Page 60 of What's in a Kiss?

“You gonna stay with Jake?” she asks.

I look at him in the tree. He’s watching me, and I know there’s only one answer. “Yeah. Thanks for the lift, Fenny.”

“I’ll never forget it,” she says. “See you on set.”

The traffic jam unjams. And soon the corner is quiet, or as quiet as it ever gets, and I’m at the base of the palm tree looking up at Jake. I feel jittery with adrenaline, amazed, and brimming with questions about how we ended up here.

“Hey, baby.” His unmegaphoned voice sends a shiver through me. “So that was crazy.”

“Crazy,” I agree. “And you were...” I search for the right words. I can’t find them.

“I—”

“You—”

“Liv, I can’t get down.”

“What?”

“I need help. I’m stuck.”

“Oh! You can’t get down!” I forgot. Jake is scared of heights.I think back to his public panic attack onEverything’s Jake, the climbing wall. I remember Aurora talking shit at him from on high.

“Oh God,” he says, sounding ill. “This is high school all over again.”

“High school?”

“At least then I had the foresight not to climb the trellis,” he says, like I should know what he means.

And then, I do.

The trellis. The set for the audition ofRomeo and Juliet. Our senior year. I wrote about it in my diary. When I’d seen Jake take one look at me up on the balcony and flee the stage.

That’swhy he’d bailed. He was scared of heights.

“When I saw that woman in labor,” he explains now, “I leapt before I looked.”

I put my hands on the tree trunk, wishing I could take his place up there. “You did good, Jake,” I say sincerely. “And you’re going to make it down. Inch by inch. I’ll be here.”

He swallows. Nods. He holds my gaze, and I see it flow between us, that he can take my support for granted, that it alone will get him out of this tree.

A sense of power washes over me. It’s a feeling I haven’t known before, something warm and steady in my heart. For the first time since I landed in the High Life, I let myself enjoy a moment’s well-needed peace.

“You can do it,” I say gently. “Deep breaths. Just like Julie.”

He cracks a smile, then gets still. We both take a deep breath, and Jake seems, suddenly, ready to try.

••••••

It takes himalmost twenty minutes to descend the tree trunk. His face is pale and damp with sweat, and when he’s four feet off the ground, he panics and drops. Right into my arms. We both thud to the pavement, laughing and only a little bruised. Jake helps me up. He wraps his arms around me and heat fills my chest, my face, my belly. Jake looks down at me and I look up at him, our lips inches apart.

We’re going to kiss. We’re going to do it. I feel like a firework near a lit match, on the brink of going off. Exploding. Lighting up the sky.

Something buzzes on Jake’s watch.

He starts laughing, pulls away from me. And I’m a little let down. I catch my breath as he says:

“We can still make it!”