Page 31 of A Summer Thing

Chapter Eighteen

Declan

Our hearts beat an average of eighty beats per minute.

One-hundred-fifteen thousand in a single day.

Forty-two million, in a year.

And yet somehow, it feels like mine has skipped every single one of them over the past three-hundred-and-something-too-many days, and only just starts beating again when I spot the very top of Jude’s head making its way through the crowd in the busy terminal.

I fidget, my hands twisting together in front of me.

Now that I’m here, I’m kind of wishing I made that sign I thought about making.

But it felt silly, and then I ran out of time and had to rush here, but having something to keep my hands busy would have been really nice right about now.

Because I don’t know what to expect. Even though we’ve talked all year—mostly in text, catching up every other day or so—I don’t really know where his head is at now.

How he feels about last summer, or me in general, or what this summer in New York is going to look like.

We’re still friends, at the very least. Closer now than even last summer. Slipping into a friendship over the past ten months that’s felt easy, natural.

We talk about our days, and our classes, and our frustrations, about football and my job at the coffee shop and our plans for the future, as far as our professional aspirations go.

We play Nevernight together on the weekends.

We’ve even built our own guild within the world.

And I finally told him about knowing who he was— SebCarter33— and the nights I used to fall asleep listening to him play.

But we don’t talk about the desperately-want-to-know things.

Like last summer, and what all those shared moments between us meant—or what they mean for us this summer.

How much we’ll be seeing each other while he’s here. If he’s dating someone.

That last one I would know if he ever posted on social media, but he doesn’t. And Addy and Boss broke up three months into our fall semester, unfortunately, so I can’t ask her, either.

She was heartbroken, of course. But she’s with Jonah now.

Lean, tan, dark hair, wire-framed glasses, super bookish and a little bit nerdy, Jonah.

Boss’s opposite in almost every way. She’s seemed happy, though.

Happier than she was, anyway, when she was missing Boss from fourteen-hundred miles away.

So, again, I don’t really know what to expect this summer.

A year feels like a lifetime ago, and yet it feels like no time has passed at all. Especially when I finally see Jude’s smiling face slipping through the crowd. A smile breaks out on my face.

It takes him a moment to pick me out in the scattered mess of people waiting, but then he does, and his eyes widen at the light pink that now colors my hair.

His steps are slow, his lips pulling up at the corners, and it feels like he’s moving in slow motion, but then time warps back to speed, and he’s stepping forward and I’m lifted into his arms in a deep, embracing hug.

Spice, flora, and thunderstorms. His scent tears me through time, bringing me right back to last summer.

The firmness of his hug, the deep rumble in his chest, the feel of his breaths at my neck as he holds me, the way everything quiets and settles and narrows in on this moment. I didn’t realize how much I just… missed him.

He lowers me to the floor, but I refuse to let him go. His chuckle reverberates through me, and he pauses where he stands in front of me before gliding his hands over my cheeks and framing my face in between his palms. His gaze—still gray, still turbulent, still hypnotizing—pierces through mine.

My breaths are stuck in my throat, lodged in my airways, as he lowers his mouth, pressing it firmly against my own. Soft, and warm, and somehow still familiar.

And then he’s pulling away, kissing my nose, and my cheeks, and then each one of my eyelids.

When he stretches back and stands at his full height, I know he can see the blush working through me from the inside out. It spreads through my cheeks and dips low into my stomach.

“You ready?” he asks, his lips tipped in a gentle, lopsided smile.

I mull it over for a minute, not wanting to break away from this moment but knowing we have to. “Yeah,” I manage to say, a little more breathless than intended. “I’m ready.”

He chuckles again—another soft breath of laughter—and loops my arm through his, hugging it against him as he guides us through the airport.

And admittedly, ridiculously, I still don’t know what any of it means.

______

We step out of the airport terminal, and all the noise rushes into our bubble at once.

Cars honking, tires rolling over asphalt, brakes squealing as they pull into the pick-up and drop-off lanes, the sharp spurt of a whistle—security urging people to hurry through their hellos and goodbyes—the roar of a 747 taking off and flying overhead.

