Chapter 13 Easton
Easton
I stand in Harper’s garage, surrounded by half-painted knights, nervously shifting from one foot to the other. I’m still in my gym clothes, damp with sweat, my hair a tangled mess from the car ride over.
Regret gnaws at me, twists tight in my chest as I stare at the scattered mess of our decorations. The knights lean against the wall, their shields missing details. A cardboard shield sits on a folding table, the design traced with pencil abandoned because I had to leave in a rush.
Everything looks unfinished.
Incomplete.
Kind of like whatever’s been happening between Harper and me.
This waiting is torture. It’s giving me too much time to think, and thinking is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid.
Footsteps sound from inside the house.
My stomach clenches.
I brace myself, forcing a steady breath as the door creaks open.
And then—there she is. Harper steps into the garage, her expression unreadable, arms crossed over her chest. Wearing a cute T-shirt, her short shorts peeking out below its hemline. Her hair? Pulled back into a high ponytail.
Cute. Since when does she look cute?
My heart does this weird flip thing in my chest, and I have no idea why, but I have to remind myself: I do not have a crush on this girl, I do not have a crush on this girl, I do not have a crush on this girl.
Need I remind you—the only reason I am even in this garage is because I am being threatened into going to prom with her.
Extorted. I am basically a hostage.
I stop staring at her smooth legs.
“Hey.” Harper’s voice is hesitant as she closes the door to the laundry room.
“Hey.” I feel like a complete dumbass. “Thanks for, you know—coming down.”
“No problem.” She smiles. “I live here.”
I huff a quiet laugh, rubbing the back of my neck. Idiot.
“Right. That was dumb,” I admit, fidgeting. “Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”
“Sure.”
Harper is giving me nothing.
“So…” Yeah. Get to the point, Westermann. Tell her why you’re here.
I clear my throat, forcing myself to meet her steely gaze. “Look, I didn’t come here to be an idiot. Or, like, more of an idiot than usual.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
I lick my lips, hyperaware of the fact that I don’t have a solid plan for what to say. All I know is I need to be here. With her. To fix my fuckup from earlier.
I could make up a reason for knocking on her door: Say I was in the neighborhood. Say I wanted to talk about prom night. Say I had a question about a class at school.
But none of that is true.
So instead, I do the scariest thing imaginable—I tell Harper the truth.
“I—” I clear my throat. “I wanted to apologize.”
Behind me the sun is setting over the rise, the last streaks of light stretching across the sky, painting everything in shades of gold and pink. It should feel peaceful. However, the weight in my chest is anything but…
“For what?” She doesn’t move. Doesn’t let me in. Her fingers tighten around the edge of the door.
“For the way I acted at the rink.”
Harper shifts on her heels. “How did you act at the rink?”
Ugh, she’s going to make me say it. Admit out loud that I skated past like I didn’t know she was there.
“Like I didn’t see you.”
Damn. Saying that out loud somehow makes it so much worse.
Harper’s face doesn’t change, but something in her mood does. I see it in the slight movement of her shoulders, the way her fingers twitch against the doorframe, tapping on the wood as if she’s suddenly grown impatient.
I rub the back of my neck. “I should have skated over to you,” I admit. “Like Marcus did. I should’ve said hi.”
Harper tilts her head. “So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I guess I was being an asshole.”
She exhales sharply through her nose. “Being an asshole.”
I shove my hands inside the pockets of my athletic pants. “I don’t want you to think that was about you. That I ignored you on purpose to hurt you.” My throat tightens. “I don’t want you to feel bad.”
“Well, I did.” Harper studies me for a long beat. “I saw you looking at me. And then you looked away.”
Shit.
My chest aches, the guilt heavy. “I’m sorry. I’m still…I’ll still ask you to prom and everything, I promise. We still have a deal. You just…caught me at a bad moment, I guess.”
An awkward silence stretches between us. Literally the longest I’ve ever endured.
I clear my throat again, glancing around the garage like the scattered decorations might offer me a way out of this crushing tension. My shoulder brushes against the edge of her dad’s workbench, and I lean against it, suddenly having no idea what to do with my hands.
