Page 52 of Left on Read

I want Hayes.

I shouldn’t call him. It’s weird. Is FaceTime better? No, I don’t want to FaceTime because I look like a gremlin. A half-drowned gremlin.

I’m going to call him whether it’s weird or not. Because I believe he’ll pick up.

The phone starts to ring, and I feel a strange urge to move around. I don’t know what it is about the awkwardness of phone calls, but I physically cannot talk and sit still. As I walk down the hallway, I take a moment to enjoy the relative quiet. It’s so peaceful around here when the house is empty. He picks up as I’m trailing a brush through my overgrown hair. I try to do something with my too-long ponytail, but those half-curls over my ears still won’t stand down.

“Hey, Novella.” His tone is light but mildly concerned, and I realize he probably thinks this is an emergency since I called out of the blue. “You okay?”

I nod at myself in the mirror, then immediately recognize how ridiculous that is.

“Do you wanna do something?” I start without a greeting because I’m awkward like that. Even as I say it, the thought of going out and putting the image of completely-fine-ness over my face feels impossible. “I’m … bored.”

It’s a gross understatement for what I am and am not feeling right now, but it is technically true. Bored, restless, and consumed by self-doubt and a fear of my own weakness. It’s all the same, really.

“I can’t imagine you being bored.” I hear things rustling around in the background, and I wonder if I’m interrupting something. I didn’t ask, and I realize I am being kind of impolite.

“I don’t know that that’s what this is, actually. I just feel …” I can’t describe it. I can’t tell him what I feel, because I don’t feel anything.

“Maybe you need to touch grass.” He says it like that’s the only solution to the problem I haven’t even explained.

“Grass?” I repeat, looking at my own sarcastically widened eyes in the mirror. Why am I still standing in the bathroom?

“Yeah. You know, grass. It grows out of the ground some places.” Now Iknowhe’s messing with me, and I hate that it helps just the slightest bit.

“I have heard of it. Seen it occasionally. There might even be some just outside my window.”

He laughs, and I feel it warm the cavern of my chest.

“Do you want me to come touch grass with you?” he asks softly.

“Yeah,” I admit, because I really, really do.

He hangs up the phone with little pretense, and then I have a moment of decision paralysis where I can’t make myself move. My brain becomes a black loading screen with an incomplete circle in the middle spinning around. I try to calculate how long it would take him to drive from his house to mine, then I think of how I should clean up my room before he gets here.

I don’t. Instead, I grab an old blanket that no one will mind getting dirty, and I head out into the front yard. My main objective is to touch grass, and I don’t have time for side quests. The sunlight is nice, and there’s a cool breeze drifting over the porch. We have exactly one tree, and I lay out the blanket underneath it.

At first, I just sit. With my legs crossed underneath me and my palms pressed against the blanket. Not touching thegrass,exactly, but close enough. A gust of wind surges by, and dry leaves rain down all over me.

Maybe this isn’t the perfect spot I thought it was.

I stand, move the blanket in between the tree and the driveway, and sit back down. There’s no breeze over here, and the sun shines down on my face. It’s warm enough to make me worried about the climate. Determinedly, I breathe in a lungful of autumn air. It’s the kind of scent that Bath & Body Works would make into a way-too-intense candle.

My eyes are closed, but not tightly enough to block the sunlight seeping through my eyelids. I hear a couple of cars drive by, and they all sound way too close. Someone’s playing horrible music loud enough that I still hear it seconds after their annoying-as-fuck truck drives by. Not very conducive to the peaceful vibe I’m going for here.

I hear a car slow down and turn into the driveway. I never did calculate how long it would take him to get here, and I don’t know how long it’s been. A car door opens and closes, and I hope that’s Hayes, or I’m going to have to explain to someone else why I appear to be meditating in the front yard. Footsteps shuffle toward me, and I can hear when he moves from the pavement to the grass.

“I feel like I’m interrupting something,” he mumbles. I open my eyes, and he’s standing in front of me, backlit by the sun. This might be the most casual I’ve ever seen him outside of his house: he’s in an old middle school T-shirt and black sweats. I don’t know how his middle school clothes still fit him, but I don’t hate the way the fabric stretches over his powerful arms.

I pat the spot next to me, and he all but face-plants onto the blanket. Somehow, I giggle. It feels as absurd as it sounds. I think that’s the first emotion I’ve expressed in days.

Hayes wiggles around until he’s lying flat, with his hands resting behind his head. I let myself fall next to him, crossing my legs at the ankles and resting my hands by my sides. We’re silent for thelongest time, as more cars pass by. I wait for him to fill the space between us with inane chatter, but he never does.

On an impulse, I roll over onto my left side, facing him. He does the same. There’s a strange mixture of emotions in his eyes. The exhaustion is heavy and familiar, but there’s something warmer there too. One of his hands finds the curve of my hip. I run a fingertip over the lines of his face. Over his jaw and down the slant of his nose. He has this exaggerated cupid’s bow, and I let the pad of my finger rest there for a split second. Hayes doesn’t move. He just lets me explore his face. I lay my palm over his cheek, and he shifts the slightest bit to kiss the inside of my wrist.

“I don’t want to compete against you,” I admit, whispering into the narrowing space between our faces. I don’t know why I said that. It feels like another one of those social missteps where I say the wrong thing, but it also feels completely true. I don’t want to compete against him.

He blinks in surprise, and his face drifts far enough away that my hand falls to his chest.