23. June
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JUNE
The trees change color about forty minutes outside Lafayette. The quality of the green shifts from the tired, oversaturated greens around campus to viridian, which is cooler and bluer and the kind of green that makes me want to mix paint. Though they’re also turning orange for fall.
Cinna is driving and humming along to the radio.
She’s wearing a cropped denim jacket over a white top, and her blonde hair is pulled into a loose braid that keeps slipping over her shoulder.
Every few minutes she tucks it back without looking.
Even in the car with no one watching, she looks put together. Cinna always looks put together.
I have my forehead against the passenger window watching the light filter through the canopy. My breath keeps fogging a small circle that appears and fades, appears and fades.
It’s Halloween weekend, so we all ditched today (Friday) for a mini vacay. Cinna and I are on our way to an Airbnb, where we’ll meet up with the others.
The past few weeks of my life have felt different, and I’m not yet sure if that’s good or bad.
After the cemetery, after everything Dorien and I finally said out loud, the dynamic between us has shifted in a way I’m still trying to understand.
We bicker in Mixed Media like always, but something about it is warmer and more playful.
There’s a looseness to our interactions, like we both took a step back from the line we’ve been standing on and realized we could stop pretending we wanted to be anywhere else.
I think we like being next to each other, if that makes sense.
Two days ago he leaned across the worktable in class while I was cutting a stencil and said, “You’re pretty when you’re concentrating.” It was so low and deep I thought I’d imagined it. But when I looked up, his eyes were…
I can’t describe them. But the look he gave made my heart flutter, and I’m pretty sure it’s never done that.
I bit my lip and responded, “You’re tolerable when you’re quiet.” He grinned, and it was so handsome and warm that I realized I’d never seen him happy as an adult.
He looked truly joyful, even if only for that one moment.
My stomach did a full backflip and I… God, I thought things about him I don’t want to admit.
Kinda pervy, yeah, but most of the thoughts were the really dumb, sappy stuff.
Like holding his hand between classes, kissing in the snow, and just laughing with each other.
Laughing and hugging and being young and in love.
Then I had an out of body experience, observing myself from above and realizing in horror that I was thinking those kinds of thoughts about Dorien. And I didn’t hate it.
I was so shocked I immediately fled to the bathroom and stayed there the rest of class.
“So what’d you bring?” Cinna asks, turning down the radio.
I blink. “Hm?”
“Your costume. For tomorrow night.”
“Oh.” I shift in my seat and pull my knees up. “I didn’t have anything, but Mom let me raid her closet, so I’ve got these insane neon leggings and an oversized blazer with shoulder pads and a scrunchie the size of my fist. My costume will be Generic Eighties Person.”
Cinna laughs so hard she snorts. “That’s better than mine. I bought a toga dress from a party store. I’m Generic Ancient Greek Person.”
I laugh because I can already picture her in something that looks like a bedsheet. She’ll still look stunning, because she looks stunning in anything.
She’s grinning, tapping her thumb on the steering wheel. Then she glances at me sideways. “What’s Tyler wearing?”
Tyler from my watercolor class. Right. For a second I kinda forgot I invited him. “Oh, he says it’s a surprise.”
Cinna gets giggly, scrunching her nose in that way she does when she decides we’re having girl talk. “Are you two sharing a room?”
I roll my eyes. “No. We haven’t even kissed. He’s sleeping on the couch.”
“The couch.”
“Probably.”
We both start giggling like we’re fourteen, and I let it go on longer than I should because it’s easier than the truth, which is that Tyler is sweet and funny yet I feel nothing for him.
The only reason I invited him is because I need a wall between me and Dorien.
A visible, physical, six-foot-tall wall named Tyler who will stand next to me and make Dorien keep his distance.
Dorien’s flirting has to stop. My body can’t take it.
Every time he says something in that low, suggestive tone, my brain short-circuits for a full three seconds.
I can’t afford that right now. My grades have already been slipping and I need to maintain my scholarship.
