The Vow

Chapter 13

Annie

He’s looking at me. I can feel his eyes from across the yard, where he’s losing a game of croquet to his niece, Piper. He’s only pretending to try, I think, but it’s hard to tell because I’m definitely not looking at him.

“You meant to do that!” Piper insists. Her voice is unusually husky for a five-year-old’s. “Hit it again.”

I glance over to see Reed reach down, pick up the red ball, and pull it back a few feet.

“This time try,” she orders.

“Yes, ma’am,” Reed says.

I take a sip of my virgin piña colada—pushed on me by Flora, who is now mixing more exciting drinks for the college girls—and eye the scene casually. I feel light, like I could drift away, but the icy glass under my fingertips somehow anchors me to the party and to these people I don’t know.

It’s odd to be at a party of older strangers. Of course, I know the people from work, but Vicky and Soup haven’t lived here all that long, so the rest of the guests are friends from their old neighborhood in Louisville.

“So are you going to hit it or what?” Piper demands.

I have to look over. Reed obeys and hits the ball through the wicket. Piper growls and hurls her mallet into a nearby bush, then growls even louder when she realizes what she’s done and goes in after it. Reed stifles a laugh while she wrestles it out; then he turns to the grill, where Soup is stationed. “Any advice here?”

Soup takes a sip of beer without looking up from his spread of meat. “Nope. But you think she’s mad now, just wait till you win.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’m going to win,” Reed says loudly as Piper disentangles herself from the bush and brushes the dirt off her mallet. “Piper’s got mad croquet skills.”

“I know,” Piper says, and whacks her ball into Reed’s red ball, sending it down the sloped side of the yard and into the creek.

I forget I’m not supposed to be watching Reed, and I don’t look away when he glances up at me with a wry but amused look, his hair falling over his glasses.

He looks different. The twilight and the lawn torches may be to blame. His features are less angular and the edges of his profile are blurring into the night air—no blanching glare of fluorescent bulbs. I hadn’t noticed how much red there is in his hair, but it’s glowing with all the colors of the sunset right now. No peach apron, either. His navy T-shirt looks like that brushed cotton that’s soft like skin.

“Annie, are you hungry?” Soup calls.

I pull my eyes away from Reed’s and make my way over to the grill. “Starving. Aside from this piña colada, I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Burger or brat?”

“Burger.”

Soup scrapes a patty off the grate for me and deposits it onto the open bun. “Extra juicy just for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Eat up. Then you should go take over for Piper before she gets really pissed off and starts swinging her mallet at Reed.”

“Oh,” I say, searching for the right words. Soup is her father, after all. “She’s such a cute little girl.”

“Yeah. Cutest dictator in the world.”

“She’ll be a great big sister, though,” I try, but it comes out with minimal feeling.

Soup shakes his head and glances at his wife. “Good luck, my unborn child.”

Vicky is sitting on a couch on the veranda, surrounded by piles of torn tissue paper and shredded ribbon. Somewhere beneath it all there are stacks of hot-pink onesies and breast pumps and other things that make me vaguely nauseous, but all I can see is wrapping carnage. I didn’t think you got all those things for your second baby. Vicky might be the type of woman who makes her own rules, though. She’s got her grandmother on one side, a frail-looking woman who’s almost asleep or possibly pretending, and someone I don’t know on the other. I’m clear across the yard, but I can hear scraps of the story Vicky’s telling. Something about her mother-in-law and baby-quilt swatches and getting kicked out of a fabric store.

“Annie.”

I startle. It’s Reed, standing beside Soup, the croquet mallet still in his hands.

“Oh, hi.”

He’s brushed his hair to the side so I can actually see his eyes now. Yes. Different from at work.

“You want a burger?” Soup asks him.

“Sure,” Reed says, dropping the mallet in the grass. “I’ll drown my croquet woes in grease.”

Soup scrapes another burger off the grill.

“Woes?” I ask. “You looked like you were doing just fine out there.”

“My ball is somewhere downstream and underwater, and my croquet partner left me to catch and torture frogs. Oh yeah, after calling me Uncle Idiot.”

Soup chuckles. “Sorry.”

“I’ve been called worse by Vicky,” Reed says with a shrug.

