Our school had a full-size, Olympic-quality natatorium—a gift from the Pattens, of course. Everybody at East River High School had to take swimming and pass a swim test—it was the bane of freshman year. I had never seen the place like this before.
My hand tightened in Will’s, because it was so unexpectedly beautiful. Now the strange, inside-out sounds made sense. It was the groan and call of waves above us. Lights from inside the pool illuminated the water. Bright wave prints danced over us as we stood there together.
This was something magical, a hint of romance to cut the ravenous want that I felt when we got too close together. Players played, sure, but Will already knew he had me. This was something more—proof that there was something more between us.
Softly, I said, “Will, it’s wonderful.”
“I love this place,” he murmured.
Suddenly, silver foam and a dark streak filled the viewing window. A deep, plunging echo seemed to waver through it, the sound of a splash from the inside. Pressing closer to the thick glass, I watched in amazement. Legs kicked, a body twisted. It took me a moment to realize what it was. When the second streak whipped past us, I finally understood. We were watching dive practice.
Eager to see the next dive, I said, “I didn’t even know it was here.”
“Me either. I found out when the custodians needed some help bringing the chlorine in. Jake and I happened to be standing around after a pep rally, and they snagged us to help.”
Touching the glass, I left foggy fingerprints behind. “It’s amazing.”
I stepped back. Right into Will’s arms. “Can they see us in here?” I asked.
Shaking his head, Will trailed his hands down my waist, down to rest on my hips. “It’s a one-way mirror. I checked it out. It’s about eight feet down. If you dive to it, all you see is yourself.”
I turned in his arms, the same time he took a step forward. Pressed between his warm body and the cool glass behind me, I took a soft, shallow breath. Mingled now with the chlorine was Will’s warm, spicy scent. He smelled so good, I wanted to press my face against his neck and just breathe him into me.
Then I thought, why shouldn’t I? I didn’t feel tentative with Will. There was no barrier, none of that shy anxiety about doing or saying the right thing. I wanted to, and so I did.
Brushing my nose against his throat, I shivered with a deeper breath. Nosing along the fine, strong line of his jaw, I filled myself with him, letting him overtake my senses. The fleeting quiver of his pulse against his cheek made my own race.
He answered with hands that tightened on my waist. His thumbs trailed restlessly, hitching beneath my shirt by increments. It was a touch of fire when he found bare skin. His caress stirred heat through me everywhere. He touched nothing more intimate than my ribs, but I was dizzy with it, anyway.
It was easy to kiss Will Spencer. We moved in tandem, both turning at the same time. It was like we were machined to fit together, the right key in the right lock. Rising on my toes to meet his mouth, I looped my arms around his neck. Stretched against him, I felt long and tall, and strangely lovely. I wasn’t transformed by his touch. I was revealed.
Will pressed into me. Every inch of him felt strong and hard, wound so tight he might snap. His grip on my waist tightened. Lifting me, he sat me on the window’s narrow ledge. It was barely wide enough to perch on, but when my legs tangled around his waist, I realized I wasn’t supposed to.
He held me up. Stealing the breath from my lips, he returned it on another kiss. His tongue was velvet on mine, seeking and teasing. I’d never been kissed like that before. Not with Dave, not with anyone. This wasn’t innocent, a kiss for its own sake. It wasn’t naïve and curious, not at all.
This felt like the beginning of something. A seduction that dared me to imagine what might come next. I felt like I’d been waiting for this. Needing it, even without knowing it. My fingers twisted in his hair, and he surged against me. It wasn’t a thrust, but it promised one. It whispered darkly, This is what it would feel like if . . .
Another splash echoed overhead. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a halo of bubbles, swirling and racing for the surface. I was happy to sink beneath it. Down, into the dark, into Will’s arms. Into an uncertain, inevitable future.
SEVEN
Sitting back to back with Will, I leaned my head against his. This was the only way we could talk without crashing into each other.
