by Jen Klein
“What’s not true?” Oliver surges closer to me. The light from the hotel plays over him and now I can see him in his tuxedo. He looks classic. Sharp. Agonized and beautiful. “The part where you broke my heart or the part where you pretended it never even happened? I have no idea what you’re trying to say. What are you trying to say, June?”
I broke his heart.
I broke his heart.
No, it’s my heart that’s breaking. It’s cracking inside me, fracturing into an infinite number of tiny jagged pieces, and if I open my mouth to say a single word, they’re going to fly out and rip apart everything in sight. Or maybe just me. I’m the only thing that will rip apart.
A year ago, a month ago, a week ago, that fear would have been enough to keep my mouth shut. But now something has changed, and that something is Oliver Flagg, and I have to tell him that.
“What?” I hear it in the word. I see it in the tense way he’s holding his mouth, in the way his upper body is leaning toward me. It’s hope.
So I answer it. I answer it with a hope that is just as strong.
“This is the moment.” That doesn’t make much sense, so I elaborate. “It wasn’t the night of the senior prank, Oliver. It’s tonight.”
“What’s tonight?”
“The night I’ll come back to, the one I’ll replay over and over and over again like a song in my head.” I smile through my tears. “The one when I tell you the truth.”
He’s standing in a way that makes me think of that deer we startled on our drive to school. Like if I make the wrong move, if I say the wrong thing, he could bolt and I’ll never see him again. “What truth?” he asks.
I take a slow, careful step toward him. I reach out to touch him. His muscles are tensed beneath the tuxedo jacket as I slide my hand down his arm and rest my fingers lightly against his. I open my mouth, and when I speak, all those jagged little heart pieces pour out. “The truth is that this is the single stupidest thing I’ve ever done, showing up right before everything changes and our lives turn upside down and time runs out, but I have to, because I’ve finally figured out that some things are uncontrollable, and one of those things is my heart and the fact that it absolutely, without question, loves you.” We stare at each other and I watch his eyes widen. Just in case I wasn’t completely clear the first time, I tell him again. “I love you.”
“I got that part,” he says. One corner of his mouth is twitching up, just a little. I take it as an encouraging sign, but even if it’s not, I’m too far gone to stop the rest of it.
“And it matters,” I tell him. “It matters because you matter and I love you.”
The words hang between us. My heart stops beating and the world stops turning and every twinkling star in the sky freezes into a bright pinpoint of white-hot light.
And then Oliver smiles, and I feel it everywhere, like he’s touching me everywhere. “Well, obviously I love you, too,” he says. “So now what?”
The tiny jagged pieces of my heart coalesce into laughter. The laughter bounces off the hood of the behemoth and rings out over the parking lot.
“Now we go to prom,” I say.
• • •
I’m walking into my senior prom, onto the dance floor, where it seems like everyone I’ve ever known is jumping up and down to some sort of Beatles house remix. It’s like a thousand high school dances I haven’t attended, except that this time I am attending and I’m doing it while holding hands with Oliver Flagg. Our fingers are interlaced, like they were always meant to be that way. As we wend our way through the craziness, we see Darbs. She and Ethan Erickson are holding hands and bopping around in a group with Lily. Nearby, Yana Pace dances with a girl in red sequins.
Oliver pulls me to a halt in the middle of the crowd. A few people glance at us, but Oliver doesn’t seem to notice, because apparently, I am the only thing he notices. In fact, his eyes are roaming all over me. “You look kind of amazing,” he says.
“Thank you.” It seems weird to tell a boy he looks beautiful, so instead, I slide a finger down the lapel of his tuxedo. “You look like a spy.” One of his eyebrows arches up, so I attempt an explanation. “An international spy. A dashing, handsome international spy who sort of has this thing about him that makes all the girls crazy and…What?”
He’s smiling that blinding smile down into my eyes. “It’s another one of those moments,” he says.
“Which moment?” I ask, even though I think I know the answer.
“The one where I kiss you.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” I answer, my heart speeding up. I want him to kiss me so bad, but I’m also a little terrified of it—of how it’s going to make me feel. “We haven’t had any tequila….”
“Good,” he says, and then his mouth is on mine. I was right to be terrified, because Oliver Flagg’s kiss destroys the entire world. Everything around us drops away, and all I know is the feel and the taste of him. I don’t care who’s looking or who’s surprised or what administrative official could run up and tell us to knock off the public display of affection. Oliver is everything, and it’s even better than when we were on the hood of the behemoth, because this time I’m not pretending about anything. This time, I’m just me. With him.
