Chapter 7 #2
“Peanut would love the Thinkers’ House. He’d stick his head in every room and wag himself into a frenzy.”
“We’d fail all our assignments with that level of distraction.”
“You say that like it would be a bad thing.”
Bennet let out a tiny breath that almost counted as a laugh. He looked toward the house again, then back at me, and I couldn’t ignore how his eyes lingered a moment too long. It didn’t feel accidental. It felt like the air thinned between us.
His gaze dropped to my sweater. “You still smell like the field.”
“Grass or sweat?”
“Grass. Mostly.”
“That’s the best compliment I’ve received all week.”
Bennet rolled his eyes, but his cheeks warmed again. He tried to hide it by tucking his chin into the scarf, but the small change in color betrayed him. I felt something in my own body respond to it. A recognition. A quiet wanting. It rose slowly and spread like the warmth from a fire.
He cleared his throat. “Well. You made it home.”
I looked at him without moving. “Walk me to the door.”
“You don’t need someone to walk you ten steps.”
“I know.”
His breath caught. He hesitated. Then he stepped forward with a small nod.
We walked together to the porch steps. He moved with that careful posture he always carried, but there was something more relaxed in his steps now.
Something that hadn’t been there when we first met. I wanted to think I’d put it there.
The porch light cast both of our shadows across the boards, and leaves rustled near the columns. I could hear the low hum of the party echoing through the walls, but the sound felt far away. The night wrapped around us with a strange sense of privacy.
I stopped at the door. Bennet stopped beside me. His shoulder almost touched mine. He looked at the door, then at me. His lips parted as if he meant to say something, but nothing came. The tension pressed in from every angle. It felt like standing at the edge of something I had never named.
I broke the silence first.
“Thanks for walking me home.”
He nodded. “I didn’t walk you home. You walked me to your house.”
“Still counts.”
He shifted his weight. His eyes searched my face, not boldly, but in quick glances that felt like a hand brushing over my jaw and pulling away. There was caution in his look, but there was something else, too. Curiosity. Something warm that slipped through the cracks in his composure.
I felt that warmth hit me like a pulse under my sweater. “You really enjoyed tonight,” I said, quieter than I planned.
“I did.” His voice settled into something steady. “You were good. With the game. With the group.”
“I’m glad I didn’t embarrass you.”
“You didn’t. They liked you.”
“Did you?” I bit my lip and held my breath.
His breath hitched, too. The faint sound stirred the space between us. He spoke in a quiet tone. “Yes. I liked you there.”
A tight rush moved through my chest. My body leaned closer without any conscious thought. Our shoulders brushed. The contact was small, but it sent a warm pull through me that settled low in my stomach.
Bennet swallowed. The motion drew my eyes to the line of his throat. The delicate shadow along his jaw. The slight curl of his hair near his temple. His lips stood out the most. Full. Sharp. Shaped in a way that made them impossible to ignore now that they were close.
I tried to look away. I couldn’t. I couldn’t tear my gaze off his lips.
“You looked happy tonight, too,” I said. I was repeating myself. I was throwing out words at him just so he wouldn’t turn around and walk home. I was three ideas away from asking his opinion about the weather.
He parted his lips in a slow exhale. “I laughed more than I expected.”
“You should do more of that.”
His mouth curled at the corners. “Help me laugh, then.”
“I can do that,” I said softly. Too softly. My voice had dropped without warning, and he sensed it. His eyes sharpened in this focused way, as if bracing for some kind of shift.
I stepped in a little closer and let my voice lower again. “I like seeing you relaxed. It suits you.”
He went still, the opposite of what I’d just said. He didn’t lean in, but he didn’t step back either. His eyes flicked to my mouth. It lasted only a moment, but my whole spine tingled.
He looked away fast, like he had stepped to the edge of a cliff and seen how far the drop went. “You say things like that too easily.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It feels like you don’t think before you speak.”
“I think,” I said, then thought about it. He might have had a point. “Sometimes.”
A tiny laugh escaped him. A small breath of warmth between us. “You confuse me.”
“That makes two of us. You confuse me, too.”
He blushed again. Not dramatically or loudly.
A quiet warmth crept over his cheeks and made him look even more like someone I shouldn’t be staring at.
So innocent and sweet underneath the scowls.
I wanted to touch his face. I kept my hands to myself because I knew something sharp was gathering between us, and I didn’t want to break it too soon.
He looked toward the street. His house glowed far down the lane. The moment stretched thin. It felt like a bubble that any wrong breath might burst.
