Page 62 of People Like Us

He muttered something I couldn’t decipher, then turned his head so his chin rested on my sternum. “Mean what?”

“That you’re mine. I know people say things they don’t mean when they’re…” I wasn’t sure what to call what we had just done. “I wouldn’t hold it against you if you found someone else—”

I was cut off by the devastated look on his face. “Lola, don’t you know I’ve always been a fool for you?”

“Always?” I asked, trying to call him out on his exaggeration.

He smiled softly, eyelids still heavy. “You remember when you beat me in the eighth grade science fair?”

I shook my head, laughing. “No.”

He rolled his eyes, pushing up to stand. The loss of his weight left me feeling empty. I sat up, tugging my dress down as he knelt to pull a shoebox out from under his bed.

“Despite my complete lack of athletic abilities, I’ve always been really competitive,” he said, sitting on the coffee table in front of me. “I always wanted to be the smartest person in the room.”

“I never would have guessed that about you,” I said dryly.

August gave me a pointed look as he pulled the lid off the box. A stack of loose papers, ribbons in different colors, folded notes, and birthday cards all arranged according to size sat inside. He lifted a stack of photos out, shuffling through them before he found the one he’d been looking for. He held it out to me.

August was standing in front of a replica of the solar system, a green second-place ribbon in his hand. I traced my finger over his cherub face in the photograph. He wasn’t looking at the camera, he was looking over at the girl next to him.

A younger version of me was there, smiling brightly in a frilly yellow dress, holding up an ant farm, a gold first-place ribbon taped to it.

My heart skipped in my chest. I wanted to yell into the past at the girl, tell her to look at him. Tell her to be kinder to herself. Tell her to have not thrown a fit that morning about wearing the yellow dress when I had wanted a pink one, because my mother had worked so hard on that dress. Tell her that she’d get everything she wanted, and she’d grow bored of all of it.

August’s timber voice pulled me from the thought. “This was the first time I lost to you,” he said, tapping the photo in my hand. “After this you won the math-a-thon, the creative writing contest, and the spelling bee.”

He laid a new photo in my hand at the mention of each event. In all of them we were standing next to each other. In all of them I was smiling at the camera, and August was looking at me, cheeks blooming coral.

“You must’ve been having a bad year,” I said hoarsely.

He shook his head. “It was the first time since my dad died that I had anything to look forward to. Every time there was a chance for me to lose to you, I was jumping at the chance.”

I bit my bottom lip to keep it from trembling. “I wish I’d known.”

“I’m glad it happened like this.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time, worried that if I opened my mouth I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from saying something I couldn’t hide from later.

He pulled the photos from my hands, placing them gently back into the box. He sank to his knees, pushing my thighs apart so he could kneel between them. His fingertips slipped underneath the hem of my dress, tracing lazy lines back and forth on my skin.

“Say you meant it,” his voice was pleading as he nudged his nose against mine.

“Meant what?” I asked, breathless.

“Say you want me to be yours,” he begged.

“But I—”

“I don’t care about your boyfriend, Lola,” he cut me off. His lips skimmed the sensitive flesh under my eyes as he whispered, like it’d force me to absorb the words. “Keep him. Get married, if you want. But say you’ll keep me too.”

Hot tears streamed over my cheeks and his tongue snaked out to catch one. “I don’t mind being second place, as long as I get to be next to you,” he said.

A wet laugh escaped me. “This is so fucked up.”

“I know,” he laughed, his breath fanning against my neck.

“I want you to be mine,” I said into his hair, the soft curls brushing my cheekbones.