CHAPTER 21 #3
His lips twisted a little, but it wasn’t the signature smirk I’d grown used to these past few weeks. This one seemed more tired. More resigned. “Add it to your short list of moments you weren’t perfect.”
“Perfect is boring.”
Now Beck’s smile twitched bigger. “Listen to her,” he said to no one in particular. “She turns eighteen, and she becomes a changed woman.”
“Why are you going back to Stanford for the summer semester?” I asked, and pushed forward another pawn. “I thought you said it was boring.”
Beck picked up a pebble and shifted it forward a space. “I didn’t finish the spring semester. My advisor suggested making up for it in the summer.”
“Why didn’t you finish—”
“Nellie.” Beck’s voice was firm, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s just play so you can get back inside. I don’t really feel like answering questions.” And then, quieter, “Your move.”
“What about my necklace?” I cleared my throat. “Will you answer that question? Where did you get it?”
“From Aunt Ally.” Beck studied the board. “She said she knew there was a girl I liked. Told me to give it to her.”
Ms. Jennings had known, then, as soon as he’d put that necklace on me. I remembered the way her eyes fell to it on Senior Night, the way she’d traced it at Mimosa Morning. It was a strange thought, knowing Ms. Jennings had known this entire time.
My neck felt bare without it now, our pieces on the board, the chain on the table.
We played the next few turns in silence, with only the chirping crickets filling the absolute quiet between us.
My fingers trembled on each piece I picked up, but Beck pretended not to notice, steadily moving pieces of his own.
He swiped up a pebble of mine, and then an acorn.
I’d gone into the game with no strategy, and Beck had gone into it to win.
The tables had really turned.
“I am really sorry for everything that happened in the garden,” I whispered, trying to speak past the clench in my throat. “I wasn’t trying to throw you under the bus, or throw you away. I was just… so afraid. And it’s not an excuse, but I—”
“You asked me why I never said anything,” Beck murmured, still eyeing the board, as if he couldn’t look at me. “Why I didn’t tell anyone the truth about who set the rosebush on fire.”
You were scared, he’d replied. And I wasn’t.
“You were my best friend.” Beck shifted his makeshift knight forward, fingers lingering on the piece.
“Even if we weren’t really that close, I thought of you as my best friend.
I would’ve done anything for you. If Mrs. Johnson had tried to tell everyone she’d seen us kissing, I would’ve said I’d kissed you.
” And then, hesitantly, his eyes flicked up, the green electric.
“As long as it meant you weren’t in trouble. ”
Even though I was sitting in the wire chair, I suddenly felt weightless, floating and falling all at the same time.
Beck’s expression was open, the softest I’d seen it since he’d come back to Addison.
He looked even more like the boy I’d known before—the boy I loved before.
He was giving me one last glimpse before he left.
“I never was mad about the fire.” He looked back at the board. “Even if Mrs. Johnson hadn’t blamed me, I would’ve taken the blame myself.”
Hearing those words on his lips had me gasping. “But—you said that I ruined your life—”
“I was mad that you kissed me. And mad that I kissed you back, and that I let myself think it meant more than it did.” Another non-smile twisted Beck’s lips, but in the dim light, I could see that it was embarrassment. “You didn’t ruin my life. You just broke my heart.”
My throat closed around the breath I drew in. Tears were back and burning my eyes, but I blinked quickly, refusing to let them fall. “Did you come back to get revenge on me, then?” I asked in a tight voice, pushing my rook forward one space. A waste of a move.
“R-E-V-E-N-G-E.” Beck spelled the word slowly, and I watched his lips as he did so. “I’m not like you, who thinks things through and follows their strategy down to the letter. I am far more impulsive.” At that declaration, Beck swept his acorn forward, right into the path of my bishop. “Nellie.”
My heart hiccupped. “Beck.”
“Ask me why I always came outside when we were little.”
I didn’t want to tell you why I was really outside, counting the stars, he’d said the night we’d thrown mud at each other, when he’d shattered my belief that he actually was a geek about stargazing. The truth had been harder for him to share—and one I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
But, crushing my flower petal bishop between my fingers, I couldn’t help but ask. “Why did you come out to look at the stars?”
“Because I was so horribly lonely.” Beck’s voice was soft, sad, and distant, even though it was just a chessboard that separated us. “And I knew you’d always follow me.”
