But were we more?

God, what a mess.

I got out of the car and followed after Kyle. He was long out of sight, but I knew where he was going. There was a spot on ridge on the other side of Mr. Ennis’s cornfield where we hung out a lot. You could see our town from that ridge, as well the silver string of the creek and the dark swath of the forest.

Kyle was halfway up the huge lightning-blasted pine that crowned the ridge. There was a long, thick branch about twenty feet up, easy to climb to, and we frequently sat on that branch together, his back to the trunk, my back to his chest. I stood on the branch beneath Kyle, waiting. He hooked his foot around the branch, reached down lifted me like a doll and set me in front of him. This position took on a new significance, suddenly. I could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He was breathing hard and smelled of sweat. He must have run up the ridge.

I leaned my head back on his shoulder and looked at him, his profile chiseled and gorgeous, bathed golden in the late afternoon sun. His brows were knitted together, his jaw clenched hard. He was pissed, still.

“Kyle…talk to me. I don’t—”

“Don’t what? Understand? Yes you do.” He glanced at me, then slid his eyes closed and turned away. As if it hurt to look at me.

“We’re best friends, Kyle. If there’s something else, for you, tell me.”

“For me?” Kyle’s head thumped back against the tree. “I don’t know, Nell. I—yeah, I mean we’re best friends, by default I guess. I mean, we grew up together, right? We spend all this time together, and we tell people that’s all we are, but…”

“But what?” I felt my heart pounding in my chest. This could change everything.

He took a lock of my strawberry blond hair in his fingers and twisted it. “What if there was more? Between us?”

“More? Like, together?”

“Why not?”

I felt a rush of anger. “Why not? Are you f**king serious, Kyle? That’s the answer you give me?” I slid forward on the branch, swung my leg over and lowered myself to the next branch down.

In seconds, I was out of the tree and running through the cornfield. I could hear Kyle behind me, calling for me to wait, but I didn’t. Home was only a mile away at that point, so I ran. I threw open my front door so hard it shook the house, startling my mother so bad she dropped a glass. I heard the smash of the glass hitting the floor, my mother’s curse, and then I was slamming my bedroom door and falling onto my bed, sobbing. I’d held it together that long, but in the sanctuary of my room, I could let go.

“Nell? What’s wrong, sweetie?” My mom’s voice on the other side of the door, concerned and sweet.

“I don’t…I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Nell, open up and talk to me.”

“No!”

I heard Kyle’s deep male voice behind my mother’s. “Nell? Kyle’s here.”

“I don’t want to see him. Make him go away.”

I heard my my mom talking to Kyle, telling him she’d talk to me, telling him it would be okay. It wouldn’t, though. Why exactly I was crying so hard I couldn’t quite figure out. I was a hundred different kinds of confused.

I was excited to go out with Jason. Or at least, I had been. I tried to picture Jason’s hand in mine, his arm around my waist. I tried to picture myself kissing Jason. I shuddered and had to push the image away, almost nauseous. So why had I been so happy? Just because I’d been asked out by a cute boy? Maybe. I mean, it was pretty common knowledge that Nell Hawthorne was off-limits for anyone and everyone. I’d been asked out before, when I was fifteen, last year, around homecoming. Aaron Swarnicki. Cute-ish, but boring. Dad had flipped out and told me I couldn’t go out. I could go to homecoming, but that was it. It had kind of just spread, unspoken but understood: Nell is off-limits. No one asked me out again after that. Dad was a pretty influential figure in our town. Only Kyle’s dad was more important, and that was just because he was a congressman. Daddy owned several of the strip mall buildings in town, and several more in the surrounding counties. He was on the city board, had the ear of the mayor, the state governor too. Through Mr. Calloway, he also had access to national political figures. Meaning, no one wanted to cross Jim Hawthorne. It was all strange, now that I thought about it. Maybe Daddy had said something to the boy that had asked me out.

My mind spun back to Kyle. To his sudden, extreme reaction to Jason having asked me out. To the way he’d looked at me in the tree.

To my own reaction to his “why not” comment.

Why not? That’s the best he could come up with? I was angry all over again, and I couldn’t stop it, even though I knew it was irrational. I didn’t want him to want to go out with me just because. I wanted it to mean something.

I tried to picture being with Kyle as more, whatever that meant. I could easily picture our fingers tangled together. Candlelit dinners. My face on his chest, his lips descending to mine as the sun set behind us…

I told myself to quit being so melodramatic. But…I couldn’t shake the image. I could almost feel Kyle’s arms on my back, his hands spanning my waist, brushing dangerously close to my butt. I could feel the secret thrill of wanting his hands to move just a little lower. I could almost feel his lips, warm and soft and wet, slipping over mine…

I blushed and squirmed on the bed, rolling to my back and wiping my face.

What was wrong with me? I was fantasizing about Kyle, all of a sudden?

I needed to get outside. I needed to run. I stripped out of my school clothes and put on my running shorts, sports bra and tank top, ankle socks, Nikes, and grabbed my iPod. Running usually cleared my head, and that was what I needed right then.

I stuck the earbuds in my ears as I descended the stairs and rushed out the front door, pretending I couldn’t hear my mom calling my name. I put on my running playlist, all the silly, empty, upbeat pop songs that I could push to the back of my head and just run. I stretched briefly and took off, heading for my usual five mile circuit.

I passed Kyle’s driveway and mentally cursed myself for not thinking. He was waiting for me, his own earbuds in, shirtless in gym shorts. I’d seen him like this a thousand times, his sculpted abs rippling in the sun, a dark line of hair running down his stomach and disappearing beneath his shorts. This time, though, I had to swallow hard at the sight. I mean, I knew Kyle was hot. I’d always known that about him, and always appreciated it. I mean, I was a normal, hormonal sixteen year-old girl with a healthy appreciation for a sexy male body. I just hadn’t really thought about Kyle in that way. Like, as an object of desire.




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