Walk a Mile

10. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Then

Shortly after nine p.m., I was packed into Sage’s truck with two of our other friends, Peyton and Lori Ann. Sage was driving way too fast, but we were too busy discussing Lori Ann's fixation on Mitch Ellington to care.

“Okay, guys,” said Lori Ann, twisted around in the passenger seat to talk to Peyton and me in the back. “Listen. I know Mitch is going to be there and I’m going to hook up with him tonight. We need to make a game plan.”

The rest of us groaned in unison. “Child,” said Peyton. She was sixteen, a year younger than Lori Ann, Sage, and I, but tended to be the mother hen of our group. Whenever she thought one of us was being stupid, she channeled that mom energy and talked to us as if we were children. “Find someone else. He’s not gonna go for it.”

“I know he wants it. Didn’t you see the way he was watching me the other day when we saw him at Scoop Shack?”

“No, yeah, he was definitely checking you out,” I admitted, and she put her hands in the air triumphantly. “But he’s not going to do anything with you. Or anybody.”

Mitch’s dad was the pastor of the largest church in town. Earlier that year, his dad had launched a teen abstinence workshop and made Mitch the face of it. At our high school, the program was widely advertised with posters featuring Mitch holding up his hands to fend off a girl taking a step toward him, hands clasped in front of her, looking desperate. The fact that the girl was portrayed by his sister did little to improve anyone’s feelings about the whole thing. In the end, I heard that they got eight participants—including the pastor’s two kids. Mitch was hot, but not hot enough to wade into that mess.

Lori Ann disagreed. She had developed a huge crush on Mitch after they were partnered up in class a month before, and she hadn’t been able to let it go yet.

“I can corrupt him,” Lori Ann insisted. “I’ll show him what he’s missing.”

“What’s that?” Sage retorted. “Your B-cups?”

What followed was a symphony of shrieking that had my ears ringing by the time we piled out of the truck into the warm night. We were on the Redding property, the only place to be on weekend nights in Amity. Vince Redding had just graduated with Theo, and the parties he threw on his family’s enormous ranch were always raging and never got busted—the advantage of having rich parents who basically owned the entire town.

Leaving Sage’s truck with a line of similar ones near the gravel road, we began our hike across the grass. People we knew and people we didn’t surrounded us: drinking from red plastic cups, dancing, screaming, making out. In the center of all the activity were several pickups belonging to Vince and his friends. One of them contained the speakers that blared music. Each of the others had a keg sitting on the tailgate and one of the boys standing beside it, filling plastic cups and passing them blindly into the crowd. We moved toward Vince, and he grinned at us. “Look who the cat dragged in!”

“Right behind you,” Sage said.

Vince gave us an easy smirk and jerked his head, shaking his overlong blonde hair out of his eyes. “Gonna be a good night,” he said.

For some reason, his eyes lingered on me after he said it. I met his gaze, reaching for the cup he held out to me. “Think so?”

“I gotta feeling,” he said, a reference to the song currently playing, and then grinned at his own dumb joke.

As Vince handed off beers to the other girls, I took a sip of mine and looked around. Almost immediately, I spotted Theo a few yards away, standing near the bonfire with Quinton. He raised his cup to me in silent acknowledgment, and I raised mine back. I thought I saw his eyes drift over my outfit—a short skirt and spaghetti- strap tank, nothing special—but at this distance and in the dark, it was hard to tell for sure.

My friends and I wandered off to where people had started to dance, moving a respectable distance away from the speakers so our eardrums didn’t blow out. We stood in a circle, hands above our heads, hips moving, beer sloshing over the side of our cups, sometimes listening to the music and sometimes just talking over it.

“Oh my god!” Lori Ann shrieked after a while, grabbing Peyton’s arm. “Mitch! Look at Mitch!”

In unison, we all turned our heads to follow her pointing finger. I gasped in delight when I saw Mitch standing nearby, talking to Amy Baird. “Hey, she gets around,” I told Lori Ann. “Maybe—”

We all watched in shock as Mitch grabbed Amy by the waist and began grinding on her.

