Page 69

And,

I wish this pencil in my hand could draw her mouth.

I’d draw the shit out of her mouth.

I laughed out loud, somehow breathless and full of life at the same time, and handed him one of my sketchbooks. He sat up against my headboard and opened it, his eyes widening at the first drawing: his mouth. And then it was his turn to laugh.

“I see you conveniently omitted that you’re obsessed with me too,” I said, “when you teased me relentlessly aboutthat.” I gestured to the collage of pictures on my wall. I don’t know how I’d forgotten about them the first time he walked into my room. But there they were, and I’d been slightly mortified, seeing as how he didn’t drop it fortwo days.Or ever.

But also…I remembered how he’d stepped closer that day, taking a deeper look and getting lost in the sea of other pictures I’d taken. And the way he’d looked at me in awe, a lot like Elizabeth had, before asking if he could keep one of them.

“Sure,”I’d told him, assuming he wanted one of his team shots, but he’d plucked down one of me instead. A black and white of me sitting still on a swing, head resting on the chain. I was looking directly into the camera, eyes dark and filled with a myriad of emotions.

Sara had taken that one.

“Yeah, but now I haveExhibit Bof your obsession with me,” he waved my sketchbook in the air, pulling me from the memory. “Should I be worried?” he teased. “You’re not gonna, like, hog-tie me and keep me in your closet, are you?”

“Shut up.” I shoved his shoulder, but he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled me closer.

I landed in his lap, and we both quickly inhaled, all humor fleeing from our eyes, our minds, the room.

And then he kissed me, and I kissed him back, and I thought to myself,I could do this forever.But the darkest corners of my mind still whispered back:you’re on borrowed time.

Sixty Before

BUT…WERE WE?On borrowed time?

I wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like it. Not after we’d talked that day in the middle of the quad and had decided to be together. Not after all the time we’d been spending with each other—laughing, and kissing, and talking, pretending like the rest of the world didn’t exist.

But there was still this nagging feeling, a clawing weight in my stomach, telling me I was wrong. That good things like this didn’t last.

That they couldn’t.

That they wouldn’t.

A whistle blew, loud and reverberating, tearing me away from the thoughts I didn’t want to be dwelling inside of anyway. I welcomed the distraction with open arms, fully focusing my attention on Greyson and his teammates out on the football field.

I know I’d once said that I hated his football pants—that they were stupid. Irritating. Obscene. Or something along those lines—but I was lying. I was a dirty, filthy liar, because those pants—thosepants—were anything but. I pulled out my sketchbook and immediately started drawing him, in full gear—like the total creeper I was.

But if no one ever knew that I had an entire notebook full of only Greyson drawings, did it still make me a creeper?

Does a bear shit in the woods, Jess?

I don’t know.Does it?

I couldn’t help but smile, but my smile slowly melted away as I pressed pencil to paper.

Small flicks, and curved strokes.

A heavy hand on the shadowing around him, pulling him center-focus.

Everything else faded out. I was adrift, lost. In that drawing. In the contrast between the quiet breeze blowing through my hair, the soft sounds of my pencil scratching against paper, and the echo of loud grunts and tackles on the field below making their way up the bleachers.

After a while, or what had felt like only minutes, really, another whistle blew in three short bursts. I looked away from my drawing to find everyone walking off the field and towards the locker rooms.

Everyone but Greyson.

He slid his helmet off and called me over, beckoning me with a single finger.