AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We make it to the off-leash area of the park, and it’s majestic, really, seeing all these creatures run wild. My dogs seize the opportunity to surround Miles, lowering onto their front legs and begging him to play.
“How do you get them to do that?” I ask. It’s not like I’m running straight at my pack of dogs, arms flung wide, yelling Let me love youuuu!
“I have no idea,” he says, laughing that warm, slightly-too-loud laugh. A black Lab named Otis and a tiny ball of fluff named Falafel sit down and wag their tails, waiting for treats. They’re entranced, under some spell apparently only Miles has cast. He digs into his bag, telling them to wait as he produces a treat for each of them.
“I refuse to believe you didn’t bathe in peanut butter before we left.” I hold out those same treats, trying to entice them over to me. It’s no use.
He pinches the collar of his shirt, takes a whiff. “Or they just really like Irish Spring.”
Ah. So that’s what his scent is. Maybe now I’ll stop obsessing. I’ll get my own bottle of Irish Spring, and then I can inhale Miles whenever I want to without being creepy about it.
Although maybe the concept of inhaling him whenever I want to is the definition of being creepy about it.
I try whistling at the dogs, throwing a few tennis balls, even getting down in the mud to play, but nothing works. They are gone for Miles and Miles only.
“Well, this is some bullshit,” I fake whine, which only makes Miles laugh harder.
The dogs love on him so much that he eventually loses his balance. Miles on his knees in a muddy patch of grass, Otis and Falafel and Bear and Neo licking his face while he tries to pet them all at once—that’s a sight I never thought I’d see, and it’s kind of glorious.
The glimpses I’ve gotten of this Miles aren’t nearly enough, even when they’re making my heart skip and stutter inside my chest.
I stretch a hand toward him, pretending I’m going to help him up before swiping a line of dirt across his cheek. His face is flushed, eyes flashing with vengeance.
“You want to play dirty?” he says, reaching for my legs and dragging me back into the mud.
DAY SEVENTEEN
Chapter 22
ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT, AND Miles and I are the only ones inside the drama building. It’s a well-known fact that this was once a women’s physical-education building, complete with a locker room, gymnasium, and pool. Today that pool is undergoing repairs for a broken filter, which I learned during freshman orientation. And, most importantly: it’s drained.
The meager lighting washes everything in sepia as we haul a dozen huge bags down the hall, passing cast photos and performance stills. It smells strange and mostly unpleasant, chlorine and sweat and decades of wannabe actors now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent-ing.
“This is absurd,” Miles keeps saying, letting out a laugh that echoes around the windowless room. It is. And that’s what makes it fantastic. “I can’t believe creating a giant ball pit is on your list.”
“Not a ball pit by name, exactly. But getting up to some kind of after-hours mischief.” I think back to Jocelyn’s story about sorority ice-skating. “You should be grateful I haven’t made any ball jokes. Because trust me, I’ve wanted to.”
“That’s not true. When I opened up the first bag, you said, ‘I thought they’d be bigger.’?”
“And then you said, ‘This is what god gave me!’?”
His mouth twists into a smirk as he shakes his head, but he can’t deny that days-1-through-65 Miles wouldn’t have humored me at all. I love that he’s embracing the absurdity. We haven’t been to the library in nearly a week, and if he’s twitching to open up a textbook, he hasn’t said anything.
By the time we’ve moved all the bags from a truck out back—we paid way too much to borrow them from an indoor playground—I’m a sweaty, exhausted mess, my T-shirt clinging to my back and my jeans buttons digging into my stomach. But it’s worth it when we stake out spots on opposite sides of the pool and start pouring. Adrenaline rushes through my veins as the balls stream out in brightly colored waves, red and yellow and green and blue.
Once we’ve emptied all the bags, Miles inches to the edge of the pool and stretches, as though gearing up for a dive into a real water-and-chlorine-filled pool. I kick off my shoes, not entirely sure of proper ball-pit-jumping attire.
“You want to do this together?” he asks, holding out his hand.
I stare at it for a few moments before glancing back at his face. Somehow, the eerie lighting casts his features in a soft, golden glow. He shouldn’t look this… well, attractive. No one should, under these conditions. His eyes spark, the static electricity making his hair a dark, spiky halo around his face. And it’s kind of cute, I decide, the way his ears stick out.
A concerning observation, right up there with my split-second desire to huff a bottle of Irish Spring.
I force myself to be rational, something the fluttering of my stomach seems determined to ignore. Miles is the only other person trapped with me. The only person who gets what I’m going through. If I ever make it to my Thursday psych class, I’m sure I’ll learn that these feelings are natural. Miles is someone to sympathize with, nothing more. It’s sheer proximity, tricking me into thinking it’s something else.
I nod and link my fingers with his, trying not to think about the fact that this is the second time we’ve held hands, because holding hands doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t romantic—it’s Miles, the guy who could probably only fall in love with a textbook.
We’re stuck in a fantasy, and that means this cannot be real.