“Haven’t we all,” Soup mused. “Annie here was just bragging about how great she is at croquet.”

I choke on my burger.

“You okay?” Reed asks.

“Fine.” I cough. “Just surprised since I’ve never bragged about being good at any sport in my entire life.”

“What?” Soup feigns astonishment. “A minute ago you were standing here telling me you could wipe the floor with Uncle Idiot. Make him cry for his mama and everything.”

Reed shakes his head. “I have to draw the line at you calling me Uncle Idiot too.”

“He lies,” I say, trying not to laugh. “I’m terrible at any sport involving a ball or aim or coordination. Not great at the ones involving speed or strength either. Plus, I already have an Uncle Idiot—my mom’s brother—so I wouldn’t call you that. I promise.”

“I don’t believe you. I think we need to play croquet.” He puts his plate on a table, burger untouched.

I follow Reed back to where the croquet mallets are lying on the ground, the skinny heels of my sandals sinking into the grass with every step.

He eyes my feet. “Those aren’t exactly croquet shoes.”

Up until this moment I’ve loved these shoes—they go perfectly with my blue sundress—but I’m suddenly wishing I’d chosen something a little less girly. “Then I’ll blame them when I lose.”

Still, I slip them off and toss them beneath a garden bench. The piña colada goes beside my plate of half-eaten burger on top of the bench, and I join Reed by the croquet balls.

“Which color?” he asks, holding up a green and a yellow ball. His knuckles are flecked with a different-colored paint now. Eggshell blue.

“What if I say red?”

“Then I guess I’ll have to go wade through the creek and find the red ball.”

“You’d do that?”

He looks down toward the creek, his hair flashing gold in the sun. “You’d make me?”

I hesitate. “Yellow.”

He drops both balls at the starting post, and they make a satisfying clunk against each other. “Why’d you choose yellow?”

“I’m an artist,” I say. “Yellow is sunlight.”

“Sunlight? I don’t know. I think of lemons or butter before I think of sunlight.”

“But you’re a chef.”

“I am a chef.”

“Lemons and butter are nice but not exactly essentials. I can’t live without sunlight.”

He puts his hand over his chest. “And my chef ’s heart is breaking right now.”

I lean on my mallet, feel the head sinking into the grass under my weight, the sweet heaviness of the summer air pushing down on me.

“Who starts?” I ask.

“Ladies first.”

I line myself up and take my first shot. It doesn’t go very far. My ball only makes it halfway to the first wicket and about a foot too far to the left. “It’s because I’m barefoot. And I’ve been drinking piña coladas.”

He walks back to the bench, picks up my drink, and takes a sip. “This is virgin.”

“Shoot,” I say. “Then I guess I’m just really bad at this. Exactly like I told you I am.”

His laughter is deep and natural, not loud but melodic. I want to be closer to it. I wait by the post and watch the setting sun warm his features as he concentrates on the ball. He hits it, and it rolls through the first wicket.

“Cheater,” I mumble.

He taps the side of my calf with his mallet. “I wasn’t the one trying to distract my opponent.”

“I’m not trying to distract you.”

“You should not try a little harder then.”

Distracting. I look away, fighting the shyness suddenly warming me.

We hit the ball a few more times each. “You weren’t kidding,” he says. My ball is finally through the first thicket; his is a foot from the end post.

“About my athletic abilities? Nope. I’m not sure why you aren’t giving me the same treatment as Piper got, though.”

“You want me to let you win?”

“No. But you could at least let me think I’m catching up.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m not afraid of you like I’m afraid of Piper. I love her, but she’s nuts.” He hits his ball too hard, deliberately missing the post by two feet. “Better?”

“Much. So you’re painting something blue?” I ask.

He rests his mallet against his leg and holds his speckled hands out. They look calloused and rough beneath the splatter. “Yeah, I just finished the den. Moving on to the kitchen next. I should be finished with the rooms by next week, then starting outside after that.”

“At least it’s not too big,” I say, glancing back at the quaint house. It has a separate garage and a weathered fence that borders the entire property.

