She’d been trying all summer to ignore the fact that Bishop was going away to college. Now they had less than a month left. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said, nudging him.
“I’m serious.” He shifted, withdrawing his arm from under her head, rolling over onto one elbow to face her. Casually, he slung his other arm over her waist. Her shirt was riding up and his hand was on her stomach—his tan skin against her pale, freckled belly—and her lungs were having trouble working properly.
It’s Bishop, she reminded herself. It’s just Bishop.
“I’m gonna miss you so bad, Heather,” he said. They were so close, she could see a bit of fuzz clinging to one of his eyelashes; she could see individual spirals of color in his eyes. And his lips. Soft-looking. The perfect imperfectness of his teeth.
“What about Avery?” Heather blurted. She didn’t know where the words came from. “Are you going to miss her, too?”
He drew back an inch, frowning. Then he sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. As soon as he wasn’t touching Heather anymore, she would have given anything to have his touch back. “I’m not with Avery anymore,” he said carefully. “We broke up.”
Heather stared. “Since when?”
“Does it matter?” Bishop looked annoyed. “Look, it was never a real thing, okay?”
“You just liked hooking up with her,” Heather said. She suddenly felt angry, and cold, and exposed. She sat up, tugging down her shirt. Bishop was leaving her behind. He would find new girls—pretty, tiny girls like Avery—and he would forget all about her. It happened all the time.
“Hey.” Bishop sat up too. Heather wouldn’t look at him, so he reached out and forced her chin in his direction. “I’m trying to talk to you, okay? I . . . I had to break up with Avery. I like . . . someone else. There’s someone else. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But it’s complicated. . . .”
He was staring at her so intensely; Heather could feel the warmth between them.
She didn’t think. She just leaned in and closed her eyes and kissed him.
It was like taking a bite of ice cream that’s been sitting out just long enough: sweet, easy, perfect. She wasn’t worried about whether she was doing it right, as she had been all those years ago in the movie theater, when she could only think of the popcorn in her teeth. She was simply there, inhaling the smell of him, of his lips, while the music thudded softly in the background and the cicadas swelled an accompaniment. Heather felt little bursts of happiness in her chest, as though someone had set off sparklers there.
Then, abruptly, he pulled away. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”
And instantly, the sparklers in her chest were extinguished, leaving only a smoking black place. Just that one word, and she knew: she’d made a mistake.
“I can’t . . .” Suddenly he looked different—older, full of regret, like someone she barely knew. “I don’t want to lie to you, Heather.”
She felt her face begin to burn. It wasn’t her. He was in love with someone else. And she’d just shoved her tongue down his throat like a lunatic.
She had to crab-walk backward, away from him, to the edge of the trampoline. “Stupid,” she said. “It was stupid. Just forget it, okay? I don’t know what I was thinking.”
For a second, he looked hurt. But she was too embarrassed to care. And then he frowned, and he just looked tired and a little irritated, like she was an unruly child and he was a patient father. She realized suddenly that that was how Bishop saw her: like a kid. A kid sister.
“Will you just sit down?” he said in his tired-dad voice. His hair was sticking straight up—the hair equivalent of a scream.
“It’s getting late,” Heather said, which it wasn’t. “I have to take Lily home. Mom will get worried.” Lie on top of lie. She didn’t know why she said it. Maybe because in that moment she really wished for it—wished that she was heading back to a real home with a normal mom who cared, instead of back to the car and the parking spot on Meth Row. Wished that she was small and delicate, like a special Christmas ornament that needed to be handled correctly. Wished that she was someone else.
“Heather, please,” he said.
The world was breaking up, shattering into colors—and she knew if she didn’t get out of there, she would start to cry. “Forget about it,” she said. “Seriously. Would you? Just forget it ever happened.”