Page 25 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

She was lying. He knew this because it was objectively cold out—it had to be about fifty degrees, if not colder, and although they weren’t weaklings in Buffalo, they did know a chill in the air when they felt it—and also because he was a seventeen-year-old boy, and the second her sweater came off, his eyes zeroed in on her breasts.

He wasn’t proud of it. In fact, if he could put a fine point on it, he might even admit to being downright ashamed. This was Julia! She wasn’t a woman to be ogled. She wasn’t even awomanin his mind. She was just…Gem.

And yet.

And yet at some point over the past few years, she’d gotten breasts. And at some point in the past few years, he’d begun to notice. And therein lay the dilemma.

He found himself swallowing hard—gulping, actually. Her nipples were visible through her shirt.

He looked away quickly, but it was too late. The damage had already been done.

He’d noticed.

They never really talked about classmates of the opposite sex or crushes. There was something about it that feltawkward. Almost taboo. Neither acknowledged whether the other felt that way, but simply by virtue of the way they both avoided it, it felt like an unspoken rule between the two of them, one of their only hard lines.

They had different friend groups at school, had almost none of the same classes, and hardly ever saw each other around the building, though they would exchange a glance or a nod if they happened to pass by each other in the halls. He knew she had her crowd—skinny art kids, mostly, and more specifically that one guy, Nick, tall and black-haired, who liked to hang out around her.

And he had his crew—cringingly stereotypical, and yet he was unable to call them anything other than what they were: the popular crowd. The athletes, the cheerleaders…He hadn’t necessarily meant to fall in with that group—and Gem loved to make fun of him for it every chance she got—but, well, he was really good at hockey. Always had been. Spent his winters as a kid skating on the nearby ponds with a stick in his hand any chance he got. And apparently being good at hockey in small-town western New York high schools meant that you quickly got moved to the top of the social food chain.

More than anything, hockey had been the one way he and his dad had bonded best. Frank hadn’t always known how to deal with his unhappy wife, who had wanted another child and couldn’t have one, or his best friend, whose own wife had run away, or his son, who seemed to bounce all over the place like the Energizer Bunny trying to find a place or an activity or a group of people where he fit in, but he did know how to deal with hockey. He’d been the one to encourage and cultivate Ethan’s interest, buy him the equipment, take him to practices. And now, horror of horrors—

It had made Ethan popular.

Which meant that Ethan—tall for his age, muscular and lean thanks to a hockey diet prescribed by his father and then his coaches, with hair that was a bit overlong, flipping slightly over his ears in bronze waves—knew what it was like to capture the attention of girls. And to be captured by them in equal measure. To have their interest and their fawning and their attraction. The same way he knew, without her saying it, that thatNickguy had Gem’s.

So neither of them was a fool or blindly inexperienced with the opposite sex. They just didn’t spend their limited free time divulging information about it to each other. Instead, they talked about everything else—their lives, their futures, their fears, their interests—with very little otherwise that was off limits.

Except now.Nowshe was sweaterless in front of him, wearing just a T-shirt in the cool autumn air that showed off the impression of nipples and the hint of a toned belly, and he couldn’t even remember a single example of all those important topics of conversation they usually indulged in.

And when she started to tug off her pants as well, he forgot his own name, too.

“What are youdoing?” he blurted out, standing up and holding his arms out as though to try to—what? Stop her? Re-dress her? The cigarette fell from his extended fingers, and he had the wherewithal at least to stomp it out before turning his attention back to her.

“I’m going to jump in the water and go for a swim,” she responded, as casually as if she had said,I’m going to go back into the house to grab a drink.

Trying to forget for a moment that she was only partiallydressed, he grabbed her by her shoulders in an attempt to talk some sense into her.

“Are you insane?” He gestured toward the lake, dark now with the deepening navy of the sky. “You are literally going to catch hypothermia and die.”

“First of all, you can’tcatchhypothermia—”

“Get, catch, whatever!” He shook her slightly. “Don’t be crazy.”

Looking down for the first time, almost forgetting himself, he caught a glimpse of her legs, bare and prickled with gooseflesh, and her black cotton underwear, and he felt his body stiffen—in more places than one.

It didn’t take much these days—or in the last five or six years—to trigger a…responsefrom him (a light breeze usually did the trick), but this was the first time it had been caused by Julia, and he felt mortification and horror course through his veins on the heels of his ill-begotten lust.

She laughed then, loudly, and he realized that she was just riling him up, and he resented the way she always caused him to question reality with her sometimes-twisted sense of humor. It made him feel disoriented and, worse, like the butt of a joke he wasn’t in on. She didn’t do it often, and most of the time it was unintentional, but sometimes he got the feeling that she felt superior to him in some way—socially, academically, intellectually—that he didn’t appreciate.

“What’s your problem?” The words came out angrier than he’d intended, but he was embarrassed and aroused and frustrated in equal measure. Whatever game Julia was playing, it was unlike the even-keeled and levelheaded girl he knew. Jumping into the water now was a dangerous endeavor. She would likely require some level of medical attention if she didn’t get out quickly enough.

She was beingstupid. And Julia Schaeffer might have been many things, but stupid was not even close to one of them.

At the sharpness of his words, she stepped back, her breath coming out in foggy pants, the condensation of her warm, sharp exhales clouding the air between them. He noticed she was shivering, and he cursed lightly, grabbing her sweater and throwing it over her head, feeding her arms through the sleeves and watching as it settled over her. Then he did the same with her pants, grabbing them off the dock and handing them to her, keeping her steady when her own hands shook.

He waited until she was fully clothed before removing his hands from her arms and taking a step back, regarding her with what he was certain appeared to be a mix of wariness and concern.

“Gem—” he started, but a closer look at her face, limned in the burgeoning moonlight, made him realize she was crying. “Hey.” Without thinking, he reached out to her once more and pulled her into his arms. She leaned into him heavily, though she didn’t return the hug. He stroked up and down her back while she took in deep breaths, the occasional sniffle belying her actual emotional state. After a beat, he turned his head, lips in her hair, and asked softly, “What is it?”