“Yeah, but the upkeep is still too much for her,” he says. “That’s why she’s selling it, which is why I’m painting it. I’m hoping to have it ready for her to put up for sale by the end of the summer so she can move into a place where she doesn’t have a lawn to mow or stairs to climb.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” I say.

“I don’t mind it. I’d rather spend the summer with her than my parents, and she’s been pretty lonely these last few years. Plus I’m getting free room and board in the apartment over the garage, so I’ve got my own space and my own kitchen.”

“Where do your parents live?”

“LA.”

“Huh. You don’t sound like you’re from California.”

“I’m not. I grew up in Louisville, but my parents moved out West a few years ago. I did my last two years of high school there, then came back the second after I graduated.”

“But California’s the place everyone wants to escape to.”

“I wasn’t exactly living in Beverly Hills.”

“Oh.” I slap a mosquito off my leg.

“What about you?” he asks.

“What about me?”

“Born and raised here?”

“Yeah.”

“And your family? Any crazy sisters, neglected grandmas? Now you know all about mine.”

“Oh.” I stare hard at the mallet in my hands. “My family’s small.”

“Siblings?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Just a mom who used to teach Victorian Lit,” he says, “and a dad who doesn’t like it when you get home too late.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

He squints at me. I know I sound dumb or aloof, but I don’t want to talk about my family.

“So, what time is officially too late tonight?”

I smile and hope it’s dark enough that he doesn’t notice. “Actually tonight they’re out with friends, so they’ll just be texting me every hour.”

He laughs. I should probably tell him I’m not kidding. Instead I say, “So we can finish our game, at least.”

“Theoretically.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, no offense, but at this rate I’m not sure your ball is ever going to make it to the post and back.”

I glare at him as I walk over to my ball, put my bare foot on top of it, roll it toward the next wicket, and push it through. “I actually do much better at this game when I’m playing in the dark.”

“I can see that.”

I nudge and roll my ball through the next few wickets with my toes, aware of Reed’s eyes on my bare legs. It’s dark enough now and we’re far enough from the lawn torches that I’m probably just a silhouette.

A high-pitched laugh floats over, and I glance at the center of the party, where people look like they’re pulsing in the moonlight. The voices are getting louder as the sky darkens and the drinks flow, but it’s the sound of orderly drunkenness. Occasional cackles and hoots are as bad as it gets—a grown-up party, as opposed to the few high school benders Mo and I have made brief appearances at. Nobody half-naked on the couch, nobody puking in the bushes.

We’re on the edge of the gathering, visibly separate. I can’t see Reed’s grandma anymore. She must’ve gone inside, and Vicky has finished with the gifts and is shouting for Soup to get her more pink lemonade.

“I’m glad you came,” Reed says. “Aside from the work people, I don’t know many of them.”

“They seem nice,” I say.

“They seem about ten years older than us.”

He has stopped playing entirely and is sitting on a large rock, leaning back on his palms, watching me cheat. It’s too dark to see much more than his eyes, but I can still feel them warming my skin.

“So, you’re a chef. What do you cook?” I ask.

“Food.”

I roll my eyes. “Really? How fascinating.”

“I’m still reeling from being told butter and lemons are nonessentials.”

“If I take it back, will you tell me what you like to cook?”

“Sure.”

“Good. I apologize to butter and lemon lovers everywhere.”

“I’ll accept your apology on their behalf.”

“So, answer my question.”

“I like to cook whatever makes people happy. For my grandma that’s hot browns, cheddar grits, and derby pie. For Soup and Vicky, ribs and chocolate anything. For Piper, mac’n’cheese.”

“What do you cook at culinary school?”

“Uh, mostly unpronounceable French sauces.”

“And what do you cook for people who don’t know what makes them happy?”

“That’s my specialty. I make them something so good they realize that’s what they’ve been wanting their whole lives. They just never knew it before.”

“Pretty sure of yourself.”

“Not really,” he says, giving his glasses a nudge and looking embarrassed. “I just love making food.”

“Okay, one more question,” I say. “When you cook for yourself, what do you make?”

He squints and I can feel his eyes evaluating me. “Something different. But I don’t believe in exotic just for the sake of exotic. It has to taste good. Have you ever had Moroccan food?”

I shake my head. “I’ve had Jordanian food a few times.”