“Oh,” Lori Ann fumed, “oh, hell no. Not when he’s been giving me the holier-than-thou treatment.”

Peyton held up a hand. “Well, hold on—”

“He can tell me he doesn’t want me to my face.” She shoved her beer at Sage and bounded over to Mitch and Amy. We watched as she pushed her way between them and began yelling and gesticulating wildly. Mitch and Amy stared at her, taken aback.

“What’s she saying?” Sage asked.

“I can’t hear,” I said. “Does anyone need a refill?”

Everyone shook their head, and I made my way back to the trucks alone. Most of the kegs had been abandoned by that point, so I picked one and pulled the spigot forward to pour my own drink. When I turned around, it was to a body hovering right behind me. I startled, spilling beer all over myself.

“Oh, shit,” said Vince. “Sorry.”

I tossed my empty cup to the ground and peeled my shirt away from my body. The stale smell of beer hit my nostrils, and already I could feel the stickiness setting in on my skin. “What the hell are you doing?”

Vince looked taken aback by my sharp tone. Briefly, I considered dumping some beer on him and seeing how he liked it. Then he recovered and turned on the flirtatious grin that had all the girls at school falling all over themselves. I didn’t dislike Vince—well, until now, maybe—but I did seem to be one of the few that wasn’t dying for a moment of his attention. “You can take it off,” he leered. “Nobody here will mind.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Done with this conversation, I went to step around him. Vince moved with me, blocking my way. “It was an accident, Nina. Jesus. I just wanted to talk to you.”

I fixed him with a glare, my mild irritation growing more severe by the second. “Too bad. Bye.”

Again, I tried to leave, and again, Vince stepped in front of me. This time he leaned forward, and in my effort to put space between us, I found myself pinned against the tailgate. Even though we were surrounded by people, a prickle of fear moved beneath my skin.

“I was coming over here to ask you to dance,” he said. His laidback, easy grin was fixed in place, but it looked wrong inside of his hard expression. “Without that thing on your face, you’d be pretty hot.”

I curled my hands into fists to keep myself from touching my birthmark. It had been a long time since somebody commented on it, at least to my face. There were times, like when my mother talked about how we’d get it removed as soon as we had the money, where the self-consciousness from my childhood came roaring back as if it had never left, but most days I didn't give it a single thought.

The finely honed sixth sense I had developed from years of being in Theo’s orbit alerted me to his presence before his voice did. The tense muscles in my neck and shoulders immediately relaxed, and I stopped trying to come up with a retort for Vince. I simply waited, knowing I was safe now.

“What’s going on?” Theo asked, stepping up beside us. He took a sip of his beer that would appear casual to most but didn’t fool me. I watched as he noticed my soaked shirt. “You alright, Sass?”

“I’m fine,” I said stiffly.

“We’re just talking, man,” said Vince. “All good here.”

Theo regarded him coolly. “Really.”

“Yeah.” Vince tried to swing his arm around my shoulders, but I stepped out of his grasp. Theo immediately grabbed a handful of my shirt and used it to tug me into his side. His hand brushed my bare back, and I tried to pretend the touch didn't turn that spot red-hot.

That seemed to be the nail in the coffin of Vince’s patience. His laidback facade dropped. “Imagine thinking you’re too good for someone,” he spat, “when you’re a frigid bitch who looks like that.”

Before I could blink, Theo’s familiar presence left my side, and he and Vince were on the ground.

“Theo!”

He ignored me, or maybe he didn’t hear me at all. Vince sprawled in the grass with Theo’s knee in his gut. I stood by helplessly, wincing when I heard the sickening crack of fist meeting jaw.

“Fucking asshole!” howled Vince.

I watched Theo’s arm rear back again, as if he intended to deliver another blow, and came to my senses in time to leap forward. “Theo! Stop!”

I grabbed at his elbow, and although I definitely wasn’t strong enough to make him do anything he didn’t want to, Theo let me pull him to his feet and away from Vince. As I got my bearings and registered the small crowd that had gathered, I noticed that it was mostly made up of Vince's friends. And they looked pissed.