Even still, we held hands. Our fingers twisted and teased. Slipping together, then apart again, they whispered with caresses. It was like our hands continued doing all the things we couldn’t. Because no matter what we wanted, we really did have to talk.
If I said too much, if I said it the wrong way, would he leave? My heart said no, but how could I be sure? A different kind of tension threaded beneath my skin. It pulled tight, shortening my breath as my pulse raced.
Pretending things weren’t complicated didn’t actually simplify them. Nerves frazzled, I shaped my lips to say it.
“You have a girlfriend,” I said. I kept my voice down. Since diving practice ended, the dark hallway took on an eerie quiet. I didn’t want all my secret thoughts and feelings to carry. No one could know what I was feeling—no one but Will. I glanced around, but we were alone. I was glad for that, because his response caught me off guard.
“Yeah. Tricia’s great.”
Jealousy filled me, not that I was entitled. But I didn’t want Will to think she was great. I wanted him to think I was better. I wanted him to admit he was mine, so I could admit that I was his. How else could we ever be together?
Casting a look over my shoulder, I said, “That night—you asked me if it was just you.”
“It sounds wrong,” Will said. His shoulders rubbed against mine. Fingers darting, he caught my hand in a new grip. His fingers trailed along the underside of my wrist. The skin there was tender, and his fingertips rough. “Or maybe it sounds like bullshit, I don’t know. But it’s different with you.”
A shiver skated through me. “How? Is it just, you know . . . physical?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
When he laughed, I felt it vibrate through him. “If it were, the boathouse would have been enough.”
“Okay, crazy confession time,” I said. I squeezed his hand, rolling against his shoulder. All I wanted was a peek at his face. I caught a glimpse of it in the shadows, half-masked by dark. The light caught his eyes so that they seemed unnaturally blue. Bright as the pool above us, and just as variable.
“Yeah?” he said, prompting me.
“Before anything happened, I felt like I knew you.”
“I thought you were on to me,” he said. With a wry little smile, he rested his weight against my back. “That Athena, she’s just too smart. She cut right through the douche-bag party-boy and saw my true nature.”
I wanted to gather him in my arms. I wanted to protect him from the rest of the world, who looked at him and couldn’t see past the surface. I was sad that he hadn’t had a chance to just be until now. His whole life, stuffed into a shape that didn’t fit him . . . it was like I was the only one who realized that Pinocchio was a real boy.
Twining our forearms together, I raised our joined hands. Fingers skimming our shoulders, I turned and brushed a kiss against his fingertips. “There you are, Will.”
Roughly, he said, “Here I am.”
Reality pressed in. Closing my eyes, I was forced to admit things were crazy complicated. We couldn’t just pack up a convertible and ride into the west together. He’d been dating Tricia for a while. They were homecoming king and queen, and on track to sweep the prom, too. And Dave? Dave wasn’t just my boyfriend. He was my partner. We had years of history behind us, and I cared about him.
“I’m waiting for the ‘but,’” Will said.
What a way to prove he did k
now me, in some basic, primal way. Already, he keyed into my silences.
“Dave isn’t just my boyfriend,” I said. “We’re partners.”
“The band,” Will said.
“Even that makes it sound easier than it is. We actually have something, music-wise. I don’t believe in muses or anything. But when we sit down and write a song together . . . it really is like there’s some force out there, pouring music and lyrics into us.”
“I’ve seen your website,” Will said.
It touched me that he’d looked at it. That made the rest of what I had to say even harder. I wanted him to understand that Dasa wasn’t so much about me and Dave as a couple. It was about us as artists.
With a frown, Will looked back at me. “You know, I’ve heard you play without him. You’re really good.”
“I’m better with him.” I sighed. This was a mess; I was making it worse.
Will turned. I guess he thought I needed to see him when he said it. Catching my chin gently, he searched my face. Then he met my eyes, unwavering. “I don’t want to take that from you.”
