11. CHAPTER ELEVEN
GIANNA
I kiss Rowan Laurens on Saturday night, and by Sunday morning I have developed a serious problem because I wake up and immediately want to do it again.
I lie in bed for a while staring at the ceiling, remembering entirely unhelpful details.
His hands on my waist. The way he laughed when I laughed into his mouth.
The second kiss, when he stopped being careful, and I stopped thinking about the fact that my brother was twenty feet away.
The fact that Rowan had apparently spent multiple days thinking about kissing me before finally doing it.
That one keeps getting me.
I roll onto my stomach and shove my face into the pillow. This is ridiculous. My phone is under the other pillow because I fell asleep with it there, and when I pull it out, there is nothing from Rowan. I open our messages anyway. Maybe he’s not awake.
The last one is from me.
Me: Home.
He reacted to it with a thumbs-up. I stare at the thumbs-up. A fucking thumbs-up. Then I start laughing because what!
There are probably men who send a woman a paragraph after kissing her for the first time. Something thoughtful about how much they enjoyed themselves. Maybe a goodnight with a heart beside it. Rowan would never, and I know it. I put my phone down.
Two minutes later, I pick it back up and call Mara.
She answers on the sixth ring sounding dead. “Someone better actually be dead.”
“I kissed Rowan.”
Silence. Then fabric moves violently on her end.
“You what?”
I grin into the pillow and squeal. “I kissed Rowan.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Where?”
“Hawthorne.”
“Where at Hawthorne?”
“The kitchen.”
“Your brother’s kitchen?”
“It is not my brother’s kitchen.”
“Where was your brother?”
“In the living room.”
She scoffs and screams. “You kissed one of his teammates when he was right around the corner!”
I laugh. “Technically Rowan kissed me.”
Mara makes a sound so loud that I have to move the phone away from my ear. “What the fuck! Tell me everything.”
I do for the most part. I don’t tell her the way Rowan looked at me right before it happened because I don’t know how to explain that without sounding insane.
I tell her about asking if he wished I hadn’t confessed.
How he said no. I tell her I asked if he had anything to say about it, and instead of giving me anything, he said he’d been thinking about kissing me.
Mara interrupts. “That’s an answer.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It’s an excellent answer.”
“It answers whether he wants to kiss me.”
“Which he clearly does.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean he likes me.”
“Are you insane? Did you enjoy being kissed?”
I roll onto my back. “Unfortunately.”
“Gianna.”
“Fine. A lot.”
“How much?”
“Mara.”
“How much?”
I stare at the ceiling and smile. “An embarrassing amount.”
Her scream comes through the speaker.
I laugh and cover my face with my free hand. “Stop.”
Mara asks, “Does Lucy know?”
“No.”
That gets her quiet. “Why not?”
I rub my thumb over the edge of the phone.
Because I’m not scared of Lucy. I’m not even particularly worried about Benson either. My brother might have questions whenever he eventually finds out, but Benson has been dating my best friend long enough that he has forfeited the moral right to behave like I belong in a convent.
It’s Rowan.
“Because Rowan doesn’t know what he wants yet,” I explain. “It was just a kiss. He didn’t say he liked me.”
Mara doesn’t answer immediately.
I continue before she can turn that into something negative. “He told me he wants to kiss me. Then he did. And he probably doesn’t know what to think.”
“Oh, I can tell you exactly what he’s thinking.”
I blush. “And I don’t want everybody involved.”
“Lucy isn’t everybody.”
“Lucy is obsessed with my brother and bangs him all the time.”
“That is such a disgusting way to describe your best friend.”
“You know what I mean.”
She does.
If I tell Lucy, I either ask her to keep something from Benson indefinitely, which is unfair, or I accept that Benson might know.
Then Benson knows Rowan kissed me. Then there’s a conversation between the two of them, even if it’s a perfectly reasonable conversation, and suddenly Rowan has somebody asking what his intentions are when he clearly doesn’t know.
If he knew, he would have said so last night.
I don’t want any of that. I don’t want Rowan making a decision because four people are staring at him, waiting for one. I want to know what he does when nobody makes him do anything.
“I think I’m just going to be normal,” I say.
Mara laughs. “You?”
“Fuck you.”
“Sorry. Continue.”
“I mean around everyone else. I’m not going to make some announcement. I’m not going to ask him what we are after one kiss. I’m just going to…” I hesitate because the next part sounds suspiciously unlike me. “Let it happen.”
“Oh my God.”
“What?” I ask, scared of what she’s going to say.