Vince stumbled up to standing, clutching his face with one hand. He used the other to point toward the exit of the ranch. “Get the fuck out of here!”

Theo pushed at my shoulder, nudging me forward. Tension rolled off of him in waves. "Go."

I stood on my tiptoes and looked around. A few heads were craned in our direction, but most people hadn’t even noticed the ruckus and were going obliviously about their business. “I don’t see Sage.”

Theo’s hand shifted down to my hip. With his fingers digging into my stomach and his back pressed against mine, he pushed me forward, gentle but insistent. “We need to go, Nina,” he said, and his authoritative tone had me briskly headed toward the edge of the field.

In his truck, I buckled myself into the passenger seat as he leaned across my lap to shuffle through the glove box. "What do you need?"

“Napkins.”

I swatted his hand away so I could look for them, and he made a sound of discomfort. Frowning, I hit the dome light so I could see.

“What—” I started to ask, and then I caught sight of his knuckles, smeared with blood. “Oh my god, Theo. Here.”

Holding his wrist with one hand, I found a couple of napkins and pressed them to his split skin. He hissed in pain.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You’re pressing too hard.”

“I’m trying to stop the bleeding.”

Theo let me clean up the worst of the mess, and he gently extracted his hand from my grasp. He held it up, studying the injury in the light, then opened the door to toss the bloody napkins into the grass.

“Litterbug,” I said.

He snorted. "Vince can pick it up."

He pulled out his keys and started the truck, and I sighed in relief as the air kicked on and washed over my face at full blast. I let my eyelids fall, assuming that Theo was about to drive off. After a few moments where we stayed stationary, I opened my eyes and met his dark gaze. “What?”

“Are you okay?” he asked, soft but with an undercurrent of intensity.

“Yeah,” I said, taken aback. “I’m fine.”

“Did he touch you?”

“No. He bumped into me and made me spill beer down my front.” I plucked at the wet shirt still clinging to my skin. Theo’s gaze raked down my torso in a way that made me feel on display. “And then I wouldn’t stay and talk to him, and he just got nasty.”

“Asshole.”

I sighed. In the dim light, I could barely make out his features. “You shouldn’t have punched him.”

Theo was still seething, every muscle in his body taut. I wasn’t sure when I last saw him like this—if I ever had. “Yes, I should’ve, and I’d fucking do it again.” Under his breath, he added, “Rich douchebag.”

I absentmindedly touched my birthmark, running a fingertip along the ridge where it raised slightly off my skin. “Hopefully I’ll be getting it removed soon.”

He squinted at me, confused. “What?”

“My birthmark.” I tapped it. “We don’t have the money right now, but—"

“Why?” he interrupted.

I blinked. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why would you get it removed?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Theo rested his elbow on the center console and leaned toward me. My stomach swooped as, for a split second, I was convinced that he was looking at my lips. That maybe he was about to kiss me. And Theo kissing me—I couldn’t even fathom what would come after that. It would shake the foundation of my world.

Theo didn’t lean in any further, though. Instead, he did something nearly as shocking—he raised his left hand and gently touched my birthmark. I sat, frozen, hardly able to breathe.

His fingers slipped away from my face, falling back into his lap, but his eyes stayed locked on mine. In the silence of the truck, with the dark night surrounding us, it felt like we were in a bubble. I’d been in bubbles with Theo my entire life—when we were on the play mat in the backroom, when we were laughing at some inside joke while the adults nearby rolled their eyes (my parents) or smiled at us (his), when we fell into the same humdrum routine we’d completed a thousand times, each of us knowing the other’s next move as well as we knew our own.

Theo swallowed. I watched the flexing of his throat, entranced. “Because—”

“Hey!”

I startled at the interruption to our peaceful moment. When Theo shifted away from me, I could barely make out the outline of Vince over his shoulder, standing outside the window. He smacked the glass with the palm of his hand. “I thought I told you to get the fuck out of here!”