I don’t need a distraction in the form of a sexy sculptor.
Also, it still feels like something bad will happen if we give in to the magnetism between us.
I glance at the car dashboard. The GPS says ten minutes, so I press my forehead back against the glass and watch the trees thicken.
After another thirty minutes or so, we arrive at our destination.
The cabin is an A-frame tucked into the woods at the end of a gravel road, and when I see it I sit up straight because it looks like a painting.
Dark wood and steep angles, the roofline cutting into the trees.
String lights trace the outline of the deck, unlit now in the afternoon light but I can already picture how they’ll glow at night.
Carter’s car is parked out front, so he and Dorien are already here.
Aubrey and Tyler should arrive on their own soon.
“They beat us,” Cinna says as she parks.
Dorien is on the deck with his feet up on the railing, drinking from a bottle of water.
He’s in a black henley pushed up to his elbows, and dark jeans, his leather jacket draped over the chair behind him.
His hair is messier than usual, like he drove with the windows down, and the afternoon sun catches the auburn in it that only shows in certain light.
I swallow hard because that level of hot is too much.
Carter is beside him, messing with his phone.
After exiting Cinna’s car, I give a quick wave, grab my bag from the trunk, and head inside before I can be pulled into a conversation that includes Dorien and the way the afternoon light is hitting his face, turning his skin a warm ochre.
My goal is to avoid him as much as possible this weekend.
The interior is filled with warm wood and vaulted ceilings. Exposed beams cross overhead and there are skylights everywhere. Aeron would’ve loved this place because of all the light, but he bailed at the last second.
I step further inside, in complete awe. The living room has a huge cream-colored sectional with a round woven ottoman in the center, and the windows face the forest. I could paint this room.
I want to paint this room. The way the light comes through the skylights and lays across the cedar paneling in long gold strips is just screaming to be captured.
“I’ll bunk with you,” I tell Cinna as we climb the stairs together.
“Actually,” Cinna says, “let me take the twin room with Aubrey.”
I stop on the landing. “Why?”
“Why not?”
I turn to face her fully. I give her such a hard frown that she starts to look guilty.
“It’s not a big deal,” she says under her breath. “Just wanna keep an eye on her.”
My hand props on my hip. “Come on. This weekend isn’t about Aubrey.
There haven’t been more texts, we don’t have proof she did anything, and honestly, we’re over halfway through the semester.
I haven’t even started a piece for the Alaria Prize.
All I want is to take a break from every single ounce of drama so when we get back on Monday I can focus on improving my grades and getting something ready for the contest. I need a weekend where nobody is investigating anybody and we can just have fun.
” I clap my hands together, full-on begging. “Please.”
“I know, I know.” She holds up her palms, making her metal bracelets jingle. “I won’t say anything to her. I just want to observe. You know I can’t stand bullies, so I want to see if she gives off bully vibes.”
I stare at her and decide it’s not a fight worth having. “Fine. But be subtle.”
“I’m always subtle.”
I laugh because she’s actually a horrible actress. She once stole my colored pencils in high school, and when I confronted her about it she caved immediately. Cinna cannot lie.
She blows me a kiss and disappears down the hall with her bag.
I grab a room with a queen bed and slide the glass door open to let the air in.
The warm wood ceiling slopes at the A-frame angle and there’s a wrought iron chandelier that looks like it belongs in a farmhouse.
There’s also a blue and rust patterned rug on the floor.
Through the glass door, I can see the backyard deck below and beyond it nothing but green.
The bedspread is white with little tassels along the edges, and there’s a round yellow throw pillow that reminds me of cadmium lemon.
I toss it to the floor because no one actually sleeps with decorative pillows.
I’m halfway through unpacking when the air in the room shifts. Dorien fills the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, arms crossed. He leans against the frame like every wall in every building was put there specifically for him to lean on.