Nervous, I nodded. I appreciated the gesture, but part of me wanted him to protest, to want to be the only guy in my life. Covering his hand with mine, I wondered if this was the part where we agreed to meet back up in five years and see if we could make it work then. A knot formed in my throat. It twisted tight, because the thought of giving him up made me want to cry.
His expression melted dramatically. All at once, his eyes were seeking. His brows tilted, reflecting my pain. Soothing, he stroked my cheek, knuckles grazing my jaw. “Hey. Hey, shhhh. There’s nothing wrong here. We can figure this out.”
“Can we?”
Framing my face with his hands, he kissed me. Then he pressed his brow against mine. Opening his eyes, he gazed into me, and I gazed back. Wrapping my fingers around his wrists, I felt for his pulse. I wanted it to keep the same beat as mine. When I breathed, I wanted him to breathe, too.
With a whisper, he said, “See me when you can see me. You don’t have to stop hanging out with Dave. I’m still good with Trish. For now. Until you can figure things out. We’ll keep talking. It’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
I believed him. When he said it like that, it made perfect sense. I didn’t have to scrabble to hold on to my dream or to Will. I had time to figure it out. As reasonable as that sounded, it plucked at my nerves. Everything between us felt like it was in the future tense; I didn’t want to be the one holding back. But I didn’t dare to be the one who jumped first. There was just so much at stake.
Desperate to hold on to something, I rushed to close the space between us with a kiss.
Will was already there.
~
The next morning, I pulled up outside Jane’s house and hit the horn once. Her quiet neighborhood was funkier than mine. Older bungalows and crazy yard people who couldn’t stop at one garden gnome when five hundred would fit beneath their old oak trees. Jane’s house had a cute old-fashioned porch on it, and a paint job that I liked to call Early Modern Bordello.
Compared with the boringly boxy houses on my street, Jane’s neighborhood was practically garish. And since there was no lack of backyard chickens and roosters, I didn’t feel bad hitting my horn, once. Jane was the one desperate for coffee before homeroom, but I always ended up waiting for her to emerge.
When she finally did, she was still scrambling to put herself together. Her purse twisted awkwardly from one wrist while she tried to shove a textbook into her bag. As soon as she got it together, she jogged up to the passenger side of my car.
Knocking on the glass, she leaned over to look at me. She mouthed, “I’m on to you,” before flinging the door open and jumping inside. Her stacked bracelets jingled, and her faux-leather jacket squeaked against my definitely straight-up plastic seats.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. But tension laced me tight. Did my second meetup with Will show on my face? Was he talking about it?
With a laugh, Jane broke the tension. “I’m just messing with you, jeez.”
I waited for her to buckle up, then took off. I headed in the opposite direction of the school. We needed coffee, and Jane insisted on the fair trade shop out by the highway. Our town, East River, wasn’t big enough for a true rush hour. Easing into traffic, I waited until I was in the express-ish lane to tell her what was happening.
“Okay, so maybe something is up,” I said uneasily. “But I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
With an arched brow, Jane told me that I should explain. Hooking a finger at me in the air, she wriggled it until I started talking. It was her way of demanding without being demanding.
Usually, that move made me laugh. She had so many great, weird quirks. I was just feeling guilty, so I reached over and closed her chattery finger in my fist.
“I don’t want you telling anybody this . . .”
“Since when do I spill on you?” Jane asked. “Speak, mouth.”
I really did want to tell her about me and Will. It’s just that when I went to say it out loud, I realized I didn’t know how to explain it. There were so many lingering questions I hadn’t yet answered. There were so many details that needed to be unpacked carefully.
In our last conversation, Jane and I had come to what seemed like a conclusion: Will was the bad candy, and I shouldn’t have any more. And at the time, I’d agreed.
So I had to find a way to make sure Jane understood there was something more with Will. Yes, there was cheating involved. And yes, it was complicated. But there was so much at stake.