And it’s so real.
After a moment (okay, a few moments), Oliver pulls away and gazes down at me. I suspect I look the same way he does—a little rattled, a little exhilarated, a lot in love. “We’re going to do more of that,” he tells me. “When we don’t have an audience.”
“I can’t wait.” And yet I can, because I’m going to savor every last second of this prom.
Oliver slides his hands down my arms, linking his fingers with mine again. “Hey, guess what.”
“You’re trading in the behemoth for a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle?”
“Oh, that’s right. I had forgotten how bad you are at guessing.” He leans over and pecks me on the lips again. “I got that summer bank internship—”
My heart falls. “Oliver…”
“—and I turned it down. Instead, I’m taking woodworking classes at a studio off State Street. Dad’s not thrilled, but he’s busy trying to handle things with Mom, so he’s dealing.”
I beam up at him before breaking away. “I have to do something. Wait here.”
Leaving Oliver on the dance floor, I run up to the deejay booth, where I fling my arms around Shaun. “You look like you’re having fun,” Shaun says after he pries me off his body.
“So do you.” I shove my phone at him. “I have a deejay request.”
Shaun glances at the song scrolling across my screen. He rolls his eyes. “Who are you?”
“I know, right?” I grin at him and he grins back. He looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. He looks like how I feel.
A minute later, I’m back with Oliver on the dance floor. After kissing me again, he motions to the deejay booth. “Who’s the guy with Shaun?”
I follow his gaze. “Oh, that’s Kirk. He drove me here.”
“Cool,” says Oliver.
“Very cool,” I say, and then the next song—the one I requested—rises from the hotel’s speakers. We hear powerful drumbeats followed by power chords. In fact, it’s definitely the drummiest, power-chordiest song that has ever graced the airwaves.
“Seriously?” says Oliver with great satisfaction.
“Seriously,” I assure him as I slide my hands up his chest and over his shoulders so I can link my fingers together behind his neck. He circles his arms around me, dropping another kiss onto my lips as “When It Matters” pours out from the speakers. “Look, you just won,” I tell him. “You won the playlist.”
“I won something better than the playlist.”
“That’s super cheesy,” I say, and he grins down at me.
“But now you embrace cheesy.”
“Now I embrace you,” I clarify.
“That’s super cheesy,” he says, and then we’re swaying back and forth, like Itch
and Akemi, like Shaun and Kirk, like everyone else. Because even though this moment is cheesy and weird and antiquated, it means something.
It matters.
“You know I’m not supposed to have boys in my room,” I tell Oliver, right before giving him a gentle shove toward my bed. He sits down on it, pulling me onto his lap.
“You’re also not supposed to consort with boys from rival schools,” he reminds me. “And yet here we are.”
“Consorting away.” I give him a peck on the mouth. I’d like to give him more than a peck, but we have a job to do. “I guess we’re going to have to make some exceptions to the rules.”
“Shaun will appreciate that, too.”
“I consort differently with Shaun,” I tell him.
“Well, I would hope so.” Oliver tries to start the kissing again, but I pull away and hop up.
“Later,” I promise him. “Now come on. Get up.”
He groans but allows me to pull him to his feet.
Mom and Cash are still drinking coffee in the kitchen when we make our last trip downstairs. They must hear us clomping on the steps, because Cash calls out, asking if we’re sure we don’t need any help. “I’m sure,” I answer, right before my box tumbles out of my arms and lands on the floor with a thump.
“Allow me,” says Oliver with a bad British accent. I roll my eyes but let him get my box along with the one he’s carrying. He lifts them both—his muscles doing all kinds of things under his T-shirt—and catches the way I’m eyeing him. “What?”
“Just appreciating the Oliver Flagg thing,” I tell him, and we grin at each other.
Outside, he loads both boxes into the overflowing bed of Cash’s truck, and we secure it all with a tarp. “Do you need to say good-bye to your mom?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I already did, and she’s going to come by the dorm later.”
“I hope she knows that boys are allowed in that room,” Oliver informs me, then quickly shakes his head. “Correction: not all boys. Just one.”
“Definitely just one,” I assure him. “The one who’s only going to be three hours away.”
