12. CHAPTER TWELVE #2
I could get out of this. There are at least four ways to answer that question without technically lying.
“They had places to go.”
Gianna’s mouth opens. Then she smiles. “All of them just happened to develop plans on the same night?”
“Yeah.”
“Blue too?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
Her eyes widen. “Oh my God. You got rid of everyone.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You even got rid of Blue.”
I lift my hands. “I just gave him movie tickets.”
She takes the rest of her coat off slowly. “Rowan.”
“He wanted to go.”
Her whole face lights up, and she turns toward the coat hooks before I can enjoy it too much. “That is so sneaky.”
I laugh. “I gave a guy tickets.”
She laughs and says, “You evacuated your house.”
I look at my laptop again. Gianna stops beside me and leans over my shoulder until her chin nearly touches it.
“You’re doing homework.”
“Trying.”
“You invited me over to watch you do homework?”
I turn my head enough that her face is right beside mine. “No.”
“Thank God.”
She reads four lines anyway. Her hair is still damp at the ends, and it brushes my arm when she shifts closer. I stop looking at the screen.
Gianna notices. She straightens, then she opens the refrigerator, takes my water bottle off the second shelf, drinks from it, and puts it back exactly where she found it.
I stare at her. “That’s mine.”
She shuts the door. “You’ve shared saliva with me.”
I lean back in the stool.
She walks over to the stove and immediately lifts the lid off the rice.
I reach across her and take it from her hand. “Don’t touch it.” I put it back.
She ignores me and peers into the pan with the chicken instead. “What are you making?”
“Chicken, rice, green beans.”
“Did you make enough for me?”
“I knew you were coming.” I say it without thinking.
Gianna goes quiet.
It lasts long enough that I finally look over.
She’s staring at me with this soft expression I’ve started noticing more often lately, the one that comes right before she says something stupid to cover it.
“You’re getting dangerously good at this.”
“Cooking?”
“Having a girl over.”
I laugh. “It’s you.”
Her eyes drop to the pan. Then to the counter. A smile pulls slowly across her mouth. I realize how the sentence sounded only after it’s already sitting between us. I don’t take it back.
Gianna clears her throat and walks toward her bag. “Okay, well. Since I’ve apparently been provided room and board, I have homework.”
She takes the stool beside mine and opens her laptop.
We manage to work for about ten minutes.
At least she does. I get through half a page before I become aware of her foot resting against mine under the table.
I don’t know when it happened. It might have been an accident at first, but neither of us moves, so eventually it stops being one.
Gianna is working on some kind of finance spreadsheet. She keeps squinting at a column of numbers, then checking something on the course site, then returning to the sheet with increasing irritation.
I try to read. Her pen taps against her mouth. I read the same sentence again.
She sighs.
I read it a third time. Then she reaches across me for my charger.
I stare at her. “You unplugged my laptop.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I was working.”
“You’ve been on the same paragraph since I got here.”
That shuts me up because she’s right.
Gianna smiles like she knows it, plugs my charger into her laptop, and goes back to whatever she was doing.
I watch her.
Her hair is starting to dry weirdly on one side. She’s wearing the same sweatshirt with the hole in the cuff that I’ve seen at least four times this semester, and she keeps pushing that sleeve over her hand while she types.
This is what I mean when I say I didn’t know.
I knew Gianna was pretty. Everybody with functioning eyes knows that. I knew she was funny because I’ve heard her make an entire room laugh. I knew I liked talking to her because at some point she became the person I sent pictures of Stanley sleeping to without considering why.
I didn’t know any of that was supposed to add up to this.
Now that she told me, I can’t stop seeing it.
Gianna turns her head slightly. “Are you going to do your homework or stare at me?”
I lean back in the stool. “Trying to do both.”
Her fingers stop over the keyboard. She looks at me. Then her eyes narrow, but there’s color moving into her cheeks.
“You’re getting worse.”
“Me?”
“You know exactly what you’re doing.”
I don’t, which is probably the funny part. But I’m learning.
We eat dinner at the table. Gianna takes one bite of her green beans, then reaches across and steals one of mine. I look at her fork. She chews. She steals another. I move my plate farther away.
Gianna looks personally offended. “Wow.”
She reaches across again, and I catch her wrist.
For a second, we both stop. Her fork is suspended halfway between our plates. My hand is wrapped around her wrist. Her eyes meet mine. The whole thing changes so quickly that it almost makes me laugh.