“Oh, right. Your friend. Moroccan flavors are warm—lots of cumin and cinnamon and turmeric. And you’ve got to sit on the floor and eat it with your hands for the whole experience to be authentic. I’ll make it for you sometime, if you’ll try it.”

“I’ll try it.”

He smiles, and I feel warm and weak at the same time.

“So, what about you?” he asks.

“What about me?”

“Are you going away to college this fall or staying here?”

I turn my mallet upside down and twist it, digging a hole into the grass. I should’ve already told him I’m still in high school. I know he saw my age on my job application, and I let him assume from there. “I actually have one more year of high school.”

“Oh.”

“But then I’m going to art school in North Carolina.”

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t, so I just roll the ball back and forth under the arch of my foot. He’s doing it right now, making the assumption people naturally make about a girl who’s a year older than her classmates and headed for art school. Dumb. It is, I think, the same assumption my parents make, though they don’t come right out and say it.

“So, tell me about your mural again,” he says.

I bend down and pick up the ball. It’s surprisingly heavy. “What have I already told you?”

“That it’s an ocean.”

“Oh. Yeah. Or it will be an ocean, but for now it’s just water and some coral. I work slowly. I want it to be exactly how I want it to be.”

“And how’s that?” he asks.

I swallow and stare up at the starlit sky. I’d have an easier time describing how stars are made. Mo suffers through my mural ramblings like they’re physically painful, reminding me regularly that he has no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe that’s why Reed’s curiosity feels so foreign and terrifying. I’m not used to genuine questions about it or having to squeeze my images into words. “Like long sheets of silk parachutes,” I try. I didn’t realize I was talking softly, but I see him lean in so I try to speak louder. My voice falters, though. “Different shades, I mean, but all twisted up together. It’s . . . it’s hard to explain. I’m not good with words.”

There is just enough silence between us to convince me I’ve made no sense, that he’s picturing some grade-school art project that looks like a SpongeBob backdrop. I shouldn’t have said anything. The idea is still too young. Before my art is done it’s just an eggshell in my open palm, so brittle that the weight of the night air could crush it. I squeeze the yellow croquet ball in my hand. It’s solid, no give at all.

“Show me,” he says.

My heartbeat throbs in the tip of each finger. Yes. No. Yes. No. I need just a few seconds to think, but my pulse is pounding reason away and I don’t know what to say. What I should say is no. I haven’t even let Mo see it yet, and the wrong reaction from Reed could make me doubt it, or hate him, or both. But then I imagine Reed in the center with me, feeling the water swirling all around us, and I know what I want. “Now?”

He glances over to where Soup is poised on a ladder, tying a pink diaper-shaped piñata to a tree. Below him Flora’s holding a Louisville Slugger bat, and some guy in a cowboy hat is blindfolding her. “I don’t think they’ll miss us.”

“Okay.”

We don’t bother telling anyone that we’re going. The piñata chaos is loud enough that we don’t have to. I scoop up my sandals, looping my fingers through the straps rather than putting them on, and down the melted piña colada.

“I’m parked over there,” I say, pointing down the street. My knees feel a little weak, but I look down and lead the way. The grass tickles, and when I feel the cool concrete under my bare feet, I stop to put my sandals on. With each step I feel a little more nervous. Why am I doing this? If he sees my mural and says something stupid, I won’t be able to like him anymore. It would be much safer to just go somewhere and make out.

“Wait, where’s your truck?” he asks, looking around.

“Oh. I got a new car.” I point to the Explorer. The car-lot gleam seems suddenly too much, almost garish under the streetlamp light. At least I took off the bow.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And what happened to your old truck?”

“I think my dad sold it. Do you want to drive?” I ask.

“Seriously?”

I shrug. I hold out the keys and he takes them, his fingers brushing over mine. They’re warm and dry, almost rough.

He opens my door for me and I climb in. Everything looks different from the passenger seat. I run my fingers over the console, open and close the glove box, examine the cup holders in the door. Reed gets in and buckles his seat belt. The muscles in his arm tighten as he turns the key. Mo would kill me if he found out I let someone else drive it before him.

It’s a short drive, but I keep forgetting that I need to tell Reed which way to turn.