Theo yanked the truck into reverse. “Hold on, Sass.”

I did as he said, gripping the seat beneath me as we careened backward. I could see Vince in the glow of the headlights, still yelling, arms gesticulating wildly. I wondered how much he’d had to drink.

“Are you drunk?” I asked Theo, suddenly wondering if that was why he’d lost his cool and gone after Vince. Theo was extroverted and gregarious, getting along with pretty much everybody. When other boys fought at school, Theo was often the one wedging himself between them to break it up. He didn’t seem drunk, but I’d also never seen him show a hint of a violent streak before tonight.

Theo cranked the wheel and started toward the main road at a steady clip. “No,” he said. “I had one beer, probably an hour ago. I’m fine to drive.”

When we reached the edge of the Redding property, Theo slowed down, looked both ways, and pulled out onto the two-lane highway. “Home free!” he hooted as he stepped on the gas, bringing our speed up to about five over the limit. I laughed, relaxing into my seat as we put distance between us and the farm.

“I’m putting on music,” I said, reaching for the radio dial.

“Go for it.”

The radio was tuned to Theo’s preferred alternative rock station, but I switched it to the country station that broadcasted from a few towns over. It was the same station that played constantly at the store.

Predictably, Theo groaned. “How do you not get sick of this shit?”

I sat back, propping my feet up on the dash. The adrenaline from the confrontation at the party had started to wear off, my heartrate returning to normal. “I like it.”

“All the songs sound the same.”

“All the newer songs sound the same,” I corrected. “This is George Strait. Everyone loves George Strait.”

“Do they?” Theo asked, but didn’t let me answer. “What time does Queen Kelly want you home?”

“My curfew’s still midnight.”

He tapped the digital clock on the dash. “Almost two hours left.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to read the message from Sage. It sounded like word had gotten around about the fight, and she wanted to know where I had gone. I typed out a response, telling her that I was fine and with Theo. “What should we do?”

We reached a four-way stop, where a right would take us back to our neighborhood. Theo put on his left turn signal. “I’ve got an idea.”

***

I yelped as I hopped out of Theo's truck and landed on a slick patch of grass, my feet nearly flying out from under me.

“Shh!” Theo hushed, laughing, even though we were four miles outside of town and hadn’t passed another car the whole way here.

“Sorry.” I giggled, stumbling after him as he started up the hill. He reached for me automatically, and I grabbed the hand he offered, letting him pull me along as we climbed through the dark and the brush to the old footbridge. Theo reached the crest of the hill first. With his feet flat and secure on the concrete, he kept my hand in his and used the other to steady me by the elbow as I climbed up beside him.

“Nobody here,” he said, and although I had already guessed that, the confirmation sent an anticipatory tingle up my spine.

I walked out onto what was known locally as Train Bridge, taking my first steps gingerly as always. Nobody had ever been hurt out here, as far as I knew, but the bridge was old and beginning to crumble in places. “I hope we didn’t miss it.”

“It won’t come until ten-thirty, eleven.”

I checked my phone. If he was right, we still had plenty of time.

In the dark, I walked out to the middle of the bridge and sat down at the side facing north, where the train would be coming in from. There was a gap between the bridge and the bottom of the metal railing that was just wide enough for me to slide my legs through, and I did, letting them dangle over the edge.

“Careful,” Theo warned as he came to sit beside me.

I wrapped my hands around the vertical rails in front of me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.”

I looked down toward the track, although it was too far down for me to see in the dark. I could barely make out my sneakers dangling in the air. Theo moved so he was leaning up against the rails, too, our hips and thighs pressed together, his feet swinging next to mine.

“When were you here last?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “When we all came out last fall, I think. Us, Sage, and Quinton.”

“Me too,” I said, thinking back to the night in question. It had started out like this one, at the Redding farm—although nobody had been in a fistfight. “Lori Ann came, too.”

“Oh, yeah.”

I gave him an annoyed look, not that he could see it in the dark. “Why are you pretending you don’t remember?”

