing my guitar wasn’t helping, I’d come up here. It made me feel a little closer to him. I like to write when I’m here, too. This is where I wrote that song for you, too.’
He smiles at me, but I can see the sheen of tears in his eyes. Quickly, he sucks in a breath and blinks, shaking it away.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. You know,’ I add, ‘you never did get to finish that song you wrote for me.’
‘It had another verse to it,’ he says. ‘It was harder to write it once we started talking again. I can sing you the other verse though, if you want? I don’t have my guitar, but I can sing it to you.’
I smile, and say, ‘I’d like that.’
He nods, and closes his eyes, tapping his fingers on his thigh, and then he starts singing. It sounds a little weird without the guitar to accompany it, but I don’t mind: this way I can focus more on the lyrics. He starts from the beginning of the song, and then the new verse.
‘It cuts me to the core
That we’re not talking any more
And it cuts me to the quick
That you might leave me by myself
Because on days that I don’t
Have the strength to move.
All I can do is wait for one more
Sleepless night
To miss you.’
I smile, feeling a little tearful because I’m touched by the song he wrote with me in mind, and it’s good to know I mean so much to him that he not only writes about me, but sings the songs he writes to me.
He doesn’t sing to me often, but sometimes he’ll show me a new song he’s working on, and ask me what I think of the lyrics – or if we’re both sitting in our window seats, he’ll play something, and then shout across to my open window to ask what I thought.
Todd puts the car in gear, but doesn’t go anywhere. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Ashley.’
The ride home is pretty quiet, but not the bad kind of quiet. It’s more the soft kind of quiet, like cotton wool wrapped around us and hugging us tight, with no tension crackling in the air and no semblance of discomfort.
After a while, he says, ‘I spoke to Jennifer earlier.’
My whole body tenses up. How had I managed to forget about her? ‘Oh, yeah? How is she?’
‘She’s good, yeah. She’s still over at her grandparents’ house from Thanksgiving, and seemed like she had a pretty nice day with her family.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘She asked if I wanted to go over for dinner sometime next week.’
This was exactly what I’d been worried he’d say.
My mouth is dry and I don’t know how I manage to actually speak. ‘What did you say?’
‘That maybe it was best we didn’t carry on dating. She’s brilliant, but I told her I didn’t want to lead her on, and I wasn’t sure that I could see things going very far with us. She understood. Actually, she thanked me for – quote – being man enough to admit that. And she said if I changed my mind about it later on, I had her number.’
‘Oh.’
‘She wasn’t upset,’ he adds. ‘I don’t think she thought things were serious yet, either.’
I can’t help but feel relieved when he tells me this. I mean, I hadn’t expected him to talk to her today, so soon after our conversation, but I’m glad he did. It makes me feel a little more sure about what I want.
I glance over at Todd, and when he sees me looking he shoots me a smile. I remember when we first met, and it was a fight to get even one smile out of him, and how I thought he was so stand-offish and pretentious, and how different he is now I’ve gotten to know him. How much more open he is and how he smiles so often, and they’re big smiles, not small, reluctant ones he wipes away as soon as he can.
I think about how when I first found out about his book of songs, he was always ready to snatch it away and hide it somewhere I couldn’t even see it; and now he’ll leave it lying around and sometimes play me snippets of songs he’s written. He opens up to me now.
We pull up on his drive, and Todd puts the car in park and turns off the engine. ‘I guess I’ll maybe see you tomorrow?’
I nod. ‘Why not? You’re welcome to come over for more leftover-turkey sandwiches.’
He laughs. ‘Can’t wait.’ Then he bites his lip, nervous.
‘What?’
‘I’m just – glad that things weren’t weird tonight. You know, after what we talked about this morning. Crap. See, now saying that made things weird, didn’t it? God, I keep messing this up so bad—’
‘Todd—’
He’s getting really flustered now, and the muscles in his jaw jump as he clenches it in exasperation at himself. I can’t help but smile, just a little.
‘I should just keep my mouth shut and I know as I’m about to say it that it’s going to make things weird, but I say it anyway and make an idiot out of myself, and – and I probably should have mentioned that I spoke to Jennifer a little sooner, but—’
‘Todd!’
‘Yeah?’
I’m leaning across the car to put a hand over his, where his right hand rests on his knee, and smiling at him. ‘It’s okay, you didn’t mess anything up.’