“Right or left?” he asks as we sit at the stop sign poised to turn onto Ridgewood.

“Oh, sorry. Left.”

I can see from half a block away that the house is pitch-black. I should be relieved. Except if they were home, I could just explain to Reed that my parents are insanely strict and make up something about not being allowed to have guys in my room and how he really doesn’t want to meet my parents anyway. That would be it. We’d go back to the party, and the mural would still be all mine.

But the lights are off, so the dread and the excitement build, filling one cell at a time until I’m brimming with it, about to spill over.

“Which one?” he asks.

“The one with the porch swing.” I hear my voice as if it’s someone else’s, forced and high.

“This is . . . wow.”

I pinch the skin on the back of my arm to keep myself from squirming. It’s big, but not that big. Not a mansion or anything. Except tonight the moon seems to have leached the cream from the towering stucco, and what’s left is bone-gray and lifeless. It looks like a mausoleum.

Reed parks. We walk up the driveway together, his hands in his pockets, mine fidgeting with my dress. It’s the sound of our steps on the pavement—the click of my heels beside the slap of his flip-flops—that makes me realize that for the first time I’m alone with Reed. Not work Reed. Just Reed.

I can still taste the sweetness of piña colada in my mouth, but it doesn’t mask the ache that’s growing in my stomach. How can bliss and nausea both happen at the same time?

“It doesn’t look like much yet,” I say, gripping the key, leaning my hip into the door for support.

“What do you mean?” He’s beside me, closer than he’s been before. So close I’m looking up at the gold stubble along his jaw. And I can smell his neck.

We could still turn around. And what would he say if I told him I wanted to go back to the party? He’d think I was crazy for dragging him out here, but there are worse things than having people think you’re crazy. Losing yourself is worse.

I twist my wrist and jingle my bracelets, but I can’t remember what they’re warning me against now. Not boys. Not sex. Something worse. Getting walked all over.

But this is different. I’m choosing this.

Reed’s staring at me now, like I really am crazy.

“I’ve only done the water,” I say. “And the water is just the background.”

“You already said that. But the way you described it before—it didn’t sound like just background.” He pushes his glasses up, and the glare from the streetlamp disappears. His eyes are warm and serious. If I kissed him, we might be able to call it a day. I look at his lips. I’m pretty sure he would kiss me back.

I slide my key into the door and twist it, and with the clunk of the lock, it’s over. I’m doing it. I push the door open and turn to watch him as we walk in. He glances around the front hall, and I feel how painfully clean it is, how the spaces between things make the house even larger than it looked on the outside.

The moonlight follows us in, pouring through the sitting room windows, soaking the tall white walls and making them glow. His face is nearly blank, but I see it in the slight widening of his eyes as he looks from chandelier to French doors, from vases to china cabinet. Too much glass. Too much crystal.

“No offense,” he whispers, “but why are you working for minimum wage?”

I take off my sandals for the second time this evening to stall. I don’t have an answer that won’t embarrass us both, based on his reaction. “I really love custard?”

It works. He laughs, and the tension lifts just enough for me to keep going. “My room is upstairs,” I say. I lead him without turning on the foyer lights. He doesn’t need to know that it turns from tomb to morgue when illuminated.

Up. I’m taking him up. My heart beats a little faster with each step.

I reach my room at the end of the hall, put my hand on the doorknob, and turn to him. He looks too big in this hallway, his shoulders filling up the space between the silver-framed photographs that line the walls. I’ve never noticed his shoulders before. Maybe it was the apron. He comes to a stop close enough that I could reach out and put my palm on his chest. I want to do it so I can both touch him and push him away.

“You’re nervous,” he says. “Am I doing something to make you nervous?”

“No. This is just the first time I’ve showed it to someone. And it’s probably not like what you’re expecting. It doesn’t actually look like water. It’s more like . . .” Of course, I can’t find the words, which is why I brought him here in the first place. Words can’t become the colors and curves and rhythms of waves.

He leans toward me and puts his hand over mine, pulling back on the door so I can’t open it. His neck is only an inch from my lips. He smells fresh but warm, like soap mingled with something indefinable—his heartbeat?

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t want you to show me if you don’t want to.”

