CHAPTER 4 #2
It’s a little silly to hear you talk about NYU like you’ll go. Jamie didn’t know Dalton had said that, though. I’d never told him. There was so much the twins did not know, because if I told them the whole truth, there’d be no forgiveness.
Which absolutely shouldn’t have been a factor, but I couldn’t help it.
Bitterness twisted my lips. “Well, he wasn’t wrong, was he?”
“You didn’t not get in.” Jamie enunciated each word carefully. “You were waitlisted.”
“Which is just a different word for rejected.” I stood then, lifting my chin higher. Even though Jamie was sitting on the bed and I now stood in front of him, it felt like he towered from higher ground. “Not that you’d know.”
The words slipped out, a defensive jab poorly disguised as sarcasm. You wouldn’t know; you were accepted.
Jamie dropped his gaze, but not before I saw the shadow that passed across his expression. “I won’t bring him up again,” he said in a calm tone, slipping out his bookmark and quickly sliding it into his pocket. “Now, shoo. I need to finish my chapters for book club.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t want to talk about Dalton, least of all with Jamie, but something in me still resisted going back to the party. It was the same feeling that had me thinking I should reach out to Mom or Penn—something heavy that I couldn’t quite shake.
Jamie’s eyes were fixed on his book, not bouncing through a sentence. He wasn’t reading. “You’ll come get me if you need me?” he asked the page.
“You mean if Dalton gets here?” He hadn’t shown up yet, but with each passing second, the likelihood became stronger. And maybe that was another reason I didn’t want to go back to the party—the thumping stereo beat felt like a ticking time bomb.
“Just… if you need me.”
“You know, you didn’t have to come with me tonight.” My voice was slow. Hesitant. The weight in my stomach forced the words out of me. “I know these things aren’t really your scene.”
“Wherever you are is my scene,” Jamie said. Then he cleared his throat. “I mean, reading here or at home is the same.” Jamie raised his book up closer to his face, scowling. “Whatever, just… go. Leave me to my book.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t have too much fun.”
Jamie didn’t even respond verbally that time; he just waved his hand, dismissing me.
This time, I listened.
Out in the hallway, the music was louder, as were the voices carrying up the stairs. Taking another quick sip of my drink, I moved on toward the stairs when my phone vibrated in my pocket.
Nellie
I’ll be there in five
beck’s not coming?? don’t tell me you actually fried his hair off
Nellie
HA. more like he said he’d rather die than go to a party filled with high schoolers.
I didn’t fry his hair off
but thanks for the faith
With my phone out, I loaded up Penn’s contact, thumb hesitating on the keyboard. She was the only sibling with a phone, and felt safer to text than Mom, but what if she was already asleep and I woke her up? Then again, could I really enjoy the rest of the party without knowing?
Biting my lip, I began to type one-handed.
hey just curious, did Mo
I didn’t get to finish the text.
I was too busy looking at my phone as I neared the stairs, and I hadn’t noticed someone hurriedly rushing up them, not until they collided with me on the landing. My plastic cup got crushed between us, spilling Sprite all down the front of our shirts.
“Gosh, I’m sorry, I—” the guy began. I didn’t have time to recognize the muffled voice before I looked up, finding Dalton standing there with his hand pressed to his nose. Red oozed between his fingers. “DD.”
“What happened?” I asked, forgetting my spilled Sprite. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just a nosebleed,” Dalton cut me off, and though most of his left hand was covering his face, his eyes were clear and bright. “Can you, uh—do you know where the bathroom is? Is it this one—” With his free hand, he reached for the door to the room Jamie was in.
“No!” Impulsively, I snatched Dalton’s hand. His fingers yielded beneath mine, as warm and knobby as I’d remembered. “It’s—this way.”
From the two sleepovers, I remembered which door was the half-bath, and thankfully it opened.
I let go of Dalton’s hand, and he brushed past me into the bathroom.
Instead of shutting the door behind him, he started talking.
“I still get those spontaneous nosebleeds,” he said with a little chuckle.
He pulled a wad of toilet paper off, pressing it to his gushing nose. “Remember our first kiss?”
Of course I did, with vivid detail. We’d been in his car, listening to Today’s Top Hits, when he’d finally leaned across the console during a Sabrina Carpenter song. He’d kissed me softly, the tip of his nose brushing mine, the perfect balance of sweet and firm.
But half a second after I’d pulled back, his nose started gushing like a geyser, getting blood all over his car’s leather interior and my white denim skirt.