I expect him to nod, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just stares at me really intensely. His eyes look gray tonight, almost silver, and those incredible cheekbones are thrown into sharp relief by the glare of the streetlight outside. Todd’s fingers move a little underneath mine, and his gaze flickers to my lips.
There’s an easy solution to see if you do like him . . . Next time he tries to kiss you, don’t push him away.
He leans a little closer, moving his face nearer to mine. I suck in a sharp breath, almost a gasp but not quite. He turns his hand around so our palms are touching, and he links our fingers together.
Both of us edge our faces a little nearer to each other, and I can feel my hands sweating, but I don’t pull my hand away from his; I don’t want to spoil the moment. My heart is racing so hard I think that most of the street must be able to hear it. It feels like my first kiss all over again.
Todd keeps his eyes locked on mine, and his breath tickles my cheek. His voice is barely louder than a whisper when he asks, ‘Are you going to push me away this time?’
I shake my head, not able to get the word out, and very softly and tentatively, he kisses me. It’s a featherlight touch of his lips against mine, and it sends a spark through me that I never felt when I used to kiss Josh. I kiss him back, and our teeth bump and the handbrake sticks into my ribs when I lean his way more, and he runs a hand through my hair only to get caught against a knot and has to apologize for pulling my hair, and we’re both laughing.
The windows are steamed up and if my mom is peeking out of the window to see why I’m not in the house when Todd’s car is outside, she’ll be under no illusions.
Todd’s forehead is still pressed against mine. ‘Was that weird for you?’
I shake my head, bumping my nose against his. ‘No. Was it weird for you?’
‘No.’
‘Good,’ I murmur, and kiss him again.
Epilogue
‘Come on,’ Todd says, urging me over with a wild hand gesture. ‘Look.’
I bend in front of the telescope, putting my hands under my armpits for extra warmth. The mittens my mom bought me for Christmas are cute and all, but right now they’re not doing
a brilliant job at keeping my fingers from going numb. Todd’s hand rests on my shoulder as he stands behind me.
‘That’s Cassiopeia?’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s amazing.’ I stand up, and he puts his arms around me, holding me in close. ‘So I did a good job on the Christmas-present front?’ I ask, referring to the telescope. After we went to look at the stars that night when we first kissed, it was easy to know what to buy him for Christmas. He got me some gorgeous hardback books, and a necklace with a star hanging from the chain.
‘You did an amazing job,’ he reassures me, and kisses my freezing cold nose.
We’re both bundled up against the cold, in thick coats and gloves and scarves (this time, I’m wearing my own scarf, not Todd’s) and hats. There were a couple of New Year parties going on, but our friends were just hanging out at Kelly’s house for the night. We were there for a couple of hours earlier this evening, but decided to bail and do our own thing instead for when it turned midnight. Then maybe go back to Kelly’s afterward to hang out for a few more hours, if everyone was still there by the time we left the hill.
When I told Allie and Kelly yesterday that we were going to spend a night under the stars – like we did on what was technically our first unofficial date – they cooed and grinned and Kelly told me not to worry about ditching them for an hour or so, that what we were doing was totally romantic and way better anyway.
After that night we kissed, it wasn’t like things changed much. There was no pressure for us to suddenly spend all our time together being a couple. We just were. Everything was just like it always had been – joking around and teasing each other, talking about anything and everything. Except now there was more kissing involved.
I kept expecting for things to feel weird between us, for us to kiss and things suddenly feel wrong. But it didn’t.
Kissing Todd was the kind of thing I felt I could never get used to.
It all just felt so right with him, and so wonderful, and I felt suddenly alive again – back in tune with the world.
We didn’t exactly announce that we were suddenly dating, either. I mean, I’d told Allie the night we’d kissed that we’d kissed and it was a huge deal and I was on cloud nine, but she was the only one who really knew; after my mom, of course, who wanted to know exactly why I’d been sat inside Todd’s car for a full twenty minutes once we’d got back.
I’d just blushed furiously and let her tease me about it before begging off to call Allie and tell her everything.
Aside from Allie, none of our friends knew that we’d transitioned from ‘just friends’ to ‘couple’. We acted totally normal on the Monday morning we were back in school, and then when the bell rang to signal us all off to homeroom, Todd gave me a brief kiss on the lips and said, ‘See you later.’