Anyway, the really short version was, I didn’t want to be judged before seven in the morning. So I offered up the next best thing.
“Did I tell you that Emmalee and Simon almost hooked up?”
“What! No!”
“Yeah. In a big way. They made it to the boathouse before Will and I broke it up.”
Whistling low, Jane shook her head. She wore shock well. When people caught Jane by surprise, they felt the massive quake as it rolled through her. “People used to call that place the V Stop. ’Cause that’s where you stopped—”
“Being a virgin,” I said. “I know.”
“Holy crap, how did that even happen?”
Cracking my window a little, I sighed in relief. Cool air flooded into the car. It scrubbed at my flushed skin. I was suddenly so hot, I wanted to peel my clothes off and jump into a deep, dark pool. That stray thought brought memories of the pool back in vivid color. And thoughts of being wrapped around Will in the cool, shadowy blue made the flush worse.
Managing to steady my voice, I said, “The usual way. Too much party, not enough sober.”
“But they didn’t actually . . .”
I shook my head. “No. No. Nothing like that, just kissing. They were so slogged, I practically carried Emmalee back to the guesthouse. She texted me yesterday, said she was vee vee vee grateful that I saved her from the Balrog. Any idea what a Balrog is?”
“They’re fire demons with scourges,” Jane said. She whipped out her phone and started Googling, presumably trying to find a picture of a Balrog somewhere that she could show me. There was nothing Jane liked better than visual aids. Her Instagram was a wonder to behold.
I kept talking. “Yeah, so that was a visit from weird town. Oh, and by the way, I made out with Will again.”
Jane’s Googling came to an abrupt halt. And there went the quake. Jane’s eyes shifted from wide and curious to narrowed with incredulity. In fact, there seemed to be a little bit of betrayal in there as well. After all, she had helped me decide it would never happen again, and there I was, telling her she was wrong. “Excuse?”
Rolling my shoulders, I tried not to squirm. “He texted me, he wanted to talk.”
“You don’t talk to a guy like Will Spencer! You ride him like a pony, and y
ou go, whee, I always wanted to have a pony, and then five minutes later you say, I’m over it now, thanks, bye!”
Defensive, I said, “He’s smarter than he looks.”
“So is a Slushy Magic, but you don’t hook up with it!”
Leave it to Jane to get real without hesitation. All my life, I’d told her basically everything, and she forgot none of it. Every kiss I’d ever had, every weird bump I’d ever grown, every nauseating, embarrassing phobia . . . Somewhere in that crazy genius head of hers, there was a running log: every dumb thing Sarah ever did. And now, there was a new event in the number-one slot.
Struggling against her seat belt, Jane seemed like she wanted to burst out of her seat and shake me. “One time is an accident, Sarah. Twice is . . .”
“I know.”
“If you know, why did you do it?” Then, randomly, she held up her phone. Sure enough, she’d found a horned demon brandishing a fire whip. I’m pretty sure if Jane had a whip, she’d have cracked it at me. “He has a girlfriend. You have a boyfriend. People’s feelings are at stake here.”
Frustrated, I flipped on my turn signal. “Yes, I am aware of that. I’m not proud of it. I’m just trying to figure things out.”
“I’ll help you,” Jane said, frowning. “Gird your ovaries and dump your boyfriend before you attempt to get a new one.”
I said nothing. Because Jane, if nothing else, was fair. And sensible. And allowed to tell me the truth, even if I didn’t want to hear it. Since I was silent, Jane felt the need to fill the quiet. “Look, you know I love you. But right now, I’m like . . . This cheating is not you. And I don’t understand how you got here.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
We passed the billboard for the coffee shop, and Jane shrugged. “Well, then I guess you’re just going to have to sit down and try.”
EIGHT
We were going to be late for homeroom, but I didn’t care. Neither did Jane. We sat in the back booth at the Daily Grind, Jane nursing her coffee and boggling at me.
While You're Away Page 5