26

MORGAN

At first, I think I’m in my old room, at my actual house, with my giant yellow lab, Dusty, sprawled across me. He always used to sneak in whenever my mom forgot to shut my door after she peeked in before work every morning.

But then I hear Dylan shout, “I’m out,” the way he always does before leaving, and it all comes rushing back: where I am, what happened last night. The weight shifts against me with a little hum, an arm snaking its way over my side. Definitely not Dusty, then.

I crack open my eyes and find Ruby tangled up around me. I’m trapped under the blankets with her on top of them. I take in her still-sleeping form, torn between being furious she’s in my bed and marveling at how peaceful she looks right now with her face relaxed and her hair spilling out around her.

But I can’t let this happen.

I take a deep breath and lean into her with a sort of half-stretch, half-shove gesture that knocks her just enough to wake her. I can tell when she really registers what’s going on, her sleepy confusion giving way to big, wide eyes. Her entire body goes tense as she scrambles backward to the end of my bed.

I push up to my elbows. “Yep,” I say, looking down at her.

“I’m sorry.”

“For coming here last night to tell me that you didn’t need me, or for ending up in my bed after I put you on the couch?”

“Both?” She runs her hand over her face. “I panicked when I heard your brother drive up last night. I was planning to sleep on your floor, I swear. I don’t know what happened.”

“Why’d you panic?”

“I didn’t want you to get in trouble because I was here,” she says, wrapping one arm around her shoulder.

I tilt my head. “I texted him to let him know. It was totally fine.”

“Oh,” she says, and then we both just sit in super-uncomfortable silence.

“I’m going to hop in the shower,” I say when it’s clear she doesn’t have anything else to add. “Will you still be here when I get out?”

“Probably not.”

I nod. It’s not like I wasn’t expecting that answer.

I take my time in the shower, trying really hard not to think about the fact that in the last thirty-six hours or so, the girl I like kissed someone else, kissed me, showed up drunk on my doorstep to tell me there are other hot girls—which is the part I’m really trying not to cling to, because for her to say “other” implies that she might actually be including me in the “hot girls” category—and then slept in my bed all night, which I am too much of a heavy sleeper to even have been able to appreciate.

Cold water forces me out of the shower before I’m ready to face the truth: Ruby will be gone when I get back to my room, and last night will just be another memory to toss on top of the mixed messages from girls I like pile.

I wrap myself in a towel and pad to my room, hesitating before I walk in. It’s fine that she’s gone, I remind myself . . . except Ruby didn’t actually leave after all.

“You’re still here,” I say, clutching my towel a little tighter as water from my hair drips down the side of my face.

She swallows hard, her eyes widening before she looks away. “I’ll give you a chance to get dressed,” she mumbles. “Can I borrow your bathroom?”

“Sure?” I say, still sort of shocked.

I dress faster than I ever have in my life and then fly around trying to straighten up before she gets back. Not that I didn’t just leave her alone in my mess of a room for fifteen minutes. I’m sitting on my bed, trying to look nonchalant, when she opens the door, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head.

“I, uh, borrowed some toothpaste too,” she says sheepishly.

“You can keep it,” I say, like an absolute grade-A dork.

A small smile spreads across her face. She starts to come closer but then seems to think better of it, folding her arms behind her and leaning against the wall near my door.

“Morning,” she says.

“You didn’t go.”

“Do you wish I did?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure you and KStew will be very happy together, so.”

Ruby hangs her head, chewing her lip for a second. “Sorry about all that.” When I don’t say anything else, she looks at me, her eyes wild. “You constantly make me feel . . .” She shakes her head. “Morgan, sometimes you are the most frustrating person I’ve ever met.”

“Wow, thanks.” I frown.

“I’m just being honest.” She shrugs. “What happened to your cheek?”

“I fell.”

“When? Where?”

“Yesterday, in the woods.”

“I thought you only went trail running when you were really upset?” She huffs out a little startled sound. “Wait, did you run in the woods because of me?”

I cross my arms and look away.

“Morgan . . .”

“What do you want me to say? That I like you? You already know that. That it hurt when you made me feel like I was some kind of an experiment? Fine, you win. It hurt. Anything else?”

“No, that’s not—”

“None of it matters, though. It doesn’t change anything between us.”

“It matters to me,” Ruby says, pushing off the wall.

“Why?”

“Because this doesn’t happen to me!”

“What? Kissing girls?”

“No, relationships!” Ruby practically shouts. “I don’t do relationships. Period. With anyone. But you’ve got me so messed up over here. I don’t . . . What do I even do with this?”

“Nothing,” I snap, standing up to, I don’t know, kick her out again or something. “My days of being someone’s experiment are way, way over.”

“I’m not experimenting. I really fucking like you, okay?!” Ruby shouts, taking another step toward me. “Why don’t you get that?”

I roll my eyes. “Maybe because you showed up drunk at my house last night, crying and telling me how much you don’t.”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“Well, you had been,” I say, just to get in a jab.

