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Miles blinks at me a few times, as though he doesn’t understand what I’m saying. “Why the hell would this mean anything about you? You did absolutely nothing wrong. It shows that you went to school with some pathetic lowlifes.” There’s empathy in his gaze now, alongside the rage. I didn’t expect Miles’s anger to feel so validating. “That is one of the most horrendous things I’ve ever heard,” he continues. “I can’t—I can’t believe they did that to you. This thing that’s supposed to be special, that—”
“I didn’t want it to be special,” I say, interrupting him, because I never thought Cole was going to rock my world in that specific way. “That wasn’t what I was looking for. I just wanted it to happen, I guess, to know what it was like.”
And to feel wanted for a few moments. The press of his hands and mouth, the weight of him on top of me… sometimes it’s impossible to separate the act from the aftermath, but for a short time, I did feel wanted.
It just wasn’t enough.
“And all you did was bring me a flower. It was a sweet thing to do. How fucked up is that, that I can’t be given a flower?”
“It’s not fucked up. I get it,” he says. “I’m so sorry. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”
I cut him off with a sharp shake of my head. “I don’t want to not be able to receive flowers from anyone. I mean, I like flowers, or I did before. And I like my last name.” It doesn’t feel as terrible as I thought it might, telling him all of this. It feels—lighter. I can’t believe I didn’t know him three weeks ago, and now he has all these pieces of me I’ve never given anyone before. “So there it is. My whole traumatic history,” I say. “Maybe I should have waited. Maybe I should have done what you’re doing.”
“It’s not your fault,” he says emphatically. “None of it. They should have acted like fucking decent human beings.”
His words are sharper than I’ve ever heard them. Miles being so upset on my behalf… it’s almost sexy.
I try to shove away that revelation but it only intensifies, speeding up my pulse and settling low in my belly. A spark of desire.
“I’ve never told anyone,” I say. “Not even my mom.”
“Thank you.” His eyes are heavy on mine, and I have an overwhelming urge to ask him if he’ll hug me, which I valiantly beat back with my waning willpower. “Thank you for telling me.”
“We don’t have to keep talking about it,” I say.
“If that’s what you want.”
I nod, unsure how to explain that this should have been too much, but it isn’t, and that’s something I’m not ready to unpack either.
“There should be a buzzer that goes off, or a light that flashes to let you know you’re with the right person,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.
“Someone who comes out and waves a flag.”
“Yes! Is that really too much to ask?”
Miles laughs. “Can I tell you something?” he says.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not. I swear.” He takes a moment to collect himself, and then: “When my days started repeating, before you got stuck too, we interacted. A bunch, as you know. And… well, I started saying things to see how you’d react. I’d make a comment about your T-shirt, or about physics, or I’d ask you about your classes. Mostly surface stuff, but still—because when I said something different, you’d say something different, and it made me feel less alone.” He gives me this sheepish half smile. “You were the most interesting person on campus.”
“I was the one with the raging temper, you mean.”
“No,” he says. “You seemed like someone I ought to be paying attention to.”
I can barely formulate a response to that.
So he keeps going, each word chipping away at the steel in my heart. “I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed as much as I have in the past few weeks. Even if I tried my absolute best not to humor you at first.” He taps each side of his mouth, leaving behind a constellation of glitter. “I’m going to develop early wrinkles here, and it’s all going to be your fault.”
Without thinking, I raise a hand to his face, placing my fingers next to his mouth as he drops his hands. Tracing the imaginary lines there. He’s kind of beautiful, and it’s a shame I’ve been this slow to notice how lovely he is to look at. Or, at the very least, slow to let myself acknowledge it.
“Aww, you’d look cute with some mouth wrinkles,” I say. “Distinguished.”
His breath catches, and that concerning thought I had a few moments ago—it’s no longer an almost. That catch of his breath sends an electric shock to the parts of my body that aren’t already on high alert. “What about gray hair?” he says.
I move my hands up into his hair, wind my fingers through the dark strands. It’s nice, thick hair, somewhere in between soft and coarse. A few dots of glitter are spread throughout, and I imagine I’m covered in it too. His eyes close, and I wonder if it’s involuntary. “You could pull it off.”
Miles’s hand drops to my knee, and it’s then that I notice how much of the space between our bodies has disappeared. Maybe we’ve been moving closer this whole time, his heat and his scent muddling my brain.
