“For a long time?” she whispered.
I nodded, barely, and then—I couldn’t help it—I kissed her. I don’t even remember leaning in, but I must have, because our lips brushed against each other softly, the feel and taste of her making me dizzy. I pressed harder, felt her teeth, her tongue. My hand was in her hair, tangling about those thick coarse strands. Her breath came short and fast, her hands on my chest. And then she pushed away, eyes wide, gasping,
“My dad.”
Dimly I heard the clomp of footsteps, my sluggish brain processing what she’d said. And what I’d done. “Oh, shit.” I was breathing hard, drunk with how it had felt to touch her. “I’m sorry.” I moved to the far side of the couch, not trusting myself to be any closer, trying to smooth out my clothes and compose myself.
She looked down. “Don’t be,” she mumbled, straightening her shirt, brushing at her face. “It’s not your fault.”
Her father pushed through the door then, looking as flustered to see us as we were him.
“Oh!” His gaze shifted from Sarah to me and then back. “I didn’t know you had a friend over.”
“This is Riley,” she said, gesturing to me. “From my physics class. Riley, this is my dad, Dr. McKenzie.”
I stood, holding the binoculars case—the first thing I could grab—in front of me as I crossed to shake hands with him. “Nice to meet you, sir,” I said, wondering if anyone in the history of man had ever been as embarrassed as I was right then.
His hand was dry and papery, especially compared to my hot, sweaty one. “Jim. You can call me Jim,” he said, oblivious to my flaming embarrassment.
“Uh, okay. Thanks. Jim.”
Sarah looked ready to burst out laughing, not oblivious at all. Which, despite my mortification, was a nice change from how she’d looked after the binoculars. “You done working for the night, Dad?”
He nodded absently, and I noticed his rumpled shirt and messy hair. Maybe he’d been making out with someone too. Ugh, why does my brain think stuff like that? “What are you two doing?” he asked. “Studying?”
“Yup,” she said breezily while I nodded along.
“Good, good,” he said. “Okay, well I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late,” he told Sarah, glancing at me. “School night and all.”
“I was just going,” I said, starting to collect my things as he climbed the stairs. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” he said, waving without turning around.
I could feel Sarah watching me from the couch, but I didn’t dare look at her as I stuffed the binoculars and case into the backpack. Finally, when I couldn’t avoid it, I met her eyes. “Well,” I said.
“Well,” she said back, smiling.
“This is awkward.”
She nodded. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Right.” I tried to read her face to figure out what she was feeling, but I was no good at that. So I asked, “What do we do now?”
Her eyes sharpened like a hundred thoughts were running through her head. “I think we pretend nothing happened,” she said finally. “I don’t think we want to tell anyone about the binoculars. Like you said, how could that help?”
I nodded.
“And I definitely don’t think we want to tell them about . . . you know . . . the other.” She blushed, which was unbelievably cute.
“Right.”
“So . . . we just forget about it.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing there was no way in hell I could forget it. I was already replaying it and would probably keep it on repeat all week. And the way she’d kissed me back, her breathing shallow, I doubt she’d forget it either. Which made me feel like a bit of a studmuffin, as Trip liked to call himself.
I pedaled home, not thinking about the future. Not feeling the cold or the burn in my muscles or even the crushing guilt that should have come with making out with my best friend’s girl.
CHAPTER 21
THE GUILT CAME THE NEXT morning. When Trip picked me up.
“I tried calling you last night,” he said. “Where were you?”
“What’re you, my mother?” I said, but my heart was beating triple time. Did he know? I hadn’t even checked my phone. I pulled it out now. Four messages from Trip. Jesus, what was wrong with me? “Sorry, man,” I fumbled. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said shortly. “I just wanted to tell you something. No big.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you listen to the messages and find out? Unless you’re too busy.”
“Come off it, Trip.” I remembered him telling me once that the best defense is a good offense. “You’re acting like a jilted girlfriend.” I winced. Poor choice of words.
“‘Jilted?’” Trip said. “Were you playing Scrabble at the nursing home last night?”
“You got me.” I clicked through the prompts on my phone, held it to my ear, and felt my eyes go wide. “Holy shit,” I said. “They arrested Galen?”
“Sort of,” he said.
He was going to make me work for it, I realized. He really did act like a girl sometimes. “What does that mean? What happened?”
“Nat found her vase.”
“At Galen’s?”
He shook his head. “She and John Peters were in town yesterday, walking to the library, and there it was, sitting right in Morris Headley’s window at the antiques shop.”
“Holy shit,” I said again. “What did Galen have to do with it?”
“They went in,” Trip continued, “and asked Morris where he got it. Which of course he couldn’t remember because he’s half-senile and doesn’t remember his name most days of the week.”
I nodded. During high season Bob Willets had gotten into the habit of dropping in on Morris in the mornings, just to make sure he hadn’t opened the shop wearing only his boxer shorts, like he had one day last summer, scaring a busload of Red Hat ladies half to death.
“Nat said he spent, like, an hour flipping through papers, finally coming up with the ticket.”
“And Galen was the one who’d brought it in,” I guessed.
“Exactly.”
***
It was all the talk that morning at school. It had been scandalous that Nat’s dad had been murdered, doubly so when she’d been held for questioning. And now one of her classmates had been hauled in? OMG, as the cheerleaders might—and did—say. The hallways were buzzing. I bumped into John Peters on my way to physics, so I heard the biggest piece of news first.