“What?” I giggled. “What do you mean? Oh, the air conditioner. Yeah, it doesn’t work. Hold on. I’ll open the window.”
I opened it but kept the curtains closed and sat down again. It was like being trapped in a jar of fireflies. Trapped with a beautiful person who wants to kiss you.
And he did want to kiss me; of that, I was 100 percent certain. And I wanted to kiss him. That’s why I’d closed the door. That’s why I’d sat with him in the dark. I was creating the optimal make-out environment.
Creating the optimal make-out environment. I really didn’t know what I was doing. Like, not at all. I wished I could press pause on all this and let myself hyperventilate for a minute. Or call Mika so she could tell me that what I was feeling was perfectly natural and to just go with it. Not that I could call her anymore. Not after our fight this morning. If I’d tried, she probably would have told me to fuck off and leave her best friend Jamie alone.
No, not her best friend Jamie. Just Jamie. Sitting right there, his cheeks slightly pink from the sun. “I like your mom,” he said. “I like how she trusts you. You guys are so comfortable with each other.”
“Of course she trusts me.” I picked up a stuffed puppy dog and tossed it onto the bed. “That’s why she lets me go out all night. That’s why she doesn’t care if my laundry smells like cigarettes and booze.”
He took his sunglasses off his head and ruffled the top of his hair. “She trusts you because you’re not the one smoking the cigarettes or drinking the booze.”
“She trusts me because I’m smart. Smart is all the currency in my family.”
“Not in mine,” he said bluntly. “We Fosters are big on appearances.”
“Just the Fosters? What about the Collinses?”
“My dad’s family has been absorbed into the orbit of the Famous Wyatt Foster. They’re all big on the manners thing. Use ma’am and sir when talking to adults. No fighting in front of strangers or, worse, in front of the Famous Wyatt Foster. Go to the gym. Smile a lot.” He smiled as an example.
“You definitely win in the manners category,” I said. “You were horrifying down there.”
He drew back, affronted. “Horrifying? How was I horrifying?”
“I’m just glad you didn’t call my mom ma’am,” I said. “If you’d called my mom ma’am, this would all be over.”
He scrunched up his eyes in adorable confusion. His sunglasses were sitting between us, so I put them on the nightstand. When I lowered my arm, he reached over and brushed his fingers against the back of my hand. Goose bumps traveled up my arm. And then I actually couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed his hand and rubbed my thumb over his knuckles, again and again and again.
He closed his eyes.
“How many girls have you kissed?” I whispered.
“What?” He opened his eyes.
“How many girls have you kissed?” I asked again.
“You want to know that?”
“Of course I want to know that. Jesus. Who wouldn’t?”
He chewed his bottom lip. “I feel like the number is misleading.”
“Oh God,” I groaned. “What does that even mean?”
“It means I’ve kissed people for stupid reasons.” He sat closer to me. “I went to boarding school. If you didn’t have a car, you might not leave campus for months. There was a lot of let’s-pass-the-time kissing going on.”
“Let it be known that you are currently confirming all my worst fears,” I said.
“Damn.” He dipped his head forward. “I was trying to make it better.”
“How many girlfriends have you had?”
He seemed to think about this for a while. I imagined him tallying up the numbers. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…
“Three,” he said.
“Three?”
He nodded. “My last girlfriend was the one I was talking about, the one Hannah hated. Her name was Sam. We dated for a year and a half.”
“That’s exactly one-half of your teenage life.”
He pulled my hand into his lap with both of his, then turned it over and started tracing figure eights on my palm. Every part of me shivered.
“We broke up last January,” he said. “But we were really done six months before that. When she went to the University of Florida. Long distance. We were doomed.”
Long distance.
“The girlfriend before that,” he said, “was one of my first friends at that school. We dated because everyone else in our tiny friend group was dating. She dumped me after two weeks.”
“And the one before that?”
His fingers stopped moving. “Mika.”
“Mika?”
“Not seriously or anything.” He pulled me a little bit closer so he was holding me lightly by the wrist and forearm. “When I started at the T-Cad, I was in kindergarten and Mika was in first grade. She saw that other kids wouldn’t play with me, so she told them all that she was my girlfriend. We used to walk around the playground holding hands.”
I thought about me and Jamie—walking around Tokyo, holding hands. I shimmied back a little. “Was that it?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “We did kiss. Once. When I was in sixth grade.”
“What?” I jerked my arm away. “The year before I moved here?”
A crease flickered briefly between his eyebrows. “It was on the train one night. Afterward, Mika made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone, and she said it would never happen again. I was disappointed, but I got over it.”
I crossed my arms. “But she’s still your best friend. You still talk to her all the time.”
“Yeah, but honestly? Mika and I have never been great with the serious stuff. I mean, we joke around, and we grew up together, so I guess she knows a lot about me. But hey, listen.” He reached out and held me carefully by the elbows. “She’s not my best friend, okay?” We were leaning into each other, like there were magnets in our shoulders. “Since we’re on the topic of past romantic lives,” he whispered, “I have to ask you a question.”
“What is it?” I whispered back.