I had to be over it too.
When she responds, her voice is lower, more vulnerable. “If you’d told me you chose your career over me, I would’ve understood. But you just left. I know it was high school, but one second you were sleeping next to me and kissing me and touching me, and the next you were gone. Did I do something to fuck it up?”
“No. Never.”
The ache is more than physical now, as if it’s pulling at the corners of my soul. Talking to each other without seeing each other feels safe, as if there are no stakes, no rules—as if every word is no sooner spoken than forgotten.
I drop my head back, shutting my eyes and remembering that day, seeing her with that guy. “You got over me,” I say, needing confirmation.
“I wrote you sixty-three times. Emails, texts, letters. All summer, halfway through the fall.” Her low laugh is dry. “I didn’t send them, didn’t try to reach you, because I didn’t want to be selfish. I knew you chose your future, and that was enough for me.”
The anguish rips through me, and I force myself to stop tearing at the edges of the Polaroids in my fingers. The backs of my eyes burn, and I swallow against the emotion rising up my throat.
“It wasn’t enough.” My voice comes out rough. “You taught me to want things I never let myself want. Fuck, Annie. You taught me to dream.”
Her shallow intake of breath has me turning, and once I do, I can’t look away.
Here, in a black bra and panties with wet hair sliding over her shoulders, she’s more than a dream.
My gaze drags down her small breasts, her stomach, the flare of her hips.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t attracted to her, but now she’s every wish and regret and ache wrapped into a single person.
I was a boy who cared too much. She was a girl infatuated with something she didn’t understand.
None of that’s responsible for the way the air crackles between us now, for the way her eyes widen in warning as if she feels it too.
“Tyler…”
I close the distance between us, one slow step at a time. When I come to a stop inches away from her, the blood pounds in my veins, my ears, my temples.
“Give those back.”
Her voice has an edge it didn’t a moment ago, and I blink when I realize her gaze has dropped to my hands—to what I’ve forgotten to conceal.
She lunges for the photos, and I hold them out of reach.
When her half-naked body brushes my chest through my T-shirt, she’s close enough I can smell her light floral scent, and I want to drop the photos and tangle my fingers in her hair, drag her angry mouth to mine.
As if maybe that can fix what’s between us, what’s inside each of us.
“You wrote them about me.” My voice is a rasp, and her chin snaps up, eyes flashing.
“Taylor Swift writes a song after every breakup. Doesn’t give her exes the right to hear her private thoughts until she makes them public.”
Her breath is light on my face, her lips close enough I could swoop down and claim them, learn whether her taste is the same or whether it’s changed, too.
“One problem with that assessment.” I breathe, and her brows lift. “We never dated.”
She shoves against my chest. I don’t budge, but I do capture her hand with one of mine, hold it there until she stops trying to twist away.
“I don’t care what you call it,” she retorts. “I was a kid. I was in…”
“In what?” Her palm covers my heart, and I know she can feel it hammer in my chest.
We stare each other down, neither of us ready to give in.
I want her to finish that sentence more than I’ve ever wanted anything, as if her saying she loved me gives permission for me to unload on her, too.
To tell her she was my entire damned world, that when I learned she was at Vanier, I was confused and frustrated, but more than all of it?
I was fucking elated.
The one thing I consoled myself with a year ago was that she’d be better off without me. I never let myself use the L-word with her, swore that whatever I felt for her was mixed up shit amplified by our circumstances.
You can’t fall in a matter of weeks.
Just like you can’t fall for someone who’s not talking to you.
Who refuses to look your way in the hall.
And she can’t fall for you.
I was wrong. I see it now.
But even if she didn’t get over me as fast as I thought, even if there’s still enough attraction between us to incinerate a city…
She’s over me now. I know it when she pulls her hand out from under mine, and my blood cools a degree the second her touch is gone.
“The photos, Tyler.”
I hand her the stack. Annie turns and sets it on her dresser under the photo of her and her dad.
Then she grabs the faded jeans on her bed and tugs them on. I don’t bother looking away. She doesn’t ask me to.
The desire’s still there, but it’s overshadowed by something bigger, an uninvited emotion filling my chest.
“So, if I help you throw this party for Beck tomorrow night, you’ll keep my secrets,” she says under her breath.
“I will.”
Annie buttons her jeans, straightening to look me dead in the eye. “Tomorrow, then. For Beck.”
I nod. “For Beck.”
But as I start for the door and she turns away to reach for a shirt, my gaze drags back to the stack of photos…
Hating that I didn’t realize how deeply I’d hurt her.
Wondering what parts of her body she inked me on.
Wishing she’d never erased me.
7
“How nervous are you?” Elle asks me on the way out of Entertainment Management Friday.
“It’s going to be great. I didn’t even know Finn was on the faculty list until the fall,” I admit as we start down the hall. “He wasn’t when I auditioned.”
“Finn Harvey?”
I look up to see Jake, the guy from the library, fall into step with us.
“Lucky,” he goes on. “The guy’s a rising star. But I don’t know anyone else who got Finn. It’ll be cool to work with someone who knows how to bust in.”
Excitement works through me. “Exactly.”
Elle jerks her head toward the dining hall. “I’m this way. Annie, I’ll catch you tonight?” Her eyebrows wiggle.
“For sure.”
“What’s tonight?” Jake prompts as she leaves.
“A bunch of us are going out to this club. You should come.” I give him the details, and he nods.
“You give any thought to the showcase?” he prompts.
“Yeah. I’m auditioning for sure.” Last night I watched some video from past events. The talent level is off the charts, particularly from the people who close.
But the faculty who preside over the auditions have to choose someone. I’m already strategizing how to make sure that someone is me.
“It’ll be a first-year uprising.” Jake pumps a fist in the air giddily.
I wave goodbye, then head for the stairs to the practice rooms on the second floor. I’m five minutes early, and my swipe card doesn’t let me in. I wait in the hallway, watching people flow by.