Page 82 of Meet Me at Midnight
“No?” She leans into me, presses her lips to mine, and pulls away far too quickly. “That’s good, because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”
Sidney
There are at least five seconds of silence after I say it, and I’m half committed to plunging myself into the icy lake and waiting for unconsciousness, when Asher turns his head to me.
“Finally.” The smile he gives me feels like it could stop wars. Maybe it has. “I was running out of pranks. That’s the real reason I had to call the truce.”
“No more pranks.” Even as I say it, I’m not sure if it’s true. “Well, only the good kind.”
“No Kool-Aid showers?”
“And no lemonade bedsheets.” I smile, remembering one of my favorite pranks of all time.
“That’s one of the few times I was actually pissed at you. No pun intended. But that was truly twisted.”
I smile. “Yeah, but you love how twisted I am.”
“I think it’s more like I loveyou,and you just happen to be twisted.”
I lay my hand in the space between us on the dock. “Cease-fire?”
Asher laces his fingers through mine, and twists toward me, his face so close I know he’s going to kiss me. So close I can feel his warm breath on my cheek when he says, “Truce.”
EPILOGUE
THE NEXT SUMMER
Sidney
“How much do you hate me right now?”
Asher shakes his head against the blanket, and I don’t have to see his face to know he’s annoyed. He hates when I ask him that, when I tease him about how horrible we used to be to each other. I poke him in the side with my elbow and then prop myself up on it so I can look at him. He’s wearing anOAKWOOD SWIMMINGT-shirt and his pajama pants. Even in the middle of summer it’s a little chilly at 4 a.m., so the blanket laid out under us also wraps up around our legs. Overhead, the Perseids rain down in tiny bursts of light. This is the most we’ve ever seen, the latest we’ve ever been out. It’s the peak of the shower and our last count was one hundred and four. Of course, we can never know if we’re seeing the same meteor at the same time, so we won’t be turning our numbers in to NASA or anything.
“Okay, how much do you like me right now?”
He raises his eyebrows at me and I know what he wants.
I smile, and lean down to his ear, resting my face there when I do. “How much do youloveme right now?” I don’t mean for it to be a whisper, but out in the dark it’s hard to do anything but.
He looks at me and smiles. “It’s hard to quantify.”
“Try.”
He turns his face from the sky to me. “More than all of the stars…” His lips touch mine, gently and quickly; it’s not our first kiss or our hundredth, and it’s certainly not our last. “And then some.”
