12 Zara #2
Frank is the faintest of them all, half hiding in the shadow of his hair. It feels right.
“It is now my mission in life to check you for freckles and melanoma every year,” I inform his sleeping face, because clearly he needs supervision. “You never wear sunscreen. I am not letting you die from our star being a bitch.”
The more I look, the more I realize thirty-five might’ve been a miscount, so obviously I have to start over.
“So that’s one, two, three…” I murmur, going slower this time as I trace across his nose. I’m probably tickling him, but he just sniffles a little and settles deeper against me, one arm tightening around my waist for a second before loosening again.
I stare at the alarm clock. 9:06. Still fine.
Somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-six, my goblin brain has a brilliant idea.
“Documentation,” I whisper to myself.
I grab my phone off the nightstand, keeping my movements careful so I don’t jostle him too much. I switch the camera to front-facing, flip the screen toward his face, and hold it in close, trying to get a shot where every freckle shows.
The angle is… not flattering. It’s basically up his nose.
Beautiful.
I pinch to zoom, trying to focus on Frank. My thumb hovers over the shutter button, tongue poking out in concentration as I line it up. Just as I’m about to hit the button, his eyes open. Full, sudden, dark brown locking right onto the camera lens.
We both freeze.
“Cheese,” I blurt, because my brain is broken, and hit the button anyway.
The shutter sound is offensively loud in the quiet room. He blinks, confused, then squints at the phone, then up at me, his cheek still pressed against my chest. His voice comes out gravelly from sleep.
“What are you doing?”
I grin, instantly. “Counting your freckles. Did you know you have thirty-six?”
His face does this incredible thing where it cycles through all five stages of grief in three seconds.
“I—what—no,” he sputters, pushing up on his elbow so he can glare at me properly. His hair is sticking up on one side, and there’s a faint crease on his cheek from my shirt. “Zara.”
I clutch the phone to my chest like it’s a national secret. “You can’t be mad at me,” I proclaim. “This is important scientific data. For your yearly skin checks. I’m saving your life.”
“Delete it,” he groans, making a grab for my phone.
I roll away at the speed of light, half laughing, half shrieking, ending up halfway across the bed with my back to the wall. “Never! Frank and Thor deserve to be remembered.”
“Frank—” He breaks off when he realizes he’s feeding the bit. “Oh my God. Give me the phone.”
He lunges. I launch my foot at his chest—not hard—to keep him at arm’s length, cackling as I do it.
“Nope! This is evidence now. Future documentaries will need this.”
He catches my ankle with one hand, pinning it. “You took an up-close mugshot of me while I was sleeping.”
“Yeah. I do that sometimes.”
“You what?”
I grin wider. “I’m kidding. This is the first time. But now that I see how mad it makes you, I might make it a tradition.”
“You’re impossible,” he mutters, trying to pry my phone out of my other hand.
Desperate times means I lick his wrist. He jerks back like I electrocuted him.
“Did you just—are you five?”
“Gremlins don’t age,” I inform him. “We only get stronger.”
He narrows his eyes, and then his fingers suddenly dig into the back of my knee, right where he knows I’m ticklish.
I yelp, losing all dignity and almost dropping the phone. “Cheater!”
“Give. Me. The. Phone,” he says, every word punctuated with a merciless tickle.
I squirm, kicking, trying to twist away as laughter bursts out of me against my will. “Stop—oh my God—Cass!”
“Delete the cursed selfie and I’ll consider it.”
“Never!” I wheeze, trying to throw the phone past him to the other side of the bed, but my aim is trash and it lands between us instead.
We both dive for it at the same time.
Somehow we end up in a full-on wrestling match, rolling across the bed, bodies bumping and sliding as we both reach for the phone like it’s the One Ring. He pins my wrists above my head for half a second, leans over me to grab the phone, then I knee him gently in the side and he loses his balance.
We tumble, laugh, grab, curse.
At one point he flips us, and I end up sprawled on top of him; at another, he rolls us so I’m on my back and he’s braced above me, one forearm next to my head, the other hand finally closing around my phone.
“There,” he says, breath a little uneven. “Got it.”
I stick my tongue out at him and go still, because suddenly I’m very aware of the way we’re positioned. My knees are bracketing his hips. His face is mere inches from mine. His breath fans my cheek. And his dark eyes are focused right on me. The laughter dies down into something quieter.
He must feel it too, because he doesn’t immediately let go of my wrists. His fingers loosen but stay curled lightly around them, his thumb resting against my pulse. His gaze flicks to my mouth for half a second before snapping back to my eyes, guilty, like he didn’t mean to look and caught himself.
My heart does that thing where it tries to Kool-Aid Man out of my chest.
Say it, some reckless part of me whispers.
Tell him. Tell him you love him.
Instead, my mouth betrays me in a completely different way.
“Why are you with Stacey?” I blurt.
His whole body goes still. I want to claw the words back immediately, shove them into a mental drawer and pretend they never existed.
Too late. They’re out in the wild, doing cartwheels between us.
He blinks once, like I just slapped him with a noodle. “That’s… direct.”
“Yeah, well.” My voice comes out thinner than I’d like. “Subtlety’s dead. I killed it. Answer the question.”
He shifts his weight slightly, sitting back so he’s not hovering over me so intensely, but he still doesn’t move away completely. My phone is forgotten in his hand.
For a second, I think he’s going to dodge it. Make a joke. Tell me it’s none of my business. Instead, he lets out a breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for a year.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.
I blink. “That’s not an answer.”