Saturday night.
Ten o’clock. Bonnie and Corinne’s mom were already yawning.
Corinne was chewing on the neck of her sweater. Even though that was gross. Even though Enoch Miller was right there and would see.
He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the game. Furiously. His jaw was so tight, the muscles kept jumping in his cheeks.
“Wrap up by midnight,” Bonnie said, on her way to bed.
Enoch waited for his mom’s last creaking footstep on the staircase.
Corinne listened to her own mother padding down the basement steps.
Then Enoch pushed the coffee table away, carefully, and Corinne dropped to the floor next to him, and he was already holding her hand. He was holding it so tight. Like two weeks was too long to go without touching her. (It was too long. It was eternal.) Enoch held her hand, and he pressed his face into her hair. Into her falling ponytail. And Corinne squeezed his thick fingers. Like she’d almost lost him. She had lost him. She’d lost a week of this, and her weeks were already numbered. His face was in her hair. Something was touching her ear, maybe his chin—but just for a second. And then he was looking down at Candy Land again. His cheeks were red. He held her hand under the table; he held her hand so tight, it actually hurt. It hurt.