“So, uh…” I gesture vaguely toward the cardboard knights. “You still working on these?”
Not a thing has been touched, which means she hasn’t made any progress without me.
Harper exhales, finally breaking her stare. “Yeah.” She moves toward the table, reaching for a paintbrush—like I’m not even here with her.
Fine.
Okay.
I deserve it for ignoring her earlier.
The distance between us feels bigger than it actually is.
I push off the bench, taking a step closer. “Want some help?”
She hesitates for half a second, then sighs. “Sure.” Sliding a marker across the table, she looks me dead in the eyes. “Don’t screw it up.”
Relief eases some of the tension coiled in my chest. I step forward, grabbing the marker, careful not to let my fingers graze hers. She already let me back into the garage—which is more than I expected for tonight.
For a few beats, we work in silence, the only sound the quiet swish of paint and marker against cardboard. It’s awkward but not unbearable.
Then, out of nowhere: “I accept your apology, by the way.”
I pause mid-stroke, glancing at her. “Yeah?”
She doesn’t look up, just keeps painting, her voice even. “Yeah. I don’t want to dwell on it.”
Amazing.
I love that for myself.
I nod, swallowing the last of my guilt. “Okay. So…what are we doing with this?” I pick up a strip of crepe paper and start stretching it across the wall.
“Nothing.” Harper is bending at the waist, moving pieces that still need paint to the center of the floor. “My mom bought a bunch of random stuff at the dollar store thinking we could use it—I’ll bring those to school when we decorate, but…”
“I love streamers,” I tell her, fiddling with the roll.
“That’s a really random fact.” She giggles, watching as I start unrolling the bright pink streamer and toss it to the open roof trusses above our heads.
When it falls back at my feet, I toss it up again.
“Dude—what are you doing?” She sounds horrified.
“Decorating.”
“Oh jeez,” she mutters, but doesn’t object, watching me for several more seconds, biting her lip like she’s holding back a laugh. “You’re doing it wrong.”
I cock my brow. “What makes you the expert?”
“Years of birthday parties,” she says with a grin. “Watch and learn.”
Harper takes the roll from me, fingers brushing against mine for a moment too long. Long enough to send a jolt of electricity up my arm and down my leg, and I’m pretty sure she felt it, too, because she hesitates before looping the streamer in an intricate pattern from wall to wall.
“Impressive,” I admit, watching the bland garage go from drab to fab. It’s a total waste of our time, but hey—whatever. “Show-off.”
She glances over at me, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Maybe a little. We should probably take this down before my mom gets home. I don’t want her to be pissed.”
“Why would your mom be pissed? It’s only streamers.”
Harper shrugs. “She’s been moody lately.”
I don’t ask her to clarify because I understand; my mom can be moody, too—mostly directed at my dad.
“We should get back to work.”
I nod. “Probably.” The sooner we get this over with, the better, ’cause then I only have that promposal to get through.
“Are you in the mood to paint?”
Am I ever? “No.”
Harper nods, then walks to the workbench and grabs a small bottle. Tosses it to me.
“Of course you want to use glitter,” I say, eyeing the bottle warily. It sparkles and shines as I turn it this way and that in the palm of my hand. “Why do I feel like me, using this, is going to end badly?”
“Because it probably will.” She giggles. “Try not to make a mess.”
I pop the cap off and start shaking glitter onto my knight, doing my best to hit my intended target—but the stuff has a mind of its own, and suddenly there’s glitter everywhere.
“Shit!” I yell as silver sparkles fill the air, the glitter bomb going off without warning. “Help!”
Glitter goes up like a cloud…and comes back down.
It’s everywhere: on the knight, on the floor, in my hair, and in hers.
“Oh my god, Easton—it’s not like a saltshaker!” Harper bursts out laughing, doubling over, face turning a color I’ve never seen it turn before. “You don’t shake it, you sprinkle it!”
“How the hell was I supposed to know that?” Like, how did this even happen? Glitter rains down on us like tiny flakes of snow or confetti at a parade—and all I did was shake that shit. “Warn me first, jeezuz!”
“I said this was going to be messy, and now we know why. Glitter is the worst.”