Something inside my chest twisted, sharp and fast, like I’d misstepped at the edge of something high.
I stared down at the board, at the neat little army we’d built out of pebbles and trinkets, but the pieces blurred together until I couldn’t tell one from another.
I knew you’d always follow me. Because I had. Time after time.
“I liked you,” I whispered, staring at the board, at how I was only a few moves away from capturing his king. A cold ache seeped through me. “I really, really liked you.”
And not just back then, I wanted to correct, because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt. I still like you, Beckham Jennings. I L-I-K-E Y-O-U.
“I liked you, too,” Beck said softly, but the words didn’t sound anything other than resigned. “I liked you a lot, Eleanor Brighton.”
I curled my fingers against the edge of the board, grounding myself, because I didn’t trust my voice.
Not when every part of me was screaming that if I let this moment pass, I’d lose him for good.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, because it hadn’t just been me who’d used the past tense, but Beck, too.
Beck flipped his pendant over, the equivalent of tipping over his king, surrendering. “I will never win against you, Nell-Bell,” he mused, staring at the board as if he were committing it to memory. “Not when you have your mind set.”
“You won before,” I whispered—I couldn’t help it. I wanted to unflip his piece. I wanted to keep playing. “In the game room. When we played.”
“Because I wasn’t playing fair.” Beck stood, swiping up the pendant and leaving the other pieces behind. He held his hand out to me, charm in his palm. “Come on. Let’s get you back before they cut the cake without you.”
There was a window of time that existed between there’s still time and too late. I’d learned that four years ago. Staring at the four-leaf clover in Beck’s hand, I came face to face with the realization again. My narrow window of time was closing.
I-N-E-V-I-T-A-B-L-E.
Instead of taking the pendant out of his palm, I grabbed his hand and stood, bringing us close. Without my heels on, I had to tip my head back to look into his eyes. They were so much more muted in the dark, but focused solely on me.
“Why did you come back?” I asked, the world feeling thin and dizzy. “Why didn’t you finish your spring semester? Why did you come back to Addison?” And then, half-guessing his answer, I asked, “Was it because you were bored?”
“I was never bored.” Beck reached out and touched his fingertip to the space between my brows, gently touching away my frown.
I held perfectly still, savoring the closeness, afraid it’d evaporate any second.
Afraid to hear what he’d say next. “It’s easy to say you’re doing something because you’re bored.
It’s far more embarrassing to say you’re doing it because you’re lonely. ”
Lonely.
At once, all the times he’d used that excuse came back to me.
When he’d called me, pretending to be Carter. Because I’m bored.
When he’d shown up at my school with his convertible. I was bored.
When I’d asked him if Stanford was boring. Horribly.
Because I’m lonely was what Beck had really meant. I was lonely. Stanford was horribly lonely.
Something in my heart cracked, the same way it had when I’d gone out to find Beck gripping the porch railing outside my house. I ducked my head a little, as if going to rest my forehead against the black material of his shirt. “Beckham,” I whispered, lungs aching.
“Don’t feel bad for me,” he said, like a soft request. “It’d just make me feel more pathetic.”
My chest physically hurt. “Pathetic? Why would—”
“For thinking you’d be the one person in the world who’d missed me.”
Something in me broke altogether. A rush of cold poured through me, freezing, like he’d dumped cold water on me.
I did miss you. I missed you nearly every day you were gone.
Alderton-Du Ponte events were miserable without you, and I had to fool myself into thinking they were fun.
Nothing was fun with you gone. But I couldn’t get any of that out. Why couldn’t I just say it?
Beck winced, as if embarrassed at what he’d admitted. “Let’s get you back,” he said, trying to pull his hand out from mine. “Before I lose my bad boy persona entirely.”
My eyes dropped to his mouth, to his barely parted lips, where his upper was fuller than his lower. My fingers tightened on his as if it were my last thread of sanity. “You were never a bad boy,” I whispered. “Just a hurt one.”
“Well,” Beck said with a little scoff. “That makes it sound even more path—”
I didn’t let him finish. The tension in me snapped, and I pushed up onto my tiptoes, pressing my lips to his.
There was no moment of hesitation, not on my end. I kissed him deeply, not caring about the pinch in my toes, not caring about anything but him. The last time I’d kissed Beck, it’d been from a place of innocence. Foolish. Soft.
This was not that.