“But who will visit a lot.” Oliver leans over for a fast kiss…and this time, it turns into a slow kiss. He pulls away long enough to glance at the house—no one’s watching—before crowding me against the truck so he can take his time.
It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been dating Oliver; when he kisses me like this—all deep and deliberate—I forget everything. I just melt.
When we break, I smile up at him. “I might let you carry everything into the dorm after all,” I tell him. “Because now my knees are weak.”
“Yeah, mine too.” He pulls Cash’s keys out of his pocket. “Ready?”
Oliver opens the driver’s-side door and I clamber aboard. I’m grateful Cash is letting us borrow his truck to move my stuff, but it’s even more unwieldy than the behemoth. Oliver swings around the car to sit in the passenger seat beside me. He hands me the keys, and as I crank the engine, he nudges my arm. “You sure you don’t want me to do that?”
He’s kidding, and he knows I know it.
“I would,” I tell him. “But you can’t drive a stick shift.”
“You could teach me.” Oliver leans across the seat to kiss my neck. I try to bat him away, but I don’t try very hard. “I should at least get to pick the music,” he murmurs into my ear.
“Be my guest.” I motion toward the console, which features an old battered radio with no jacks or wireless connections. “But our playlist isn’t going to work in here.”
“That’s okay.” Oliver gives me a last kiss. “I don’t need the playlist anymore.”
He turns on the radio and scrolls through stations until some pop song I can’t name comes on. “That’s terrible,” I tell him.
“Awful,” he agrees.
“Turn it up.”
He does. I back onto Callaway and shift into first gear. I touch the gas and the engine revs. Its power becomes my power: there all along, just waiting for me to notice.
I let out the clutch, and we head down the road, happy to listen to any song that plays.
“When It Matters”—Emotional Resonance**
“Making Love out of Nothing at All”—Air Supply
“Gone Daddy Gone”—Violent Femmes
“Here I Go Again”—Whitesnake
“Cry for Love”—Iggy Pop
“(I Just) Died in Your Arms”—Cutting Crew
“Heaven”—Warrant
“London Calling”—The Clash
“I Wanna Be Sedated”—The Ramones
“Angel”—Aerosmith
“Luv Luv Luv”—Pansy Division
“I’ll Be There for You”—Bon Jovi
“Chase It Down”—Ume
“This Is Usually the Part Where People Scream”—Alesana
“Love Bites”—Def Leppard
“Hearts Are Made for Beating”—Wax Fang
“You’re So Vain”—Carly Simon
“The Search Is Over”—Survivor
“Bang Bang”—Nico Vega
* * *
* All playlist songs exist.
** Except this one.
So much gratitude to the following:
Anyone who’s reading this now. You are the reason. Thank you.
My exceptional book agent—Lisa Gallagher—for her endless passion and support and enthusiasm.
Chelsea Eberly, both for her mad editorial skills and for the gift of collaboration. This book came about through a magical alchemy where one person says a thing, and the other person says a thing, and then they come to a whole different thing that is far better than either of the original things. That happened a lot, and it was both extraordinary and extraordinarily fun.
Michelle Nagler, for letting me talk about ideas, and for listening, and then for taking a chance.
Alison Kolani and Barbara Bakowski in Copyediting, Jocelyn Lange in Subsidiary Rights, Heather Palisi in Design, and the entire Sales, Marketing, and Publicity teams at Random House Children’s Books, who are too numerous to name but are fantastic champions.
Barrett Gregory for the fun photo sesh and great new head shots.
Elise Allen and Nina Berry—my fantastic author friends who took time from their own books to read my initial pitch pages.
The writing and support staff of Grey’s Anatomy, season 12…with an extra-special thanks to Andy Reaser for “PMGO.”
Sara Rae Dodson—who was the first Real Live Teen to read this book—for her breakneck pace, insightful thoughts, and fearless honesty.
Nicole Desperito, for joining my chaotic village, for reading early drafts, for helping bring order to the chaos, and for letting me learn through teaching.
Countless numbers of friends and family, who are my cheering squad, my necessary distraction, my loves.
JEN KLEIN lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a menagerie of little boys and animals, all of whom are unruly and ill-behaved. When she’s not writing YA novels, Jen is an Emmy-nominated television writer, currently writing on the series Grey’s Anatomy. Visit her online at jenkleinbooks.com and follow her on Twitter at @jenkleintweets.
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