“Because I’m not pretending? I forgot about her until you mentioned it. I’ve hung out with her, like, three times in my life. I can’t even remember her last name right now.”

I snorted. “Okay. Your protesting is a little much.”

“Nina, come on. What the fuck are you talking about?”

I ran my fingers lightly up and down the metal rails. They were disgusting, absolutely covered in years of whatever nature had to offer, and yet something about the grit of dirt under my nails appealed to me. “I just think it’s weird that you wouldn’t remember flirting with her the entire time.”

“What?” Theo sounded incredulous. “I was not.”

I stared down at my dangling feet, unsure why this conversation was bothering me so much. To me, the memory was crystal clear: Theo skirting around Lori Ann, resting his palm on her back. Theo sitting down next to her even though there was room next to me, leaving me strangely lonely. Lori Ann doing a pretty accurate imitation of the quirky chemistry teacher at our school and Theo bursting into raucous laughter that echoed through the night.

“Whatever.” I busied myself with picking at the frayed hem of my denim skirt, and then found myself saying, “She’s into Mitch right now, anyway, so you’ll have your work cut out for you.”

“Nina.”

“What?” I asked innocently.

Theo made a frustrated noise. “I don’t give a fuck about Lori Ann, okay?”

“Oh- kay ,” I snapped, unable to mask my own irritation.

An awkward silence fell, something so rare between us that I didn’t have the foggiest clue how to handle it. We were sitting close enough that I could feel the tension in his body. I began to wonder if I really had misread things—not that it should matter; I only meant to tease him, anyway, and wasn’t even sure how we had ended up bickering.

To my surprise, Theo broke the silence with a burst of laughter. I looked at him, confused.

“Jesus, Sass,” he said, “you reek .”

It took me a moment to register his words, and then I started laughing, too. Just like that, we were back where we belonged: in perfect sync.

I pulled my shirt away from my body. It was mostly dry now, but it did smell. “Do you have an extra t-shirt in the truck?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“I can’t wear this home. If my mom is waiting up and smells it, she’ll never let me out of her sight again.”

Theo nodded in understanding. “You can have my shirt, if I don’t have another one.”

“So you’ll show up half-naked back at your house?” I asked, appalled. “What would Randi and Cecil say?”

“They’ll never know. They don’t wait up.”

I tilted my head back. You could easily see the stars in town—it wasn’t like Amity was a buzzing metropolis—but out here, the stars stood out sharply against the inky black sky. I focused on one in particular that was a little bigger, a little brighter, than the others. “I always forget your parents aren’t control freaks.”

“I’m also eighteen,” he said gently, “and out of high school.”

“They didn’t give you a bunch of rules before, either.” Something occurred to me then, and I turned to him. Theo had been oddly reserved about the reason he decided to stay in town after graduation. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the grades for college, and I knew for a fact that he had been accepted into the University of North Carolina. I’d always assumed that Randi and Cecil would want him to go, but maybe not. Maybe they were like my family and the money just wasn’t there. It would make sense; they did all have the same source of income.

“Are they the reason you’re not going to college?”

A moment passed. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not because of them.”

I waited, but it seemed like that was all I was going to get for now. My stomach twisted with discomfort at the thought of a secret between us. We didn’t have those. At least, we didn’t used to.

In the distance, I heard the first rumbles of the approaching train. It was so quiet out here that you could hear it from miles away; it would still be a few minutes before it reached us. Even so, my body began to hum with anticipation.

Without discussing it, Theo and I wriggled around until we were laying on our stomachs, faces near the railing on one side and feet tucked beneath the opposite one. This was the best position to be in when the train came through, because you could feel the vibrations from head to toe while still getting the full force of the wind in your face. I liked to close my eyes and pretend that I was on a roller coaster.

“What about you?” he asked, his voice hushed. “If the store closes, what will you do after high school?”

