Page 111 of On His Mind

And then I have two hours to fill and no idea how to fill them.

I clean the apartment that is already clean. I move a stack of drawings off the table and then put them back because the table looks wrong without them. I catch myself in the mirror doing something to my hair and I stop, because I don’t do this — I have never once in my life fussed for a boy — and here I am, redoingthe same piece of hair three times because a hockey player who barely speaks is coming to see me.

I make myself sit down. I fold my hands. I breathe.

It doesn’t work. I’m up in ninety seconds, checking the window I can’t see anything useful from, checking the clock, running the plan again.

At 10:52 pm, my phone buzzes.

Percy:Here.

I stand up too fast. My heart’s going like it grown wheels, and I have to press a hand flat to my chest for one second like that’ll settle it, and it doesn’t.

I look in the mirror one more time, and then I take the elevator down with my heart thumping hard against my ribs. The doors open, and there he is — too big for the little service hallway, hood up, hands shoved in his pockets — and the second I see him, the frantic thing in me goes still.

“Hi,” I whisper, opening the door for him.

“Hey.”

I bring him up the back way, quiet in the elevator, the two of us a careful foot apart. He smells like clean soap. He keeps his eyes on the numbers. I can feel him next to me the way you feel heat off a wall.

I get him into the apartment and shut the door. He stands there a second and takes it in — not like it’s new, because it isn’t, he’s stood in this exact room before. Freshman year. He was quiet then too, careful with my space the way he’s careful with everything.

His eyes go to the table, to the drawings fanned across it, and stay there a second longer than they need to. I wonder if he’s remembering when he was last here.

I take him to my bedroom. He steps in behind me, and I shut the door. Now we’re in the safe zone, and it’s just us.

He sits on the edge of my bed like he’s not sure he’s allowed. I sit next to him, closer than I need to, and the whole night narrows down to the six inches between us.

Neither of us says anything for a second.

“You texted me first,” I say. “You never do that.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Why now?”

He looks at his hands.

Then at me.

His eyes are a soft blue right now, and I drink them in. My heart is flickering in my chest. And whatever’s coming, I can see it costing him, the way everything costs him.

Chapter 37

Percy

She’snervous.

I can see it the second she lets me in — the composed girl, the one who reads a room like a blueprint and never once shows you her hand, and her hands are moving, tucking hair back, straightening a thing on the desk that’s already straight. She sits on the edge of her bed and looks up at me and it’s the strangest thing to see her like this, but it levels me out. I came in wound so tight I could barely breathe and then I see she’s scared too, and somehow that makes it possible to be in the room.

We’re both out of our depth.

I sat on the edge of my bed last night and sent the text and then couldn’t put the phone down for an hour. I waited out the house tonight the same as always, listened for every door, so nobody would ask where I was going. Then I walked across town half-sure I’d turn around at some point and didn’t. I’m here against everything in me, and I don’t fully know how I got my feet to do it.

I sit down on the edge of the bed next to her, leaving a foot of space.

“You texted me first,” she says quietly. “You’ve never done that.”