The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, I recited to myself in an imagined British accent. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
I’d never believed it before, although I’d heard half a dozen different actors playing Cecily say it with varying degrees of ingenue swooning. My homesickness was a rock in my shoe, about the same size as the pang of hurt when I thought about how long it’d be until my mom’s next visit to California, or the thought of Ethan finishing growing up without me in the house.
But here I was, punchy with want for someone I hardly knew. And compared to the pebbles of the rest of my worries, it was like a boulder that kept knocking me sideways.
It was entirely stupid, but even if I’d had the password to stop it, I probably wouldn’t have typed it in. Because, as Brandon’s meringue-light voice entered the room through a crack in the door, I felt like all of the electricity in my body could have powered the entire coast.
“Ever?”
“I’m here,” I whispered back.
The door opened fully and he slipped inside, careful to muffle the sound of the latch. He was in the white T-shirt and jeans combination he had been wearing on the first day of camp. He took three long strides and stopped short an arm’s length away from me.
“Is everything okay?” he asked. He shook his head so that his hair brushed over the bridge of his nose. “Stupid question. Is everything okay other than, um, everything? Nope. Sorry. Let me try that again…”
“I’m okay.” I took a hesitant step forward, suddenly afraid that he might run away like a startled deer if I moved too quick. “Is anything missing from your room? Is your typewriter safe?”
“It’s safe. Who else would want it?” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. The friction made a quiet shushing sound. “But Jams’s binder is gone. And most of my socks. I had a pair for every day of camp.” He shrugged, his arms flopping by his sides. “I didn’t want to pay to do laundry fifteen minutes away from home. What about you guys? Anything missing?”
“Nothing vital. Other than Leigh’s binder.”
Silence filled the room like a flood, pushing against the squash-orange walls and lodging deep inside of my throat.
“I can’t stay long,” he said, shifting his weight from one Chuck to the other. “Cornell’s going to do an inspection soon.”
“Right,” I said, shoving the word out of my suddenly dry mouth. “Same here. With Meg.”
I’d felt like there was too much to say before, and now I was legitimately struggling to find a single word that wasn’t the most awkward. It didn’t help that I was pretty sure that each of Brandon’s fidgets and flinches was making my heart crank the emergency brake.
Maybe he didn’t want to be sneaking around with me. Maybe he was trying to flinch his way to the door and down the stairs and away from me forever. Or until our first class, which was in something like three minutes.
“Brandon?”
His throat constricted as he gave an audible swallow. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t imagine last night, did I? I was kind of picturing a different reaction to having a time crunch in this empty room.”
He moved in a blur. High-tops scuffed my toes. An arm around my waist. A hand cupping my jaw. A kiss seared against my lips, which I caught up to only in time for it to be over.
“Sorry,” he breathed. “I didn’t want to assume—”
I buried my fingers in his hair and rubbed my nose against his cheek. “I didn’t want to attack your face when you walked in. I mean, I did want to, but I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“I know we ate breakfast next to each other—”
“You put jam on waffles. Who does that?”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d changed your mind—”
“Nope. I am so all about this.”
I caught his lower lip and used it to tug him back until we collided with the wall, a crush of mouths and heartbeats. Kisses rained down against my neck, accompanied by a brush of eyelashes on skin that made me shiver.
“I can get us off campus for Friday night. There’s no Cheeseman trial then, so we won’t miss anything here,” he said, each word a puff of hot air against the thin skin under my ear. “We’ll need Jams and Leigh to help cover for us.”
“What do we tell them?”
His head popped up so that we were nose to nose. If I’d wanted to, I could have counted his eyelashes. “That we’re going on a date?”
“Oh. That’s like really official, isn’t it?”
He gave me that wide-open smile that I adored. “I was told that it’s best not to leave these things ambiguous.”
I ran my thumb across the apple of his cheek. “You were told?”
His laugh hiccupped our chests together. “You thought that I was naturally cool enough to know how to ask you out? I’m a nerd, Ever. A certified and well-documented nerd. I had a rolling backpack until last year.” He reached up, gently twining my hair around his fingers. “So yeah, I asked for advice as to how not to immediately screw this up. I can’t even kiss you without permission.”
“You shouldn’t kiss anyone without permission. That’s called assault.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did know. What if it all disappeared? What if he changed his mind? What if the wanting went one-sided? I was pretty sure my ribs would cave in on my organs and I’d shrivel up like a sex-starved raisin.
“I want you to kiss me, Brandon. But we have to go back downstairs.”
“Ten more seconds,” he said.
His hands braced against my shoulder blades. I locked my arms around his neck and closed my eyes. It was just a hug, underscored by an almost unconscious sway.
But it was the first time all day I had no urge to run.
26
I watched the envelope pass from Meg to Brandon. It was about the size of his palm, cheerfully coral, with a nondescript stamp in the top corner. I only had a chance to read “B. Calistero c/o Camp Onward” before it disappeared into the pocket of his jeans. He caught my eye and grinned as Meg started shooing us to clear our lunches so she could walk us to our next class.