CHAPTER 18 #3
His lashes fluttered, probably because my breath tickled his ear. The tension evaporated between his shoulders, and he leaned back into my embrace, even tilting his head more toward me. “It’s good,” he murmured, his hair brushing my cheek. “I’ve read it before.”
He leaned into me, even at the idea of Raelynn being in the hall. I wasn’t sure why, but that made me giddy. “Why read something you’ve already read before?”
“Why do you want to watch Monte Carlo seven billion times?”
Fine. Touché. I wondered if the shadow in the hallway had left yet. I didn’t want to look. “Read me something.”
I actually heard him swallow. “I—I’m not a good reader. Aloud. I’m not good at reading aloud.”
“You did a good job reading to Theo the other night. What book was that, anyway? Did you look it up on the phone call?”
“I-It wasn’t a book.” Jamie closed his eyes, long lashes swiping against the lenses of his glasses. “I made it up.”
I pulled back enough to look at his side profile. “You made it up.”
“I mean, I’d started to write something once. I’ve gone through a few edited versions over the years. I could remember bits and pieces. I’m sure… it was obvious.”
It hadn’t been, though. Granted, I didn’t remember a lot of the specifics, but to know Jamie had been the one to come up with the little planet and the moon stirred something in me.
I’m not a writer, he’d always say, but clearly, it’d been a lie.
“You’re practicing your skills to write our story together? ”
“I’ve had the material for a while.”
Jamie turned to look at me then, bringing our faces inches apart. Five inches. Four. Close. My eyes locked onto his for only a moment, looking at the constellation of light brown specks inside the dark brown irises, before, as if hypnotized, I looked at his lips. And then time stopped altogether.
The darkness of his pupils had swallowed the brown, and something in my stomach tipped. Jamie’s jaw flexed once, like he was holding back words. Or movement. Or both.
Jamie turned away, facing toward his book. Something flickered across his face before it disappeared—so fast I almost missed it.
He wanted it, too. For the first time since he’d started flipping the Romance Switch, I felt like I could read him again. Perfectly.
“Read for me,” I told him again in as normal a voice as I could manage, trying to pretend nothing had happened. That I was not self-destructing from the inside out, and my cheeks weren’t flaming. “Or I’ll have no choice but to assume you’re reading something dirty.”
The joke did exactly what I’d wanted it to—it broke the tension in Jamie’s shoulders with a soft laugh. He slipped his bookmark out, tucking the octopus behind his book, before he cleared his throat.
He read a piece of dialogue, and the excerpt was exactly what I expected from something he’d read—long, dramatic, and filled with big words I only sort of knew. I scrunched my nose. “What is this?”
“A Tale of Two Cities.”
“An old book?”
Jamie made an offended noise. “A classic.” And then he went on.
I settled onto Jamie’s shoulders a little more as he read.
The words were still flowery and confusing, but I picked up bits and pieces.
It sounded like Mr. Carton—Sydney Carton?
—loved this Miss Manette, but in a way that was kind of pathetic.
Hopeless. He didn’t think he deserved her; he knew it wouldn’t go anywhere, and said it anyway.
It was strange. I’d never heard a depressing love confession before.
Jamie read with the same soft voice he’d used with Theo and me the other night, but with a calm surety that came from having the words right in front of him. He didn’t stumble once, almost like this was a passage he’d read a million times. One he connected with.
I watched him through it all, as his eyes slowly bounced over the page, as his lips spoke the old-fashioned words aloud. Even though he was turned away from me now, the magnetized feeling still gripped me, and gripped me hard.
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.
I think I’d kiss you just fine. I leaned further against him, dizzy with the force of butterflies in my stomach. I couldn’t be crazy. He had to feel this too.
“What are you thinking right now?” Jamie asked suddenly. He hadn’t turned toward me again, not really, but I could see his eyes trying to peek from the corners.
But I couldn’t ask him now. I wanted to stay in the bubble just a bit longer, where the feelings were warm and harmless. I nudged up closer to him, the sweet scent of him tickling my nose. “Carton,” I said. “Sydney Carton. This is the character you compared yourself to?”
“I—I was just saying I’m not really an Oliver Twist—”
“Gotcha.” I glanced over at the hallway, but the shadow was gone. Even still, I leaned closer, pretending we were still being watched so I could keep my cheek close to his. “I’m thinking something else.”
Jamie drew in a slow breath, as if he was afraid of the answer. “And what’s that?”
I read the quote on the page in front of me.
I’m thinking that you’re kindling me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.
I’d never say that aloud, though, because A) it was corny and embarrassing, and B) Jamie would probably tell me I interpreted the passage wrong.
But it was a realization that sank into my bones, because even as close as I was to Jamie now, it didn’t feel close enough.
Something in me still pulled. I didn’t know how else to explain the sharp feeling underneath my ribcage, as if something had hooked inside and yanked, and everything tumbled inside me.
Jamie, who kept all my drawings and a piece of paper in his pocket. Jamie, who saw me clearly—saw my R-rated art and my crazy siblings—and loved me anyway.
I lowered my voice, and this time, my lips brushed Jamie’s ear. The barest touch, the slightest pressure, but it was enough. “I’m thinking that you really have been secretly reading romance books.”
Jamie choked on air.