“I thought you were going to run for the hills.” Dalton chuckled, tossing out his bloody tissue and grabbing another. “Any other girl would’ve.”
“It was like something out of a horror movie.” Inexplicably, I thought of the way I’d crouched in front of Jamie’s bed the other day. “It’s a good thing you kissed a girl who’s okay with blood.”
Now his chuckle bloomed into a real laugh. “Yeah.”
The sound of it was too familiar, and I found myself leaning toward the bathroom door. I needed to walk away—knew it the same way I’d known it earlier when I’d lingered in the room with Jamie. “Sorry about the pop.”
“Not really my biggest concern.” Behind his hand, Dalton’s teeth grazed his bottom lip. “I’m kinda more concerned about the ice cream you spilled on me the other day. Turns out, chocolate swirl is really hard to get out of Malstoni linen.”
I felt my cheeks go hot. “It was Malstoni?” It hadn’t looked that expensive.
“I get it.” His teeth left his lip, and I realized it was him holding back a smile. “I’ll admit, I deserved it. Does that make us even?”
“Even?”
“It was my favorite shirt.”
The tone—it was his flirting tone. Playful, casual, rumbly in his throat.
Everything about this moment was too familiar, from the soft fluff of his dark hair to the spontaneous nosebleed that was slowing down its flow.
The same, as if nothing had changed. Nothing’s changed about me, I wanted to tell him.
I still fall asleep during movies, and I still put chocolate on my popcorn, and I still love—
“Even,” I forced myself to say, a hard line through my thoughts.
“Right, because me ruining your shirt is totally the same as you dumping me the day you left for ASU. Right.” I grabbed onto that anger, digging my fingers around that rope as if it were the only thing keeping me tethered.
“Good luck with your nosebleed. Hopefully you don’t bleed out. ”
“I missed you,” Dalton said before I could turn away, saying the three words he had to have known would stop me in my tracks. “I texted you a few times, but you never replied.”
“I—I blocked your number.”
Really, Nellie had blocked his number. She’d deleted the contact after that, and I’d had no way of finding it again, not without being obvious and asking someone for it.
“I figured you might’ve.” He lowered his tissue, and the area underneath his nose was still red from the pressure. In contrast, and in the dim hallway, his eyes were so, so blue. “I deserved to be blocked after everything that happened.”
It’s been fun.
I just don’t think this long-distance thing will work out, not how we hope. It’s better to give ourselves both a clean break here.
It’s a little silly to hear you talk about NYU like you’ll go.
“I don’t really know what I was thinking, letting go of the best thing in my life.” Dalton reached for my hand that was in a fist at my side, gently wrapping his fingers around it. “But I missed you, DD. You have no idea.”
Boom. A blast to the flimsy little wall I’d put up.
The nickname only he called me among the words I’d dreamt of him saying.
Sure, he wasn’t climbing the tree in my backyard and throwing stones at my window, but he was still saying them.
I missed you. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting go of the best thing in my life. I missed you.
I could feel my resolve crumbling, exactly how Jamie and Nellie were worried it would. Exactly how I’d known it would.
“It’s karma,” I finally got out, but my voice was weak. “Missing me so much after you dumped me so cruelly.”
“Let me make it up to you,” Dalton entreated, taking a half step closer.
The heat from his body seeped through his clothes, washing over me like a heady scent of cologne.
My head swam with it, heart pounding along with the beat of the music downstairs.
“Let me beg for forgiveness.” He leaned closer, close enough to kiss.
In that moment, I couldn’t remember what the heartbreak had been like—not really.
The times I’d cried myself to sleep faded into the background of my mind, replaced with the desperate longing that had my body swaying forward.
I remembered how loved I’d felt in his arms, with his lips on mine, and chased that feeling.
In that moment, it didn’t matter how casually cruel he’d been when he dumped me.
It didn’t matter that he’d given me a box of our relationship as if it were nothing more than a bundle of garbage.
All that mattered was that Dalton Giovanni wanted me again.
“You know we’re meant to be together,” Dalton murmured, words barely cutting through the fog in my mind. “I’m home for the summer. Let’s pick up where we left off. Dump him and be with me.”
I blinked, dizzy, as if I’d been drinking something other than Sprite. “Dump… who?” Dalton’s forehead was close enough that if he leaned forward another inch, it’d touch my own. Kiss me, I thought, and felt guilty for thinking it, but the want was too great.
Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
“Jamie.”