A small cry escaped her lips. Wasn’t her disgrace complete already?
She jumped as the doorbell rang again. Slowly, she edged backward, pressing herself against the stack of boxes—maybe she could just slip away and pretend no one was home.
The face at the window moved in closer to the glass. Carson’s hands shaded his eyes as he pressed his nose to the window. “Julie,” he yelled, his Australian accent sharpening the vowels in her name. “Julie, I know you’re in there. Open the door.”
Julie shrank backward another step. She started to hyperventilate.
“You can’t hide in there forever. I just want to talk to you.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Yeah, right. He wanted to tease her. Or maybe cut her apart for not telling the truth. Whatever he was going to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
Carson was silent for a moment, watching her through the small window.
“Please talk to me.”
She looked up. His voice was so sweet, so sincere. Something in her turned. She desperately wanted someone to help her, soothe her, especially after the police and Ashley and her mother’s cruel words.
She forced herself to take one step forward, then another. She felt like she’d walked a mile when her fingers finally closed over the knob. The door swung open, and the fresh air washed over her like a spring shower. Julie took in the dewy grass, the cars still beaded with last night’s rain, the newspaper on her neighbor’s stoop. And Carson.
She slipped out onto the porch and shut the door firmly behind her. She couldn’t look at him directly but instead kept her eyes focused on the collection of empty boxes, soda cans, cat food tins, and half-used sacks of bird feed littering the porch. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Carson said gently. “I tried to text you, but your phone was off.”
Julie shrugged. She’d turned her phone off after Ashley’s email went out. She couldn’t face the aftermath.
“And you weren’t at school.”
Julie sniffed sarcastically. “It’s pretty obvious why, isn’t it?”
He scoffed. “I just want to be with you, Julie. I don’t care what people think.”
She stared at him, confused. “But what about that picture of you and Ashley?”
He cocked his head. “What picture?”
“At the Pike Place Fish Market. Ashley said, This is what Carson thinks of you now. You looked . . .” She trailed off. He’d looked, well, totally disgusted.
Carson narrowed his eyes. “The Pike Place . . .” Then he brightened. “I was in a picture with Ashley there, yeah. We were there for a class trip a few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks ago?” Julie repeated.
Carson nodded. “James West shot it, and he told us to make a crazy face. Ashley grabbed my hand, and I just went with it.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Wait, she sent it to you now? That girl is horrible.”
“I know,” Julie exploded, and she suddenly erupted into fresh tears.
Carson put his arms around Julie’s shoulders and pulled her in. She stiffened, but then relaxed into his chest, breathing in the fresh-laundry scent of his flannel shirt.
But then she leaned back. “How could you not care about the truth about me?” she asked. “Because it is true, Carson. All of it—well, at least the stuff about my mom, anyway.” She squeezed her eyes shut, reliving the awful things her mom had just said to her. “It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting.”
Carson gently pulled back so he could see her face again. “You, Julie Redding, are beautiful. And smart. And funny. There is nothing about you—not even your pinky toe—that could be considered disgusting.”
Then, amazingly, Carson tipped his head forward and brushed her lips with his. Julie didn’t even believe it was happening until a few seconds in, when her numbness subsided and she actually felt his lips on hers. They were kissing. Really kissing.
And then it hit her: This was her first kiss, ever. Not quite how she pictured it, of course—in her bathrobe, on her wretched front porch, in full view of the broken patio furniture and multitudes of Christmas decorations and even a couple of random cat scratching posts on the lawn. But it was a pure, sweet, sensual kiss all the same.
When it was over, Carson leaned back and smiled graciously at her. “Thank you,” he breathed.
“I should be thanking you,” Julie said. “Are you sure about this? About . . . me? Because, I mean, you have no idea how cruel people can be. It’s going to be brutal. It’s okay if you don’t want to be associated with me. I understand.”
He waved his hand. “I don’t care.”
She blinked hard. “You’re . . . sure?”
“Well,” he said with mock seriousness, “that depends. It’s my understanding that you yourself are not the Crazy Cat Lady of Beacon Heights. Is that correct?”