Chapter 3 #2
Tyler brushes his fingers over the design, tracing the lines with a reverence they don’t deserve.
A dusting of silver graphite stains his skin.
He’s so hard to read. She understands why—life has taught him to always keep his cards close.
But she’s dying for one little hint of the assessment to come.
Art is so subjective. And while she’s grown up surrounded by the patterns of her ancestors, she’s well aware not everyone in Dallas appreciates them.
The girls at school make fun of her jewelry and her mother’s clothes enough to make that clear.
The groove etched into the center of his focused brow could be saying anything.
He hates it and doesn’t know what to say.
He was only kidding but now he doesn’t have an exit strategy.
Because of course, a guy like Tyler would never want to wear some silly bracelet she—
He looks up.
Winnie holds her breath, waiting for his assessment. Those crystal-blue eyes are a diamond reflecting with every facet.
“I love it.”
The words are barely a whisper, but they hold her captive.
She can’t move. Tyler doesn’t either. They sit there for a moment, staring.
No words pass between them, and yet, the air feels heavy with something she can’t explain.
Invisible tension grabs her lungs, making her breath come short.
For the first time in her life, those words she always keeps so tightly bound at the back of her mind threaten to work their way up her throat.
I love you.
Before she has a chance to make an absolute fool of herself, Tyler sucks in a sharp breath and hands the sketchbook back to her. He jumps to his feet with a sudden bout of energy and glances around her room. “Hey, you want to watch a movie or something?”
“Oh,” she says, still reeling, trying to hide it. “Sure. Yeah.”
They settle down on her bed—Tyler on his back with her computer resting on his flat stomach, his hands clasped behind his head, and Winnie snuggled up on her side, careful to keep a solid foot between them lest she self-combust. The movie is some action film she’s barely able to focus on, too enraptured by the way his chest moves every time he breathes and the subtle noises he makes, each laugh or snort or snicker like a peek into the inner workings of his mind.
For the next few weeks, it’s their little inside joke.
“Where’s my bracelet?” when he runs into her at the rink.
“Status report?” when she finds him waiting for her brother after school.
“I need to speak with a customer service representative” when he comes into her room at Alex’s next party.
It’s thrilling to feel as if for once, maybe, he’s seeking her out. To have something that’s just theirs. Not to be the tagalong little sister, but the main event.
She’s not, she understands. He’s just being nice, because she’s a Rusu, and he loves her family, and by extension that includes her. But it’s fun to pretend, for six weeks anyway. That’s how long it takes her to finish the bracelet.
She’s too much of a chicken to give it to him in person. What if she starts crying? What if he sees? What if he asks why she’s upset? What if she does something crazy like tell the truth?
Because now you don’t have a reason to come see me.
God, how pathetic is that?
No, much better to slip it in his hockey bag while he’s at practice, shed a few humiliating tears in private, and then scram. She doesn’t anticipate the knock on her door three hours later.
“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? I was not looking at porn.” She lifts her head toward the door and stops dead in her tracks. “Oh my god.”
Tyler leans against her doorframe and crosses his arms with a half-smile. “What were you doing?”
Foot, meet mouth.
“Oh my god,” she repeats and buries her face in her hands. “It’s called a figure study. I’m not old enough to go to one in person, so I looked it up online.”
“Figure study?”
“Yes!”
“Naked figures?”
“…Yes.”
“Sounds like porn.”
“Would you just—” She grabs her lumbar pillow and chucks it at him.
He catches it easily, because of course he does. “I came to tell you dinner’s ready.”
“Drew the short straw?”
“I volunteered.” He takes a step into her room and holds out his arm.
She’s too distracted by the muscles in his forearm to notice the bracelet at first. Seriously, it’s not fair for one boy to have so many defined flexors.
The artist in her yearns to grab her pencils.
The girl in her wants to jump his bones.
It’s truly an all-around struggle. “I wanted to say thank you.”
The weight of his gaze paired with the earnestness of his tone sets her skin ablaze. She turns back to her desk and busies herself by putting her pens away. “It’s nothing, Ty.”
“You don’t have to do that with me.”
“Do what?”
“Hide.”
“I’m not.”
“Win.”
His voice is closer this time, but she doesn’t realize how close until he grabs the back of her chair and spins it around, practically pinning her against the seat as he leans down to her eye level, not giving her the chance to turn away.
She couldn’t even if she wanted to. His body, this close.
It’s like being struck by lightning. She’s too stunned to move, caught in the sizzle.
“I know what those idiots at your school say, but I’m not one of them. I wouldn’t have asked you to make this for me if I didn’t want it. And it means something to me, even if it’s nothing to you. It means a lot, okay?”
“Okay.”
She doesn’t trust herself to say more. He looks at her for another moment, as if trying to decipher a language he doesn’t understand, before he leaves.
When he gets a hat trick in his next game, he declares the token his good-luck charm.
Alex rolls his eyes. Winnie’s heart secretly sings.
Every time something good happens for the next few months, Tyler gives his wrist a little shake.
The day the clasp snaps, he gets a broken nose at practice and nearly misses a playoff game.
Alex storms into Winnie’s room with his bandaged friend in tow.
“Can you fix this stupid thing? I don’t for one second think it possesses some mysterious superpower, but he does. And I want to win one more championship before college. So, just, figure it out. Will you?”
Winnie gets it to Tyler before their next game. They win, and keep winning, until her father eventually secures another massive trophy for the case. The next day, Tyler shows up at their house for dinner with gauze around his wrist.
“What’s that?”
He glances down at his arm with a secretive twinkle. “My new tattoo.”
“Is that…” She can’t even finish the sentence as her pulse races.
“I can’t risk losing it again,” he answers with a shrug, so cool, so casual, as if it’s no big deal. But Winnie just stands there, dumbstruck, as her heart launches into the stratosphere.