Page 22 of The Getaway List
“Worst case?” Tom asks, in a tone I can’t quite decipher. Like it’s teetering on some edge between amusement and hurt. Before I can answer, he adds wryly, “Seems like you’ve really thought this through.”
I shake my head. “More like my mom has.”
Tom hums thoughtfully. We’re both quiet a moment, and either fortunately or unfortunately, that’s where most of my schemes with Tom begin—in the easy shared silence between the two of us, the one that always felt like a blank canvas for whatever it was we were going to do that day. The one I’m conjuring right now, though, is decidedly different from the olden days of hopping on crosstown buses or trying to reenact scenes from Tides of Time.
“Okay, but here’s the solution,” I say, even though my brain hasn’t quite yet caught up to my mouth.
Off whatever he’s seeing in my expression, Tom asks, “Should I be worried?”
Maybe. Even as the idea is occurring to me I’m aware of how utterly far-fetched and possibly damning it is. But the words tumble out of me of their own accord: “You and me. We go outside right now—neutral territory—and we kiss.”
Tom’s cheeks aren’t pink now but a full flaming red. Still, his voice is just calm enough that I know I haven’t actually crossed a line when he says, “Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just to make sure there’s no chemistry,” I say, the words deceptively casual given the electricity that’s crackling all over my body right now. It’s close to the enticing, promising tug I used to get just before Tom and I went off on our adventures together when we were kids, but also not. Like it needs its own category entirely. I push past it and add, “If there is then obviously we can’t spend the whole summer living together because that would be weird. And if not, boom, we’re golden.”
Tom considers me for a moment, his eyes searching my face with an intensity I’ve never seen before. The kind that makes me wonder if I should take it back—if in my effort to prove my mom wrong, I’ve inadvertently opened a door that’s better off left untouched. A door that goes somewhere there’s no coming back from.
But then Tom says, “Yeah. Okay.” He stands abruptly, pressing his palms into his jeans. “Let’s do it.”
Only once we’re down in the courtyard just outside his building do I realize how ridiculous I’ve been. It’s not secluded by any means—we’re still smack-dab in the middle of New York, with cars rushing past and the doormen gossiping and people headed to the park for their Sunday morning runs—but the space is just separated enough that it feels like we’re apart from it all. We settle on the lone bench and I look over at Tom and immediately start laughing again. Not because it’s funny, but because strangely, suddenly, there’s a part of this that isn’t funny at all.
“We don’t have to do this,” Tom says at once.
I shake my head, still laughing. “No, no, I’m just being ridiculous. I’m in if you are.”
“Sure,” he says, with a calm I apparently no longer possess. A calm I fully lose hold of a few moments later, when Tom slowly lifts his hand and settles it just under my jaw, the gesture gentle and warm, tilting my face up toward his.
Just like that the laughter ebbs out in my throat. Just like that I’m staring up at a Tom that every part of me recognizes except for my heart, which is thrumming like it’s working overtime. Tom leans in and so do I. Tom holds my gaze and I hold his back. His thumb tightens slightly where it’s resting just under my ear, sending an unexpected shiver through me, a quiet pulse of a question. He’s waiting for me to lean in the rest of the way.
“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “nothing we do together could ever ‘ruin’ anything.”
The words settle in me all at once, calm and heavy like a blanket. Tom is still watching me carefully, but my own eyes are sliding shut. I lean in, close enough to smell the mint of his toothpaste, to feel the heat of his breath, to feel a strange thrill tighten in my chest, and then—
“Tom?”
We both blink, going very still. We’re so close that our noses are near touching, that I can’t focus on any one part of his face. In a rush it all comes back—my too-loud heart, the even louder city, the crush of reality slamming back into our haze.
“Hey, Tom!”
Tom glances toward the sidewalk then, his hand sliding off my jaw. The loss of his eyes and his touch momentarily root me to the spot. Like I was briefly someone else in the moment I had them, and now I’m back in my usual body, trying to figure out how the bones fit.
“And Riley!” says the voice.
I blink again and there’s Luca, his freckly face beaming at us from the sidewalk. He’s got a backpack slung over his shoulder, the strings of a bright purple apron spilling out of it where the zipper is half-undone.
“Oh, thank god, it actually is you,” Luca says to me, slumping into himself with relief. “I just yelled ‘Tom’ without thinking, and when you didn’t look up I was like, oh shit, what if it’s not Tom, but here you are, decidedly Tom. Hi. Good morning.”
I bite my lower lip in a mostly successful attempt not to laugh. All things considered it’s a miracle I’m in control of any of my physical form right now, given the aftermath of this almost-kiss, which is still tingling bizarrely all over my body.
“Luca,” I manage, the guilt somehow pushing its way through the veritable storm of my human body right now. “Oh boy. Okay. Funny story. So it turns out—I’m not … not not Tom?”
Luca’s brows furrow. I put a palm on my forehead because apparently I’m utterly useless right now.
“Is that a triple negative?” asks Luca after a moment.
Tom finds his wits before I do, and stands up from the bench. “So actually I’m Tom. And this well-intentioned troublemaker here is Riley.”
“Oh?” Luca doesn’t sound offended so much as deeply, profoundly confused.