I inhaled deeply. Hearing it laid out like that— if the store closes —as an actual possibility caught me off guard, even after discussing it in veiled terms that afternoon. Theo had always been a straight-A student, but I brought home Cs and the occasional B. So many kids we went to school with were chomping at the bit, ready to find a way out of Amity. I wasn’t one of them. I wanted to get out from under my mom’s thumb, for sure, but I didn’t imagine myself going far. Just to my own little place across town.

After he decided not to go to college himself, Theo and I had occasionally pondered the idea that we might eventually take over the store and run it together. With that possibility seeming to move further and further out of our grasp, I didn’t have an answer to his question.

I turned my head to the right at the same time he looked to his left, and my breath caught in my throat as I realized how close our faces were. “I’m not sure,” I admitted.

Even in the dark, I could see the intensity of Theo’s pupils zeroing in on mine. “We’ll figure it out,” he said.

A shrill whistle pierced the air, and when I looked back at the track, I could see the train in the distance, its headlights just rising over the horizon. I wrapped my hands around the railing and wiggled excitedly. “It’s coming!”

Theo threw his left arm over my back and pulled me snug against him. He always did this when the train came by, as if afraid I’d blow away.

Except for last time, I thought bitterly, when he sat by Lori Ann. I tried to remember if he had held onto her, too, but I couldn’t.

I decided to believe that this gesture was just for me, whether that was true or not.

“Ready?” Theo asked as the train rushed toward us, the headlights close enough now that I had to squint against them.

I closed my eyes. “Ready!”

Beneath me, the boards of the bridge began to rattle. Wind rushed through my hair. Theo’s fingertips dug into my ribcage, and the roar of the train grew ever closer. I was good at imagining out here, tricking myself into a bigger adrenaline rush than being on Train Bridge really warranted. My stomach turned just like it would at the top of a roller coaster, right before the big drop.

I knew the moment the train hurtled by beneath us because the air pushed upward with such force, it made me feel weightless. The rattle of the train’s wheels and the roar of its engine surrounded us; I thought I heard Theo say something, but I couldn’t hear him over the noise.

“What?” I yelled, opening my eyes, and in the next second he was cupping my chin and putting his mouth on mine.

I stiffened in surprise, sitting frozen inside the rush of the train going by, but Theo either didn’t notice or didn’t care. I had kissed other boys before, but never experienced the kind of gentle firmness that Theo possessed when he kissed me that first time. I didn’t know what to do with that any more than I knew what to do with the fact that Theo was kissing me , and so I froze, raising one hand to touch his wrist but otherwise giving no response.

And just when I registered what was happening, when I began to move my jaw to kiss him back, his lips were gone. He stared at me, looking as shocked as I felt—as if he hadn’t been the one to deviate from our well-established norms.

The last car of the train passed beneath us. The adrenaline of an imagined roller coaster was gone, replaced with the buzz in my veins left behind by Theo’s kiss. Even as the rumble of the train grew distant, we stayed right where we were, afraid to move now that the earth had.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, and I found myself watching closely. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?” I was incredulous, my voice borderline shrill. “You kissed me.”

Theo exhaled, a hint of alcohol still lingering in his breath. “Yeah.”

With the train gone and the night silent once again, I found no reason to stay splayed out on the boards with splinters poking into my skin. I held onto the rail for balance as I clambered to my feet. My heart beat fast, my pulse throbbing in my neck. Theo got up, too, but where I felt frenzied, his movements were slow and measured.

I moved to the other side of the bridge and leaned back against the railing. With a few feet between us, I found myself better able to think. “Theo—”

“You’ve never thought about it?” he interrupted. His own hands reached slightly behind him to grip the railing on his side. “About kissing me?”

I looked away, considering. The previous fall, around the time we had last been out here, I had an all-consuming crush on Kyle George. He wore ripped jeans and leather jackets and had a full head of thick dark hair that he was constantly swiping out of his eyes. When I was into Kyle, he was all I thought about. I watched him from across our biology class and practiced signing ‘Nina George’ in the margins of my notebook. I studied his mouth and tried to imagine what it would feel like moving against mine, his hair twisted in my fingers. After I finally got up the nerve to talk to him, I spent every waking hour plotting our next conversation, convinced that I was a single witty one-liner away from receiving a kiss that would transform my life forever.