I stare into his eyes. Do I want to? Or am I getting talked into this too? I turn to look at his hand over mine. His grip has relaxed, not pulling anymore, and he’s waiting for me to decide. In or out.

In.

I turn the knob and push. Panic spirals inside me. I anchor my hand to the door frame to keep the room from spinning and let my eyes follow Reed to the center, where my bed and dresser have been pushed. I focus on his face. I don’t want to but I have to, because if he doesn’t understand, I’ll see it now, in the way his eyes flit over the four walls I’ve spent weeks painting. And then I won’t be able to just like him because he’s handsome and he smells beautiful and the feel of his skin on mine makes my heart race.

But his face tells me nothing. He turns a slow circle, then walks to the far wall to where his shoes crinkle the tarp that lines the room. He lifts his hand, and his fingers trace a turquoise current to the corner, then down the length of the next wall as it rises and falls.

“It looks like it’s moving,” he says, voice low and soft.

He feels it. I lean into the door frame.

“How did you do this?” he asks. “I mean, have you seen something like this somewhere?” He stops turning and looks at me.

I shake my head. “It’s my idea. I’ve been obsessed with murals for a while. It just took a few years of begging for my mom to give in. I like the idea of making art that wraps around you. Or me, I guess.”

“Amazing,” he whispers. “Why the ocean?”

“I don’t know.” I fold my arms. The panic is gone, but I’m suddenly cold. “It’s endless, but hidden too. And something to hide in.”

He’s staring at me, not moving, not talking, and I hear my words. I don’t talk this way to anyone but Mo.

“What are you hiding from?” he asks.

“What?”

“You said something to hide in. I was just wondering . . . nothing,” he says. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I . . . I’m going to paint coral on the lower half of that wall behind you and the left side of this one.” I tap the wall beside me with my fingertips and pretend I’m not changing the subject. “And I’m still researching ocean life for the rest. It’s taking me too long to decide, but I’m paranoid about it looking cheesy.”

“I can’t imagine you painting something cheesy,” he says. “Not overtop of this.”

I can’t believe he’s in my room, beside my bed, leaning against my dresser like he belongs here.

“Why are you standing way over there?” he asks. “Isn’t the idea that it surrounds you?”

“Yeah,” I say, leaving the safety of the door frame. But once I’m close to him, I won’t be able to really see him anymore. No distance, no objectivity.

I walk to where he’s standing, so we are staring at the same blue wall. I think hard for something to say, anything to say, but then I feel the lightest pressure of his hand on my waist and abandon hope. I will not be coming up with words. His other hand is on the other side of my waist, and I can smell him again. I feel the faint tickle of his breath on my neck and wonder if my legs are going to give out. Is that just his breath, or do I feel his lips brushing the side of my neck? I’m almost sure it’s his mouth when my phone buzzes from inside my purse and I jump several inches. He takes a step back and lets his hands drop.

“Sorry,” I mutter, digging into my purse. “It’s probably my parents.”

I’m wrong. I glare at Mo’s name on my phone. I’m going to kill him.

“Do you need to get it?” Reed asks.

I shake my head and drop it back into my purse. “Just a friend. I’ll call him later.”

“Are you sure?”

He is almost smiling, his lips perfectly shaped and parted a little. I glance up at his eyes and realize he saw me staring at his mouth. I nod. “I’m sure.”

He moves to close the space between us, but the phone buzzes again before he can reach me.

I close my eyes to hide the frustration. “It’s him again.” I check just to be sure. Yeah.

“Wait, the one who’s moving?” Reed asks.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you take it?” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

I press talk but keep watching Reed. He walks over to the window, the single break in the waves, and waits.

“What’s up?” I say into the phone and rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger. I can’t yell at him with Reed right here. I’ll save it for later. “Mo?”

“I did it,” he says. He sounds out of breath. Or scared.

“Did what?”

“I talked to my mom. I asked her if she’d, you know, give consent.”

I suck in all of the air in the room. I’m such a ditz. He said he was doing it tonight, and I totally forgot. “And?”

“And it was messy.”