“You handed it to me!” Nay—she tossed it. And like a damn idiot I fell into her web of lies.
I spot a broom in the corner and go to snap it up, sweeping what flecks I can off the concrete floor; the last thing I need is her parents blowing a gasket, what with her mom being pissy and all.
As I sweep, Harper makes a show of bending to fluff her hair, speckles and sparkles falling to the ground.
Then it’s back to work.
We fall into a rhythm—I cover the larger areas of the few unpainted knights with a fresh coat of paint (silver, if you’re wondering), and Harper is the clean-up crew who adds the fine details with a Sharpie.
Soon our men begin to look like something you might see guarding a medieval castle… if the castle was made of cardboard.
“So.” Harper looks over at me with a casual curiosity that instantly puts me on edge. “What’s the deal with you and Maddie Miller, anyway? Is she the reason you want to learn how to talk to girls?”
My stomach drops at the mention of Maddie’s name.
With my back toward Harper, I bend to pick up a knight and lean it against the wall to dry. “I dunno. Might be.”
Behind me, Harper scoffs. “Didn’t you and Maddie used to be friends in middle school?”
“Everyone was friends in middle school.”
She snorts. “Not me. I hated middle school. Worst years of my life.”
That catches my attention. “Why?”
She lets out a dry laugh. “Girls like Maddie Miller made me feel like a loser. My shoes weren’t cool enough. I didn’t have the right leggings or some giant tumbler. I was never invited to bonfires or any of that ‘cool kid’ stuff.”
A knot forms in my chest. Hearing Maddie’s name tied to that kind of crap doesn’t sit right with me. My grip tightens around the cardboard shield in my hand, flecks of dried silver paint clinging to my fingers.
Harper leans against the workbench, her tone shifting, more reflective now. “Middle school’s brutal for girls. Not that guys have it easy, but girls? We tear each other down for no reason.”
I glance at her. “Really?”
She nods. “It’s this weird social shift. You hit middle school, and suddenly, there’s pressure to fit in—but the harder you try, the worse it gets. Everything feels like a test, like where you sit at lunch somehow defines you.”
I watch her for a beat, realizing she’s not just talking in general terms.
“Now I’m glad I never cared about anything but hockey,” I joke, but I’m mostly serious.
“Sorry to trauma dump on you.” Harper nods. “But…yeah. So, is she the reason you want advice?”
God, why did I make up that stupid rule? She will never let this go. Might as well have her give me advice, though; clearly I fucking need it.
“I guess.”
“What specifically do you want to know? How to flirt? Because as you may have noticed, I’m not great at it myself.” Harper laughs.
I noticed.
The truth is, she’s way worse than I am.
“If by flirting you mean scowling and roasting people, I would say you’re actually pretty decent.”
“Ha ha—very funny.” My partner pauses, looking at me thoughtfully. “My only advice would be to…be yourself. And don’t be so shy.”
Me? Shy? “Am I shy?”
She shrugs. “Maybe not around me, but I’ve seen how you are with other people.”
“Are you saying you watch me?” I ask, smirking.
Her eyes widen. “No, of course I don’t watch you—but I notice things.” She throws her hands up in mock frustration, but there’s a smile tugging at her lips.
“What kinds of things? You can’t say you notice things about me and then not tell me what they are. So what kinds of things are we talking about?”
Harper rolls her eyes. “Fine. You really wanna know?”
“Desperately.”
She rolls her eyes but plays along, seemingly studying me. “I notice how you laugh differently with your friends than you do with other people. And when we had World Lit together, I noticed you would crack your neck before a test or quiz.”
For a second, we just look at each other, caught in that strange, comfortable silence.
“And you’re bad at flirting,” she continues. “You could try complimenting girls.”
I grin, meeting her gaze. “You look really good right now.”
She snorts. “That sounded so cheesy.”
I step closer, dropping my voice. “I swear, every time you look at me like that, I forget how to act normal.”
Harper’s eyes go wide for a split second before she clears her throat, dropping her gaze. “Better.”
I huff a laugh. “Better? That’s all I get?” I tilt my head, smirking. “If you think I’m so bad at it, then show me how it’s done.”