I eventually did get a kiss from Kyle, and it was far from earth-shattering. There was too much tongue, too much spit, and he grabbed my ass approximately five seconds into it. I made out with him for only a minute or so before pulling away and so I could make up a lie about needing to go help at the store. In biology the next day, we ignored each other, and that was that.

Thinking about kissing Theo was definitely something I’d done over the previous few years, but it was different than with Kyle. It wasn’t surrounded by anxiety, like I was on this mission I didn’t know how to complete, and it didn’t consume me. The idea would enter my head fleetingly and at seemingly random moments: watching him help the elderly Mrs. Bryant get a shoebox down from a high shelf. Doing my homework at the sales counter as he looked over my shoulder, giving me tips. The first time he kissed a girlfriend in front of me and I unwittingly wondered what it would feel like to be in her place.

When I first developed my crush on Kyle, we had no relationship. I barely knew him. It wasn’t just the thought of kissing a cute boy that I was hung up on; it was the fact that Kyle was a blank slate, an image I could mold. But with Theo, we already had a relationship—one with deep, deep roots—and kissing was not a part of it. So I would have my occasional thoughts about kissing him and then I would shove them aside, because what else was I supposed to do?

“Maybe a few times,” I admitted. “I guess you have too.”

“Sass.” Theo pushed off the rail and took a step toward me. His tone was low and as serious as I’d ever heard it. “It’s all I think about.”

My heart leapt into my throat. I opened my mouth uselessly. He kept walking toward me, and I put my hands up, starting to feel flustered from his words and his proximity and the way he was looking at me, so intense even in the low light of the moon. “I don’t even know what you’re saying,” I spouted. “What the hell are we even still doing out here? The train’s gone, let’s just go back to—”

I cut myself off when he leaned forward, leaving only inches between us. I thought he was going in for another kiss—and despite my indignation, I was absolutely going to let him kiss me again—but instead he planted his hands on the railing on either side of me, caging me in. The heat of his body surrounded me, and I felt a bead of sweat roll between my shoulder blades.

Theo was only a little bit taller than me, so when he dipped his chin slightly, I found myself looking directly into his eyes. “You want to know why I was flirting with Lori Ann that night?” he asked, still using that low, serious tone.

“Thought you didn’t remember that.”

“Trust me, I remember. It was when you were obsessed with that Kyle kid. All that day at work, you’d been telling me that you’d caught him looking at you during class, and you were sure he’d ask you out soon. You wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“So what? You decided you were into Lori Ann?”

Theo laughed softly. “No. I was never into Lori Ann. I was pretending because I was jealous.” He reached up to move my hair behind my ear. “I’m into you .”

“Oh,” I said dumbly.

“ Oh , she says.” For someone so intent on turning my world upside down, Theo’s demeanor was remarkably casual. A little smirk played on his lips. “This is the part where you either tell me to get lost or that you’re into me, too.”

He seemed awfully confident that I wasn’t about to shoot him down, and I found myself wanting to knock him down a peg, just to feel like I had some semblance of control here. “What if I do the first one?” I asked, a challenge in my voice.

“Then we’ll go. I’ll drop you off at home, and tomorrow, it’ll be like this never happened.”

Could I do that? Could I go to the store and hang out with Theo and not think about the biggest adrenaline rush of my life? He seemed to think he could, but I wasn’t so sure. More than that, I wasn’t convinced that I really wanted to.

“And the second one?” I asked, working hard to sound like I didn't care about the answer.

The humor fell from Theo’s expression, and then he was in my space, pinning my hips to the railing with his own. I put my hands on his chest out of instinct; he held my waist and nuzzled my cheek. “That’s the one you’re going to pick,” he told me softly.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Yes, you have.” Theo dragged his nose along my jaw and dropped a kiss under my ear. It was barely anything, just a feather of a touch, but it felt like a burst of fire right there on my skin. “You didn’t want to talk to Vince earlier, and you let him know it. If you didn’t want to be here like this, we’d be back in the truck by now.”