“So . . .” My heart is falling, everything slipping from me, and my thoughts are blurred but not too blurred to understand. Whatever I was feeling before this phone call is gone because that’s it, the only chance Mo has, shut down by one weak woman who doesn’t care about her own son. I feel tears spring to my eyes, then panic to blink them away before Reed sees. “So that’s it.”

“No. She said she’d do it. She wants me to stay.”

Suddenly I can hear what I didn’t before: The tremor in his voice isn’t fear. It’s excitement. Relief rushes through my veins, and I’m back to wanting to kick Mo in the shins. Hard.

“She said she’ll come to the courthouse with us tomorrow morning and sign whatever she has to sign.”

“Tomorrow morning,” I repeat. What he’s saying makes sense and it doesn’t. Too many contradictions: Mrs. Hussein said yes, but knowing her, she might back out, but Mo will talk her back into it if she does, and we’ll get married, which means Mo’s practically safe, but of course we’re both totally screwed if anyone finds out. And the marriage will be the biggest contradiction of all—pretending to love each other when, well, we actually do love each other. I don’t know whether to laugh or sob. “That’s . . . amazing.”

“I know.” His voice is jittery, and the words are coming too quickly. “It’s soon, but I don’t trust my mom not to flip out and tell my dad if we wait too long, and I know he’s going into Louisville to say good-bye to a few colleagues.”

“Um, I have to work at noon,” I say slowly, strangely numb. I don’t mention that I was planning on going to Myrna’s for more brushes in the morning—it seems unimportant, less than unimportant, now that I’m trying to wedge a wedding into the schedule. “Is that enough time? How long does it take to get . . .” I stop myself in time. Reed is looking at me. I can’t believe his lips were just touching my neck.

“The courthouse opens at nine,” Mo says, “so based on how long all my other courthouse weddings took, I’d say you should be fine. Oh, and I think we should do it in Taylorsville, just in case. It would be too easy for someone to find out if we did it here.”

I’m not listening. Reed has turned away from me and is holding his hand out to another ribbon of color, tracing the indigo current now.

“Annie? Hello?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just . . . relieved.”

“I know,” Mo says. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time since my dad told me we were leaving. So tomorrow is okay?”

I release a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

He laughs, a weird un-Mo-like chuckle. “Can you believe this?”

“Yes. I mean no.” Reed finishes tracing the indigo wave and comes back to the center of the room. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

“Sure. Wait, are you still at that baby shower?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, call me later. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight.”

“Okay, bye.”

I slip the phone back in my purse. “Sorry about that,” I say, my brain circling and circling for a lie that makes sense, but I can’t even remember what I said aloud.

“What’s amazing?” Reed asks.

“Hmm?”

“On the phone. You said, that’s amazing.”

“Oh, right.” I swallow, and miraculously the lie Mo told my dad lands on me. “Mo’s been trying to get some special student visa. He just found out he can stay.”

“That’s great,” Reed says. “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to faint.”

“No, I’m fine.” I sit down on the bed because I’m not entirely sure I won’t faint. “It’s just such great news, I . . .”

He furrows his eyebrows and I’m almost convinced he knows I’m lying, when I realize it’s more likely he misunderstands what Mo means to me.

I stand back up and take two steps toward him. I can’t explain it properly. He needs to meet Mo, see us together, to understand that Mo isn’t a threat. Except now more than ever, I don’t want him to meet Mo. But that doesn’t make sense either, because a fake marriage that nobody will ever know about is not going to change anything between anybody. My head hurts.

My phone chirps. A text. “Sorry, I have to check it,” I say, pulling the phone back out. Of course. “It’s my parents. They’re on their way home.”

“Your phone doesn’t want us alone together in this room, does it?”

I grin. “I guess not. I’m also guessing you don’t want to meet my dad.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, trust me, you don’t.”

He shrugs. “I should be getting back anyway,” he says, and leads the way into the hall. He takes one last look over his shoulder at the mural. “Will it be done before the end of the summer?”

“Why?”

“So I can see it before I go back to school.”

Two months. That doesn’t seem long enough, not for Reed or the mural. “I hope so.”

I follow him, but at the top of the stairs he turns around suddenly and I almost bump into him. I’m an inch from his chest, close enough to feel heat pulsing from his body without actually touching him.

