What are you thinking?” Alex wants to know, driving down the lonely highway at a quarter to ten, moonlight a web between flecks of dirt on his windshield. “I know I just asked you that, but I like to refresh my data every two seconds, so I’ve gotta ask again.”
“That you’re cute. Ugh. It stresses me out. Do you know how hard it’s been to ignore your face?” I angle toward him, cheek on the vinyl seat, and smile at his posture: relaxed, fluid. He’s been tense this whole time, every minute we’ve spent together. I never knew exactly how much he was holding in until he let go. “You have the best face.”
“I don’t want to hear about it. You only had to suffer for a few days.” He goes silent for a moment, thinking. “I always had a crush on you—can’t remember a time when I didn’t—but the crush grew into this uncontainable monster freshman year. I stared at you in biology while you stared at Corey Muskingham, feeling like my skin was so hot that it would start peeling right off me.”
I pat his cheek lightly, my face cracking into a smile so wide that it hurts. “If it makes you feel any better, I spent so much time memorizing your profile in eleventh grade that Mr. Broeckhart wrote a note of concern to my parents in my report card. In pencil, thankfully. What a snitch.”
“Corey sent me a friend request a couple years ago. I ignored it.”
“Haaaa! You did not!”
“Didn’t want to decline because it wasn’t as if he’d personally done anything wrong to me, but I couldn’t forgive how many pencils you loaned him that he didn’t return. Even your fuzzy pink one with the charms on it! Asshole. I couldn’t stand it. I remember walking about fifteen feet behind him one day after baseball practice, glaring at the back of his head, so jealous that I felt waves coming off me . . .” He talks with his hands, fingers spread. “Radioactive. I didn’t know what to do about it, so I threw my baseball into the creek as hard as I could. Then I had to go get it, like an idiot. Mom asked why my jeans were soaked. I told her the grip of my shoes was bad, that they made me fall into the creek. Brand-new shoes.” He sighs. “She made me wear my dad’s old sneakers until she could buy me a different pair—these ugly, bulky ones with ridiculously bumpy treads. My new terror became, What if Romina thinks my shoes are ugly? Which would be even worse than my usual terror: What if Romina never notices me?”
“Young Alex and his new hormones.” I laugh and laugh. “I forgot all about Corey. Hmm. Maybe I ought to look him up. You think he’s still got that hot pink skateboard?”
He slides me an amused grin, then returns his focus to the road, shaking his head. His left hand drums the door handle continually. And then, much too quickly, we’re rumbling down the alley behind the carriage house.
After he parks and the headlights shudder out, we sit in the pitch-black car for a quiet, loaded minute.
I turn toward him. “Tell me honestly.” Alex’s finger-drumming stills.
“Do I look like someone who just sixty-nined in a field?”
His eyes are sparks in the darkness of the cab. A flash of white teeth. “Nah.”
Before I can say anything else, he unbuckles and springs across the seat, lips crushing mine. He kisses me until my mouth is swollen, one hand roving up my shirt, cupping a breast, lightly pinching a nipple, his touch desperate right up to the point when I begin to reciprocate in frenzied kind—and then he withdraws instantly, leaving me disoriented. Out of my mind with need.
He musses my hair until it’s scandalously sexed-up. “There. Now you do.” Then he jams the button of my seatbelt, opening my door for me from the inside. Starts the engine again.
“You’re not coming in?”
He smiles at my disappointment. “I want to give you time to miss me.”
“Where will you go?”
“Home.” He shrugs. “Oreton isn’t that far away.”
I shove his shoulder. He laughs.
I slide out of the truck, smoothing my clothes. “Not even gonna walk me to my door. I see how it is.”
“Walking you to your door is boyfriend business. You want me to be your boyfriend, Romina Romina?”
I’m so flustered by this blatant teasing that I bump my elbow into a telephone pole. “No.” Before I unlock my back door, he calls my name.
I turn.
He leans his head out the window. “You never answered my question.”
“Which question is that?”
“What’s viscaria for?”
I stare at him, open-mouthed, trying and failing to remember. Before I can come up with an answer, he drives away.
It’s the day of the wedding.
“Croissants,” Kristin says to Daniel, standing shoulder to shoulder in Half Moon Mill’s empty restaurant, gazing out onto the patio. Rain sheets down in end-of-the-world waves.
He takes her hand. “Gelato. Macarons.”
“Toast,” Trevor chimes in, unaware of what they’re talking about, as he spreads jam on his snack. Next to him, Alex is doing the same. When he catches me watching, he licks jam off three of his fingers while holding my gaze, and I have to quickly look away before someone asks why I’m flushed. Outwardly, I’m trying to maintain my composure. Inwardly, I don’t think I’ve stopped freaking out.
Did last night actually happen? Did I make it up? If not, what does that mean? Is Alex the kind of guy who partakes in one-night stands, and if so, am I one? Is he a one-night stand for me?
All I know is that I can’t think about him, or anything remotely related to him, without feeling like my brain has been smushed into a juicer. But also, excessively turned on? I want to sit in a closet and stare at a wall for a few hours until I can get it together, but instead I end up in the corner with ten kids ranging from three to eleven years, most of whom are making it their mission to stain either their own nice clothes or someone else’s.
“Romina, you’re a lifesaver,” Kristin calls. “Thank you so much!”
“No problem.” I’m doling out printer paper and crayons. One of the kids gets ahold of glitter markers, which are swiftly removed. “We’re going to draw pictures for Kristin and Daniel to open on their anniversary next year,” I begin to explain when I notice a little boy lurking behind a nearby chair, jacket still zipped up, boots shiny with rain. He’s watching us, gripping a kids’ tablet in a blue safety case, looking unsure.
“Hey, there.” I smile at him. “I’m Romina. We’re drawing pictures for Kristin and Daniel. Would you like to color one?”
He shakes his head.
“Oh, he loves to color,” a woman pipes up. “Miles, don’t you want to color?” To me: “He’s a little shy.”
“Everyone here is super nice, I promise.” I hold up the drawing I’m working on for Miles to see as the woman shifts aside to allow a few other people by. It’s starting to get congested in the restaurant, but there isn’t anywhere else for us all to congregate ahead of the ceremony. “I drew Kristin in a wedding dress that looks like a cupcake. What do you think?”
“I drew poop,” a little girl announces, giggling.
The woman kneels to the boy’s eye level, unzipping his jacket. “Coloring sounds fun,” she whispers, with a rapid tickle over his belly that finesses a smile from him before he leans to the side and subdues it, rubbing the back of his hand over one eye. “You want to draw a picture, too?”
He shakes his head, retaining a white-knuckled grip on the strap of her tank top. Whispers in her ear.
She hugs him tight. “It’s all right, buddy. You’re going to have so much fun today, and you can eat as much cake as you want! I love you bunches and bunches. Be good for Daddy, all right? I’ll see you in a few days.”
He adheres himself to her leg when she tries to leave. Side-eyes me as if to say, No sudden movements, you!
“I didn’t see you come in,” Alex says, joining us.
“I’ve been—” I begin, then stop.
He isn’t speaking to me. The little boy wraps his arms around Alex’s waist right at the moment I realize who his golden-brown ringlets remind me of, and he says in a quivery voice, “I don’t want to be here with so many people, Daddy. Can we go?”