I couldn’t even argue, because as usual, Theo knew me through and through. I let out a breath, and with it went my last bit of trepidation. “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

Theo kissed me again, and this time, I gave as good as I got. He tilted his head, and I tilted mine the other way. He opened his lips and my tongue was right there, ready for a taste of him. He wrapped a hand in my hair and I responded by twisting the collar of his shirt around my fist, holding him right there in front of me, where I wanted him. Where he belonged.

Eventually I had to break away to take a breath. I tilted my head back, trying to get a lungful of fresh night air. I was planning to get right back to it, but Theo ducked his head. I stared up at the stars and made some embarrassing noise as his mouth moved down the sensitive column of my neck. When he reached my pulse point, he sucked lightly, and I gasped at the unfamiliar bolt of desire that shot through me.

Then he was taking my face in both hands, gently pulling me back to look at him. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he leaned in to give me one more kiss—this time, over my birthmark.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered against my skin.

It was the first time I’d ever been told that.

It was the first time I’d ever felt it.

Nobody had ever called me beautiful before—not a stranger, not my father, and definitely not my mother. I had always been hyperaware of my birthmark, the way new people would do a double take when they saw it and then try not to look my way again. It wasn’t just my birthmark, either—it was my mousy brown hair and overly pointed nose and the dull hazel of my eyes. Even though I had never forgotten how wonderful it felt to be six years old and have Theo call me pretty, that was kid stuff. Beautiful was a different level.

“Stop,” I said, pushing on his chest. It wasn’t forceful, but he moved anyway, giving me the space I needed to duck out of his embrace. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

I started down the rocky path back to the car. Theo stumbled after me. He reached for my hand, but I crossed my arms over my chest. I’d take my chances on falling.

I was almost to the truck when he cut in front of me. I stopped so I didn’t run into him, keeping my glare intact.

“You know earlier?” he asked, breathless. “When you asked why you shouldn’t get your birthmark removed?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t get to answer.”

“Well, what were you going to say?”

He kept his hands to himself this time. Good. I’d be able to think better. “That you shouldn’t change any part of you.”

A gust of wind blew my hair across my face. Impatiently, I swept it out of my eyes and behind my ears. “I’ll do what I want, thanks.”

His eyebrows shot up. “What you want? Or what Kelly wants?”

I paused. It had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t want to get it removed. Didn’t I want a face that blended in, that wasn’t worth a second glance? To overhear myself being described as ‘the girl with the brown hair’ instead of ‘the girl with the thing on her face’?

“I want to stop being stared at,” I said. “I don’t want to hear any more pity from people who act like having a birthmark is the worst thing that could ever happen to me.”

Some sort of understanding passed over Theo’s features. “Okay. I won’t bring it up again,” he said, “as long as you promise me something.”

“What?”

His hand slid up my arm, over my shoulder, and then curled around my nape. Instinctively, I licked my bottom lip, and I saw his gaze snag there for just a moment before he raised his eyes to meet mine.

“Don’t ever accuse me of lying to you,” he said. Hurt laced his tone; it was the first time I realized how my knee-jerk reaction had cut into him, and my heart fell under the weight of the guilt. “You’re the one person in the world that I’ve never, ever lied to.”

“I know,” I murmured. “I’m sorry. I’ve never lied to you, either.”

Theo’s expression cleared, and he slung his arm over my shoulders. “Come on. Curfew’s coming soon.”

“Wait,” I said, planting my feet when he tried to tug me toward the truck. “The kissing.”

The corner of his lips rose in his familiar smirk. “Yeah?”

“Was that a one-time thing, or...?”

I wasn’t sure who I was fooling earlier. If he said yes, I would be devastated.

He didn’t. Instead, he just tugged me closer and gave me a playful, smacking kiss. “Does that answer your question?”

I tried to bite back my grin, but I suspected that it was a failed effort. “I guess so."