Two seconds ago, I was defending green beans. Now I’m thinking about yesterday. So is she. I can tell.
Her voice comes quieter. “Are you going to let go?”
“Probably.”
“When?”
I loosen my hand but don’t move it.
Gianna’s mouth curls. Then she steals the green bean anyway.
I let her go.
We finish eating, and she starts telling me a story about Mara while we clean up.
I lose the structure of it almost immediately because the story involves a guy in one of Mara’s labs, a screenshot sent to the wrong group chat, and an argument over whether a thumbs-up reaction can be considered passive-aggressive. Gianna insists it can.
She starts imitating Mara arguing with the lab guy, and I only catch about sixty percent of the story because I turn around and actually look at her.
She’s leaning against the counter with a glass in one hand.
Her hair has dried almost completely now, except one side has gone in a direction I know she will complain about later.
The cuff of her sweatshirt is pulled over her fingers again. She looks comfortable.
A week ago, Gianna being comfortable in Hawthorne wouldn’t have registered. She has been comfortable here for years. She knows where everything is. She walks in without knocking. She steals food, water, chargers, blankets, and whatever else happens to be within reach.
Tonight I wanted her here specifically. I cooked for her. I waited for her to walk through the door. And now she’s here, filling up the kitchen like she always does, except there’s nobody else around to make it feel accidental.
Gianna stops talking. “What?”
I shut the dishwasher. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve been zoning out on my face for like ten seconds.”
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
I step closer.
She watches me. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing you.”
That makes her smile immediately. “Okay.”
I stop in front of her. “You can say that, but I can’t?”
She laughs. “Correct.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I never promised fairness.”
I put my hands on her waist. She sets the glass down behind her without looking.
Then I kiss her. There is nothing rushed about it at first because there doesn’t need to be.
Nobody is downstairs. Nobody is twenty feet away.
Gianna doesn’t have an eight-minute bathroom window.
We have a quiet house and at least a couple of hours before anybody comes back.
Her hands slide over my shoulders and into my hair. She lasts maybe ten seconds before deepening the kiss herself. I smile against her mouth.
She pulls back slightly. “What?”
“You’re impatient.”
“You’re slow.”
“We have time.”
That gets her attention.
She leans back enough to look at me properly. “How much?”
“A couple hours.”
Her eyebrows go up. “Before somebody comes back?”
“Yeah.”
She looks toward the empty living room, then back at me.
A smile starts. “You really did plan this.”
“The only thing I did was give Blue movie tickets.”
“You gave Blue movie tickets because you wanted him gone.”
I don’t answer.
Gianna’s smile gets wider. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You did.”
I kiss her before she can keep talking. She laughs into my mouth and wraps both arms around my neck. The kiss gets heavier quickly.
Yesterday had been different. Every sound downstairs mattered. Every step in the hallway mattered. Even when I had Gianna on my lap, part of my attention stayed on the door.
Tonight there’s nothing dividing my attention.
I can feel exactly what she does when I touch her.
My hands move from her waist over her hips. She comes closer instead of pulling away. I kiss beneath her jaw, and her fingers tighten at the back of my neck. When I find the spot below her ear that made her go quiet yesterday, her entire body reacts before she can pretend it didn’t.
Her head tips back. Then she immediately says, “Don’t.”
I smile against her skin. “Don’t what?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
“That.”
“What?”
She pushes at my shoulder until I look at her. I kiss her again. Her hands slide beneath the bottom of my shirt, palms warm against my sides, and that takes enough of my attention that I don’t realize she’s gone quiet until she pulls back.
“Wait.”
“What?”
Her expression changes.
I know that look.
“Remember when you told me I don’t make you nervous?”
I laugh once. “No.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“I genuinely don’t remember.”
“You absolutely remember.”
She steps backward.
I let her go.
Her eyes move over me in a way that feels different now that we’re alone. Gianna has seen me shirtless plenty of times. Everybody who spends time around hockey players eventually sees more male skin than they asked for.
This is not that.
She is looking because she wants to.
I know that now.
“Take your shirt off,” she says.
I stare at her.
Her mouth twitches. “Oh. That made you nervous.”
“No.”
She shrugs. “You hesitated.”
“Because you ordered me to get undressed in my kitchen.”
“And?”
I pull the shirt over my head and toss it onto the counter.