She shakes her head. “Whatever. I told you I was sorry.”

“‘Sorry’ doesn’t explain it happening in the first place!”

Ruby laces her fingers over her forehead, never breaking eye contact. “I tried to kiss you, and you slammed the door on me.”

“Because I’m not playing your games!” I shout. “You can’t just like me when you’re drunk.”

“I wasn’t drunk yesterday afternoon!”

And that I don’t have an answer for. But I know this: We aren’t working. We aren’t in sync at all. “I can’t do this with you, Ruby.”

Her face falls, all the anger draining away. “Why not?”

And the sincerity behind her question knocks the air out of me. Everything I know and feel about this absolute tornado of a person standing in my room right now starts spinning around my head along with everything Aaron said yesterday, punctuated by her big puppy-dog eyes and the sad slump of her shoulders. So what if she’s a mess? Maybe we all are. But what if she’s meant to be my mess, and I’m meant to be hers?

“Do you really like me?” I ask, my voice so small and unsure it barely sounds like me at all.

“I’m not allowed to like you,” she says, biting her lip. “But I don’t really care about that right now.”

“What does that mean?”

She takes another step toward me, so close we’re nearly face-to-face. “It means I don’t care about anything except how much I want to kiss you and have everything be okay between us.”

“Just right now?” I ask as she comes even closer, her nose skimming against my cheek.

“We gotta start somewhere, don’t we?”

She pauses right before our lips touch, letting me be the one to close the distance this time, to be the one making the choice. And I do.

It’s our first kiss, the first one that really, truly counts, and my toes curl.

She nudges my lips open, her hand tangling in my hair, as we dissolve into a mess of smiles and teeth and tongues. And it feels like nothing exists beyond where our bodies meet. Because Ruby Thompson is the very best kisser, and this kiss is one for the ages, and I want it to last forever.

Ruby walks me backward toward the bed, giggles escaping us both as we fall onto the mattress. Her hands and hair, her lips and nails, are everywhere at once. She kisses like she’s dying, like it’s our last moment on earth. She pushes up my shirt and brushes her lips against my sides and my stomach so desperately, and then she’s back in front of me, so close I can count her freckles before she disappears against my neck, my entire body trembling as her hand snakes down, past the band of my shorts, and then—

“Wait,” I say, my hand on her wrist before she can go any farther. She stills, looking at me with a mixture of concern and lust that quickly turns to fear and rejection as she jerks away.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, trying to get out of the bed, but I pull her close until she buries her head in my neck and finally breathes. “I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s okay,” I say, running my hand up and down her back.

Ruby pushes herself up to her elbows. “Was it not good?”

I frown at the fear in her face and touch her cheek. “No, it was amazing. You’re amazing. I’m just not ready for that yet. Are you?”

“Yes,” she insists, looking like she has something to prove as she leans in for another kiss.

“Ruby,” I say, tucking some of her hair behind her ear with a soft smile. “I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m making out with the person I like,” she says, and sticks out her tongue.

“I don’t want it like this,” I say, and she looks confused. “I don’t want you to hide your feelings behind sex.”

“I’m not,” she says, distracting me with another kiss behind my ear.

“Then what?” I ask, when I regain my senses.

She looks down to where her fingers are tracing lazy infinity symbols on my arm and takes a deep breath. “I want to show you how much I like you.” She looks up at me then, her eyes a little glassy, her lips a little wobbly. I open my mouth to say something, but she just shakes her head, letting out a self-deprecating laugh as she pushes herself off the bed.

“Ruby, we don’t have to have sex for me to know . . .”

She turns around, shrugging as she raises her hands and drops them. “What do you expect? Because this is who I am. I do pageants, I fix cars, and I . . . If you’re looking for another, deeper Ruby or something, she doesn’t exist. So I don’t know, Morgan. Is this just pointless?”

“Ruby,” I say, more sternly.

She turns to me, looking utterly lost. “Yeah?”

“I am interested in that.”

“What?”

“The cars, the pageants, the . . . rest,” I say. “I’m very interested.”

“But . . .”

“But I want to know more than the fact you like cars and were a runner-up Miss Tulip or whatever before we go farther than, like, kissing. I want to know what those things mean to you. It’s not that I’m not interested; it’s that I’m not ready. I want to take it slow, and I really, really hope you can understand.”

She hesitates before answering, like she’s really thinking it over, and then nods. “All right, Matthews. We can try. But I’m gonna need more hints about what you’re looking for, okay?”

I smile. “I don’t have anywhere to be right now, do you?”

She shakes her head.

“Take me somewhere, then.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere that matters to you,” I say, and her face, it just lights up.

“I can definitely do that,” she says, leaning closer. “But can I have another kiss first?”

“One,” I say, holding up my finger with a laugh as she tackles me on the bed. “One kiss.”

“One kiss.” She grins. “For now.”