I didn’t miss the looks we got, but nobody said anything immediately. At lunch, when we exchanged a few more light and casual kisses, they still didn’t say anything. Aside from the ‘I told you so’ look I got from Amanda, none of them seemed even remotely surprised.
I’d found a thick ground mat and picnic blanket in the garage to lay out on the ground next to the telescope for us to sit on now, and we have chocolates and coffee in thermoses to keep us going. I sit back on the mat, and Todd looks through the telescope a while longer, until I get his attention.
‘Todd, it’s almost midnight.’
‘Oh, right.’ He sits down next to me, and puts an arm around me at the same time as I lean into him. I turn to give him a kiss before drinking a little of the coffee. It’s still warm, at least. I pass him the thermos and we both take turns sipping from it while we wait for the fireworks.
He holds his left arm out in front of us, so we can see his watch.
‘Four . . . three . . . two . . .’
‘One,’ I finish, and kiss him, smiling, heart racing, as the fireworks explode around us.
Acknowledgements
This book was probably my most challenging, simply down to the fact that I was balancing working on it with settling into my first year as a university student, so there’s a long list of people to thank with this book . . .
As always, a massive thanks to my brilliant editor at Random House, Lauren Buckland, and my publicist Clare Hall-Craggs, for your help in publishing my books, and to the rest of the team, too, for all your hard work.
Thanks to all my fans, new and old; particular thanks to Wattpad and my fans from there, who have been with me since the beginning of my journey into becoming a published author. I owe my success to you!
Thanks to Mum and Dad, who have done a late-night dash down to university to give me a laptop to write on when mine broke, and for everything else you’ve done to support me; to my sister for putting up with me stealing the spotlight every so often; to Auntie Sally and Uncle Jason for your crazy (and occasionally useful!) input; to my granddad, to whom this book is dedicated, for being probably my biggest fan and telling everybody you meet about me and my books.
To my flatmates, who introduce me to their friends and families as ‘the one who wrote the books’, you’ve been great at distracting me and lifting my mood when I’ve been working too hard, so a big thank you for that!
Tara and Ffion, you both need a mention here, for keeping me sane in my moments of madness trying to juggle problems sheets for classes and editing this book. Colebrook and Caroline, you’ve always been there for me, too – and Aimee J, I don’t know what I’d do without you!
And finally, a big thank you to James: you’re always encouraging me, inspiring me, and motivating me when I hit a wall with my work, and I definitely owe you a big hug and batch of brownies for that!
About the Author
Beth is from South Wales and is currently studying Physics at the University of Exeter. She is an undeniable bookworm and avid drinker of tea.
Beth’s novel The Kissing Booth became the most-viewed, most-commented-on teen fiction title on Wattpad in 2012 – 19 million reads and 40,000 comments. The Kissing Booth was winner of the Most Popular Teen Fiction Watty Award, and the digital edition topped the YA iBooks chart on release.
In 2013, Beth was named as one of Time magazine’s Top Influential Teens.
Also by Beth Reekles
The Kissing Booth
Rolling Dice
The first published book by Beth Reekles –
the internet sensation everyone is talking about!
Meet Rochelle Evans.
Pretty, popular – and never been kissed.
Meet Noah Flynn.
Badass, volatile – and a total player.
And also Elle’s best friend’s older brother . . .
When Elle decides to run a kissing booth for the school’s Spring Carnival, she locks lips with Noah and her life is turned upside down. But this romance seems far from fairy-tale and headed for heartbreak . . . Will Elle get her happily ever after in the end?
Love is a game of chance . . .
Madison Clarke used to be a lonely, loser outcast – but when she moves town and school, she jumps at the chance to reinvent herself. A hot boyfriend, parties, friends with the popular clique – the new Madison has it all.
But they say that the higher you climb, the harder you fall – and as Madison finds herself attracted to a funny, cute but totally nerdy guy, will she risk her amazing new life crumbling to pieces? Running from her past and stumbling through her present, it’s a gamble she’ll be forced to take . . .
OUT OF TUNE
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17284 9
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2014
Copyright © Beth Reeks, 2014
First Published in Great Britain by Corgi Books, 2014
The right of Beth Reeks to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design
s and Patents Act 1988.
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