“Let’s do this again sometime,” I said.
His hand lifted like he meant to fix his hair, then fell back into his coat pocket. It was such a small, uncertain gesture that it felt intimate just to witness it.
He nodded. “Good night, Jason,” he said, soft as the wind.
I didn’t move. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
“You already walked me to your door.”
“Then let me walk you back.”
He hesitated long enough for my pulse to thud faster. He held my gaze for a moment that stretched and stretched. Something fragile sat in his eyes, and something brave sat beside it. “Fine,” he murmured.
We walked back down the porch steps. Our shoulders brushed again. The night wrapped around us as we crossed the yard. The sound of the party faded behind us until it was nothing more than a distant thrum.
He walked half a step ahead, then slowed so our strides matched. His hand swung close enough to mine that our fingers brushed once. He didn’t pull away. I didn’t either.
The streetlamps passed over us in wide circles of pale light. He watched the pavement while I watched him. His mouth formed the shape of words he wouldn’t speak aloud.
“Do you always take multiple long ways home?” he asked at last.
“Only when I want the walk to last.”
He lowered his gaze. “I see.”
We reached his walkway. His house glowed with warm, steady light behind the frosted windows. He stopped near the path. I stopped beside him.
I shifted my bag. His breath clouded in the cold. His lips pressed together as if he tried to hold something inside.
“This is me,” he whispered.
“I know.”
We stood there, breaths rising together in thin pale clouds. He looked at the stairs. Then he looked at me.
I felt heat climb up my spine. My heart knocked hard in my chest. I knew that feeling. I had felt it before with other boys, but never this exact way. Never this fiercely. Never with this strange mix of fear and softness tangled together.
“Seeing as I’m not gonna walk you home… Good night, Jason,” he said again.
“You won’t?” I pretended to be disappointed. “There go all my plans.”
“We’d be walking back and forth till dawn,” he said. His voice carried a tremor. Not fear or discomfort, but something fragile. Something new.
I should have said good night and left it there. I should have breathed out, stepped back, and let the moment settle into something safe.
Instead, I took one small step closer.
Then another.
He froze. His eyes widened just slightly, and the breath he drew in made his shoulders rise.
I leaned in before my brain caught up. I brushed my lips against his cheek.
Only a faint touch. A whisper of contact. Soft. Quick. Warm.
I meant to pull back.
But…
But.
But I didn’t.
He turned toward me at the same moment I leaned in the tiniest bit more. Our lips met. Not neatly. Not even confidently. The kiss landed off-center and clumsy. It was barely more than a startled press of mouths.
Bennet drew in a sharp breath.
I jerked back half a step, heat flooding my face. His eyes had gone wide behind his glasses. His mouth parted as if words had slipped out of him before he could speak them.
“Oh,” I blurted. “That was— That was not— I did not plan that. At all.”
He kept staring at me. Not moving. Not breathing. Not blinking.
I laughed. It came out tight and broken. “There I go making Stats even more awkward. Fantastic job, Jason.”
His lips parted slightly more, but no sound left him. Now that I looked, not even the foggy breath came from his mouth or nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hands lifting as if I meant to fix something in the air. “I didn’t mean to do that. Who wants that? I mean, I did, but not really. I don’t know what I mean. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He still said nothing. His expression held surprise so sharp it sliced straight through me.
I swallowed hard. My words rushed out faster. “It was a silly mistake. I got caught up. I don’t know. Blame the fresh air or the dice or whatever. I’m not trying to make anything weird.”
His brow furrowed, and the confusion there hit me square in the face. I kept talking, trying to fill the silence. “I just. I kissed you. That’s all. A stupid impulse. Nothing to panic about. Never gonna happen again. Alright?”
He blinked once. “Alright.” The smallest movement and the quietest whisper. It felt like a door slamming somewhere between us.
“I should go,” I muttered.
He nodded slowly, still caught between shock and something I couldn’t decode. It couldn’t be disgust. Could it?
I stepped back. My chest felt tight enough to crack open. “Good night.”
He whispered it back, so faint I barely heard it.
He turned and walked toward his door, steps too careful, as if the ground had turned uneven beneath him. He slipped inside without looking back. The porch light framed him for one second before the door closed.
I stood alone in the cold with my heart beating too fast and the taste of that brief, clumsy kiss lingering like a dying flame on my lips.
And nothing about it felt like a silly mistake except the way I pulled back with fear.