“Shit. Okay. I have to ask if you really liked David? Before, when we used to… hang out a lot?”
I paused. “Yes. I mean, I did. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I led you on.”
He ducked closer still; our foreheads were nearly touching. “Listen to me, Sophia. You didn’t lead me on. We were friends. You treated me like a friend. It was my problem that I wanted it to be different.”
“I really liked you, Jamie,” I said. “But, I don’t know, I liked David, too. He was so… self-assured, and funny, and charming—”
“Thanks,” Jamie said. “I got it.”
“No.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean, he was imposing. I thought, if someone like him paid attention to me, I must be special. Turns out he was just addicted to the confidence boost.”
“He liked you,” Jamie insisted. “But you’re too much awesome for his brain to handle.”
“Uh.” I snorted. “Am not.”
“You are,” he said. “Sophia. I like you. The last three years haven’t felt as real to me as the last three days. I like talking to you. I like listening to you talk. I don’t want it to end.”
I shifted forward. Our knees connected.
“That’s because I’m good at talking,” I said. “You may think my only strong suit is science, but I have a bunch of other skills. I can talk, I can listen and look serious at the same time, I can nod knowingly.”
Jamie lifted my left hand and pressed it between both of his. He brought my exposed wrist to his lips and kissed it, once, where my skin was nearly sheer and charged with nerves.
I really hoped it wasn’t sweaty or smelly or something. I really hoped he didn’t hate it. I really hoped he didn’t think it was embarrassing when I gasped.
I sat up on my knees and ran both of my hands around Jamie’s neck, tilted his face up to mine. His lips parted easily, and his eyes closed. When he opened them again, I said, “I don’t want it to end, either.”
His mouth found mine, his arms wrapped around my back. Kissing. I was kissing someone! And it—it made my mouth feel instantly numb. It was like plunging into ice-cold water. My body was all, I have no map for this! Help!
I took a quick, shallow breath and our lips disconnected. I sat back on my feet, trying to fill my lungs with oxygen. Jamie leaned forward, one hand sweeping away the hair that had gotten stuck to my lips. “Is everything okay?”
All those shadows and the curves of his face. All that concern in his magic green eyes. Okay. I am okay. My hands held on to his face. And then…
And then we were kissing again.
I opened my mouth wider and his tongue pushed gently against mine and I tasted tea leaves and mint. His hands slipped under my knees and he was pulling me into his lap. My stomach touched his. My mouth opened a little more and his teeth clicked against mine, which Mika had told me was bad, but it didn’t feel so bad. It didn’t feel like a disaster.
He shifted back so he was resting against the bookshelf. I sat back and ran my hands down his shoulders and up his arms. His eyes were closed, and his eyelashes beat furiously against his cheeks, sending out all kinds of Morse code. It made me want to kiss him more.
So I did.
I wanted to coil all the way around him. I wanted to take all his air and give it back to him and take it again. His arms adjusted around my waist, and he twisted his mouth away. He touched his nose to my cheek, then my jaw. “You’re pretty good at this, too,” he whispered.
I kissed his ear and rested my nose there, in the dappled sunlight of his hair. I whispered, “MIT will be glad to hear it.”
He laughed with his mouth against my throat, and the nerves in my body disconnected, one by one by one.
CHAPTER 24
THURSDAY
JAMIE WAS RIGHT. He was good at packing.
“This is the advantage of being repeatedly shipped between nations,” he said. “I am a Jedi master of packing.”
“If that was true,” I said, “I’d be one, too. But I totally suck.”
“You”—he pointed at me with a pack of Pingu stationery—“are just denying your potential.”
It took three hours to pack my room. It should have been weird between us after the marathon make-out session, but it wasn’t. I was too floaty to be anxious. Too effervescent, like I’d been filled to the top with something carbonated.
Kissing Jamie had made time stop. Or, at the very least, slow down. Every second was too alive to worry about the next. I couldn’t even think about getting on a plane in two days, because there were hundreds upon thousands of seconds between this moment and that one. Seconds I could potentially spend with Jamie. Kissing.
We’d only been making out for ten minutes or so when we heard the back door open again. My house was small enough that I could feel if someone else was inside it. The floor in my bedroom actually shook when Mom and Alison walked into the kitchen.
I jumped up, flipped on the light, and threw open the door. By the time I turned around, Jamie had started packing. We made boxes, we labeled boxes, we filled boxes. Jamie was a Grade A folder of clothes. And he wrapped all my science books in old T-shirts and carried them with both hands before putting them gingerly into a box. Which made me want to nudge my way between him and the box, to nudge my nose against his neck and kiss a line along the back of his ear. (My imagination was being way more active than I had realized it could be.)
Soon my room was nothing but boxes. They sat around my bed and under my desk and in front of the closet. We packed a suitcase for me to take on the plane, since the rest of my stuff was being shipped to the States.
I stood next to my bed and tried to wrap my head around all the change. The walls were stripped of posters and pictures, the rainbow rug was gone, and the twinkle lights were coiled in a box instead of hanging from the ceiling. I went downstairs to get a glass of water and put our tea mugs away while Jamie finished taping the very last box. When I came back, it was done.