“What?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’m whispering, except that he’s so close I don’t need to use my voice. Or maybe I’m afraid the electricity flowing between his body and mine will vanish beneath anything louder.

He answers me with his eyes. I can see the kiss coming, feel the intensity in his gaze as he lifts my chin.

I close my eyes. The rest is about touch and texture: his smooth warm lips on mine; a finger lighter than a whisper tracing my jawline and the length of my throat; another hand, firmer, almost insistent on my lower back pulling me forward, forward, forward; a rush of heat when my body hits his.

I’m not sure what I thought kissing Reed would be like, but it’s not this. The shy, bookish Reed from work, with glasses and endless patience for rude customers, wouldn’t kiss like this. The glasses are off now, but I don’t know when or where they went, and he’s cradling my head in his hands. I’m leaning in to him, letting him hold me up because the alternative is melting under his lips and sliding to the ground. His mouth is hot, but I’d rather be burned from the inside out than push him away. I hear myself sigh, but I’m too far gone to be embarrassed. I don’t think Chris Dorsey ever made me sigh.

He pulls back gently. I don’t open my eyes yet. I can hear that he’s as breathless as I am, still feel his chest heaving up and down. I’m scared that when I do open my eyes, he’ll be shy and it’ll be awkward and that minute of perfection will start to fade.

“Annie,” he says.

I open my eyes and he’s looking at me, just a hint of a grin on his face. Not awkward at all. We stare at each other, silently acknowledging the truth: That was not a first kiss. No nose bumping, no excess saliva issues, no rhythmical difficulties in the least.

We need to do that again.

He bends down and picks his glasses up off the floor, where someone—Him? Me? I have no idea—tossed them, and takes my hand. “Just so you know,” he says as we walk down the stairs together. “I usually do okay with dads.”

“I’m sure you do. But he’s not . . . it’s not . . .” I abandon the attempt to explain, letting my starts hang between us. I’m not going to tell Reed about Lena, and without that explanation, my dad is just a caricature of a Neanderthal, the overprotective father who turns rabid around every male his daughter encounters. “He’s not a bad person.”

Reed looks over his shoulder at me as we head out the front door, and I’m struck by the line of his jaw and the muscles in his neck. I want to touch him again.

“Of course not,” he says.

“He carries a gun.”

“Right. I’ll go.”

We walk out onto the porch and down the steps. “Would you have kissed me if I’d told you that before?”

He turns to me. “About the gun? I thought you were kidding, but yeah. Of course.” He meets my gaze and the glimmer in his eye holds me there. “I just would’ve kissed you twice as hard for half the time.”

I want to come back with something witty, but my stomach is flipping backward and over onto itself because I can’t not imagine what it would feel like to be kissed twice as hard, and maybe I need to sit down.

“I’ll drive you back,” I offer, but he shakes his head.

“It’s a ten-minute walk. Besides, aren’t you drunk off virgin piña coladas?”

I grin. “Maybe.”

He leans in close and his lips tickle my ear as he murmurs, “I’m just saying you taste like pineapple and coconut. That’s all. Good night, Annie.”

He turns and walks up the street, leaving me, heart thumping, under the streetlight.

Changing clothes is too much work. Besides, I want to stretch tonight into forever, or at least into tomorrow. So I crawl into bed still wearing my dress, ignoring the way it strangles my waist, bunching and twisting, because honestly, whatever. After that kiss, whatever. I don’t even know.

I pull the cool sheet over me and live it again. Then again and again. His scent, his pulse, his heat, his breath. How could I feel both weaker and stronger in that single kiss than anything I ever got pressured into with Chris Dorsey?

Exhaustion presses down on my calves, my chest, my eyes, but my mind can’t let go of my body. That kiss made color explode in my brain, and I’m almost afraid that sleep will fade it. It was that perfect. In that moment, I was closer to whole than I’ve been in forever, or at least since Lena left, except I can’t see the chain that connects the two—losing Lena and kissing Reed.

I’m hovering over sleep when it occurs to me that Mo is absolutely right. Some things are meant to be. Not that I’m about to believe in fate or God or soul mates, but as of this evening, I might have to believe that in this world of random chaos and pain, I am meant to be kissing Reed.

Which reminds me, I should call Mo back.