His black henley pulls across his chest and shoulders in a way that emphasizes the muscles he builds so he has more stamina to sculpt with hard mediums. His hair is still messy, dark strands falling across his forehead, and he hasn’t shaved in a day or two so there’s stubble along his jaw that sharpens the angles of his face.
His sleeves are pushed to his elbows and I can see the tendons in his forearms, the hands that sculpt, shape, and build things, and I have to look away because I’m staring at his hands like a weirdo.
I really need to stop thinking of those strong hands all over my body.
Even though my heart is pounding, I keep folding a sweater and try to ignore him.
“You don’t snore, do you?” he asks. “Your room is next to mine.”
Dammit. I thought I picked the room next to Carter’s. Of course his room is right there on the other side of this wall. I fold the sweater slower. “I don’t snore. Do you?”
He pushes off the frame and walks closer. Two steps. Three. “Maybe.” His voice drops as his face gets a bit too close to mine. “Will that be a problem?”
It’s not a flirtatious sentence. Written on paper it would read flat. But out of Dorien’s mouth, with his eyes holding mine and his head tilted just slightly, everything feels electric. Every word becomes a dare.
I open my mouth to respond with something I think is brilliant, but what comes out is absolutely nothing because Tyler appears behind Dorien, duffel bag over his shoulder.
He’s almost as tall as Dorien, but not quite, and his hair flops over his forehead.
He’s smiling like a golden retriever who just found the park.
“Hey!” he says.
Dorien turns and his posture stiffens. “Who the hell are you?”
Tyler extends his hand for a bro shake, completely unfazed. “Tyler. June invited me.”
They shake. Dorien’s eyes slide to me.
Tyler drops his bag and catches my gaze. “We sharing a room?”
And here it is. The wall I brought. I look at Dorien looking at me, and I think about his voice two days ago saying I’m pretty when I’m concentrating, and I think about how I basically melted from his seductive tone, and I think about how I cannot let this keep happening because every time I get close to him I feel happy but also scared.
Scared of bad things happening. Doesn’t he still feel that too? It feels like he’s now ready to throw caution to the wind.
I’m not there yet.
I hook my arm through Tyler’s. “Yup. Hope you don’t snore.”
He laughs. “Nah.” He tosses his bag on the floor next to the bed.
Dorien gives me a look I can read perfectly because I’ve been studying his face for years. It says: really? And beneath that, a flicker of a dare that says: we’ll see. Then he turns and walks out.
I unhook my arm from Tyler’s, sit on the bed, then stare at the ceiling and think, I already regret this. But Tyler is a good guy. He won’t pressure me for anything, so we can platonically share the same bed.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asks, bursting with enthusiasm. “The woods look amazing.”
“No,” I say. “I need a nap.”
He nods, unbothered. “Cool. I’ll go explore.”
He leaves and I immediately dig through my bag for my diary and flip to a blank page. I’ve been keeping notes on Dorien’s behavior since the cemetery. I need to see it written down to believe it’s real. The list so far:
He held the door for me after Mixed Media last week, and when I gave him a suspicious look he said, “Don’t get used to it,” but he did it again every class after that.
He waited outside my watercolor class to give me coffee, exactly the way I like it. Didn’t say a word, just handed it to me then left. I didn’t even know he knew how I take my coffee.
In Mixed Media this week, I was struggling with an adhesive that wouldn’t bond and he came up behind me, put his hand over mine, and said, “Slower. You’re rushing.” His mouth was close enough to my ear that I felt his breath on my neck.
And Carter has been telling me that Dorien is asking about me a lot. Like every time they hang out. My cousin is starting to get annoyed by it.
Things changed for me at the cemetery, but did they change even more for Dorien? Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if he’s been body-snatched, or this is somehow his twin.
I add a few notes to my diary about how it felt like he was flirting just now, even though he was asking something dumb about me snoring. I write: What am I supposed to do? Should I…
I snap my diary closed before I finish that thought.
I lie back on the white bedspread and close my eyes, trying not to think about who’s on the other side of the wall.