Jude holds my hand firmly in his and guides me across the street through the mess of it all.

“The car is just over there,” I point in the general vicinity of where I parked Addy’s car, and he makes some sort of low, grunting noise in confirmation that he heard my words, squeezing my hand tighter.

My heartbeat echoes in my palm where it meets his. I’m trying not to overthink this. Trying, being the operative word. But with the way he kissed me back there, tender, careful, and affectionately, and with the way he hasn’t let go of my hand since, it’s hard not to.

There’s still something simmering between us, undeniably so, and right now, it feels like it never stopped.

When we reach the car, it’s all I can do not to stand here and completely gawk at him, but I fail miserably anyway, my hands sliding smoothly into my back pockets as I rock back on my heels, watching him maneuver his two suitcases into the trunk and studying him from tip to toe.

His build is bigger than it was last year.

His shoulders a bit broader. His arms thicker.

His jeans fit him just a little bit snugger, too.

The trunk door slams shut, and it jars me from my reverie. From my straight-out gawk-fest. I laugh under my breath at myself and slip into the car on the passenger side, giving him the go ahead to drive us through the city he’s much more comfortable with than I am.

When he gets inside, too, our doors closing and shutting out all the outside noise, he just sits there and stares at me in return.

And stares, and stares. And I know I’ve never been looked at like this before.

Like he’s cataloging every breath, every blink, filling his memory bank with every movement and storing them there for later.

At least that’s what I tell myself he’s doing since I’m so blatantly doing the same.

There was a connection between us last summer, a definite attraction, too, and a solace in the friendship we found.

But I could hardly see two feet in front of me then.

Looking at Jude now, it’s clearer how much brighter my skies have grown.

How much clearer I’m seeing him, and understanding the way he makes me feel.

Safe. Seen. Wanted. Appreciated.

My heart races, and my hands grow shaky, my palms sweaty. I’m anxious, but in the way that makes me want to speed up time to find out what happens next.

Jude reaches out between us and nudges my chin. “I really missed you, Little D.” It’s the first time I’ve been called that in ten long months, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it, too.

“I missed you too, Brooklyn.”

His smile stretches wide. “Speaking of. How are you liking my city? The truth—now that I can see it on your face when you answer me.” It’s a question he’s asked me every other week since I left, but it feels different now, having him ask me when he’s sitting right in front of me.

It’s almost like two versions of him have been existing in my mind—the physical, imprinted on my psyche Jude from last summer, and the friend I’ve been talking to through texts and Nevernight ever since.

I’ve longed for one, while growing closer to the other.

It was inevitable they would slip and shift, sliding into a space that melds the two together, I just didn’t expect it to happen this quickly.

“It’s growing on me,” I reply, and his smile stretches wider.

The truth is, New York has been liberating, intoxicating, an excited hum that lives inside my body.

But it’s also a hum that never stops, the chaotic-ness of the busy city never turning off, and it can be…

overwhelming. All my senses constantly firing is exhausting.

And having to navigate that, along with the anxiety that wrestles with my sanity, hasn’t been the easiest. It’s only when I crawl into my tiny excuse for a bed in my tiny excuse for a dorm with Addy, that I find a moment of peace and I can finally breathe.

I’ve already vowed that this summer will be different, though. I’ll get out more, explore, and see what New York really has to offer. Especially during the next six weeks, now that Jude is here and Addy is back home visiting her parents.

Jude pulls us out of our parking spot, and we exit the parking structure, and he drives us through the city.

I rest my chin on my closed hand and look out the window, my neck craned as sky-scraper after sky-scraper passes my view.

The clouds above them are white and fluffy, the sky a perfect, crystal-blue.

“So, what are your plans for the rest of summer? With Addy being out of town?” Jude asks.

“Not much.” I shrug, bringing my attention back to him. “I’ve got work, and I’ve been able to take on more hours now that we’re on break. But I’m also taking a six-week summer course on campus, so I’m sure that will fill a lot of my time, too.”

“Ah. What course?”

“Expository Writing.”

He nods. “That’s the critical reading, logical thinking, exploratory writing one, right?”

I mash my lips together, biting down on my smile.