“Personal growth.”
I make a disgusted sound. “I know.”
“I would rather you be insane and obsessive over him. Be fucking insufferable about it. Yank on the man’s balls, G. If you don’t, I’m going to hang up. Wait!” She laughs at herself. “Are you going over there today?”
“I always go over there on Sundays.”
“And are you going to kiss him again?”
My stomach turns over. “I hope so.”
“Are you going to fuck him?”
I laugh. “Goodbye, Mara.” I hang up on her.
Lucy comes out of her bedroom while I’m making coffee about twenty minutes later, and I have the disorienting experience of looking at my best friend and realizing I have something I am purposely not telling her.
Usually, withholding information from Lucy requires actual effort. I have told this woman things while she’s asleep because waiting until morning felt unreasonable.
She yawns and opens the refrigerator. “We’re out of creamer.”
“There’s oat milk.”
“That’s not creamer.”
“It comes from the same emotional family.”
She gives me a tired look.
I smile into my coffee.
Lucy stops. She keeps looking at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re happy.”
That should not be an accusation. Still, my whole body reacts like she just found contraband in my pocket.
“I am frequently happy.”
“You’re smiling at coffee.”
I shrug. “Maybe because I used the rest of the creamer.”
She narrows her eyes at me. I throw my head back and laugh.
For one terrifying second I think she knows, which is impossible unless Rowan ran upstairs after I left last night and gave Benson a full incident report.
Then Lucy looks at her phone. “Benson wants to know if we’re coming over.”
My heart gives one hard, humiliating beat.
I set my mug down carefully. “Yeah.”
Her eyes come back to me. “You said yeah like Rowan does. Same tone and all. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh my God, Lucy. Go shower.”
She laughs and disappears down the hallway.
I stand alone in the kitchen afterward, staring into my coffee. Shit.
Normal. I am going to be extremely normal. Not obsessive. Not dying to kiss him again. I am going to be a normal girl. I can be that.
By the time we get to Hawthorne, I have repeated this enough times that it has become a threat.
The house is in its usual Sunday state. Nobody has enough energy to leave but everybody has enough energy to make noise.
Music is on. Somebody started laundry and then abandoned the basket in front of the stairs.
Stanley has ordered food despite the fact that there is already food, and Benson is stretched across the couch with his head in Lucy’s lap before she has been inside for two minutes.
I am taking off my sweater when Rowan comes through from the kitchen.
My brain stops.
Not dramatically. I still know where I am. I remember my own name. I could probably answer an easy math question.
But I know what his mouth feels like now. That turns out to be a piece of information capable of fundamentally changing the experience of seeing a man walk through a room.
He’s wearing grey sweats and a black T-shirt. His hair is resting against his forehead, dark and luscious, and when he sees me, his expression changes in that small Rowan way.
His mouth pulls at one side.
Mine immediately does the same.
“What’s up, G?”
I hate that I have those three words imprinted in my brain. “Hey, Laurens.”
“Are you coming?” Lucy is looking at me from beside Benson.
“Yeah.”
I hang my sweater up and go sit on the floor.
The next two hours are torture in the most enjoyable way possible.
Rowan hands me a bottle of water. We drink at the same time like we did at the party until the bottle is empty.
My brother makes a comment about me being thirsty, and I ignore him.
Later, I get up for food and find him already moving his knees so I can pass between the coffee table and the couch.
When Stanley says something stupid, I look at Rowan automatically, and he’s already looking at me.
None of this would have mattered yesterday morning. Now every ordinary thing has an underside. Nobody else seems to notice. Or if they do, nobody makes eyes or says anything about it.
Lucy spends most of the afternoon attached to Benson.
Aspen comes by and immediately ends up with Stanley half on top of her.
Melly has her feet tucked under Blue’s leg.
Penelope eventually arrives and takes the spot beside Percy, who has spent most of the afternoon reading and somehow moves exactly enough for her without looking up.
There are couples everywhere. I have never resented furniture placement before. Rowan is six feet away from me, and that six feet might as well be another state. He catches me looking at him. His eyebrows lift. My stomach sinks. I look away.
When I look back thirty seconds later, he’s still watching me.
Asshole.
He smiles.
I bite the inside of my cheek and refuse to give him anything else.
At some point he gets up, takes his plate into the kitchen, and says, “I’m showering.”
I keep my eyes on the TV.
Nobody cares.
Stanley makes some comment about Rowan taking forty-minute showers that Rowan ignores on his way upstairs.