“So I don’t have to stay up.”

“I’m pretty sure you can go to bed without me.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, turning a remote toward the TV and shutting it off, “but I don’t want to.”

Chapter 21

I’m not sure what being on drugs feels like, since I’ve never done any, but I imagine it must feel a lot like having Mike Madden order you to go to bed with him. Reality spins, time picks up speed, and my whole body buzzes with nervous anticipation.

It’s late—really late—and I’m pacing back and forth in Mike’s hallway bathroom. My fuzzy blue socks eat a line into the slate-gray tile.

When I was thirteen, I kept having this recurring dream that a six-foot-tall blue mouse broke into my room to play hopscotch on my bed, and that made more sense than everything that’s happened with Mike tonight. I pace toward the bathtub, remembering the way his thumb massaged my shoulder, the way he refused to go to bed without me. Then I pace back toward the door, remembering the way we scarfed down pizza and played war games together like twenty-year-old frat brothers. Toward the tub—how tightly he held my legs last night. Toward the door—the fact that it took him weeks to break up with Danica, even though I’ve been here the whole time.

His voice at the pond echoes in my mind: You’re one of my best friends now.

I sit on the lid of the toilet and press the heels of my palms into my eyes. I’m exhausted, I’m drained, and I’m making something out of nothing. Mike rubbed my shoulder to tease me, like friends do. He wanted me to come to bed so we could keep talking and laughing, like friends do. He carried me through the woods, he picked me up from the animal shelter, he confided in me about his feelings for Danica, because those are all things that friends—really, really good friends—would do.

He’ll miss me when I’m gone. But not like I’ll miss him.

And anyway, even if he did like me like I like him, it’s not like it would matter. He’s a rock star. He’s going to be ridiculously famous. He’s going to have girls throwing themselves at his feet in every country in the world, starting next week when he goes on tour. Most of his life is going to be spent far away from Virginia. Far away from Indiana. Far away from me.

Maybe he was always just meant to be my one exciting story. Fifty years from now, when I’m still living on the farm my parents lived in and my grandparents lived in, when my own granddaughters have tired of a thousand boring stories about livestock and weather and crops, I’ll tell them about the hot drummer I pined after during my one semester in Virginia. Maybe I’ll even tell them about the night I slept in his bed. They’ll probably think he’s the one that got away, and maybe I’ll think that too . . . but I’ll smile anyway, because there are worse things than being Mike Madden’s friend—I could have never even known him at all.

Ignoring the sting in my chest, I push open the bathroom door and pad down the hall to Mike’s bedroom. In the dim light of a corner lamp, he’s straightening the sheets of his oversized bed. His brown eyes lift to mine, dark under thick lashes in the soft lamplight. He straightens to his full six-foot-something, in a white T-shirt, red workout shorts, and black ankle socks, and it strikes me how big he is—how if he wrapped his arms around me, I could get lost in them completely.

“Which side do you want?” he asks.

“Whichever side you don’t normally sleep on.”

“I normally sleep in the middle.” Mike drums his fingers on his leg, and I curl and uncurl my toes against the floor.

“It’s your bed. You pick.”

“I guess I’ll take that one,” he decides after a while, pointing to the side closer to the door. I nod and chew on my lip as we walk past each other at the foot of the bed. The faint scent of his cologne makes my heart ache. It smells like running through the rain, like being carried through red leaves.

Mike and I climb under his covers at the same time—me, teetering on the edge of the mattress; him, getting comfortable on his side. When his eyes find mine in that soft yellow light, I nearly roll right off the bed.

I expect him to crack a joke about how awkward this is, or ask me if I’m comfortable, or say something, anything, but instead, he just lies there, and so do I. In the gentle light, I let him study me, because it means I get to study him. I take in the curve of his black lashes, the golden undertones in his eyes, the strong slope of his cheek, the adorable shape of his ear. It feels forbidden, staring at him like this, being this close. But not because of Danica. It’s because he’s too perfect. How soft his hair looks against his navy pillow. The way it fades perfectly into the scruff on his jaw. The tempting shape of his lips.

I close my eyes and try to commit it all to memory, because I want to take this moment home with me. I want to keep it close forever.

“I missed wishing you sweet dreams,” Mike says, and his quiet voice persuades my eyes to open. I find him still lying inches away, studying me with that gaze that pulls the strings inside me.

I want to ask why he stopped, but I already know the answer. It’s because I stopped responding. I didn’t want him to realize I had a crush on him, and I still don’t. I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering if that’s the reason he never talks to me again once I leave this town behind.

“Me too,” I say, and when my gaze twines with his, I let it. I let myself fall into those eyes, and fall, and fall, and fall.




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