“I want to know.”
He shrugs. “Okay. I don’t know. It was during prom, so she might have been a little drunk, but we both ended up outside at one point. And she came over and sat next to me—which was a little surprising, just because, you know, we’d never really—anyway, she put her arm around me and got a very serious look on her face and said, ‘Reid, I’m going to give you some really, really important advice. Okay?’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ And she said, ‘Those sneakers are a liability.’”
“A liability?” I ask.
He nods and takes a quick bite of cookie dough. “Yeah. Like with girls.” He blushes. “With dating. Like my shoes are a turnoff.”
“Oh God.” I cover my cheeks. “Mina.”
“Yeah, it was kind of weird,” Reid says.
But oh—there’s a tiny, secret part of me that knows: Mina’s right. Sort of. It’s hard to explain, but the sneakers are awful. They are so bright white. They’re so loudly, defiantly uncool.
Not that it matters. It totally doesn’t matter.
But come on: he wore the sneakers to prom?
“But you kept them,” I say, nudging his sneaker with the toe of my flat.
“Yeah.” He smiles. “I don’t know. I just don’t care that much?”
“About impressing girls?”
He blushes again. “No. It’s just . . . I am who I am, you know? I’m not ever going to be cool.” He shrugs. “But it doesn’t really bother me.”
“I think you’re cool.”
He laughs. “Thank you.”
“I’m just saying.” I turn a mason jar over in my hands and try not to smile.
Because I have to admit: there’s something really badass about truly, honestly not caring what people think about you. A lot of people say they don’t care. Or they act like they don’t care. But I think most people care a lot. I know I do.
Like, if someone had told me an article of my clothing was a liability? I’ll be honest. I’d probably burn it. But Reid wears those sneakers every single day.
And there’s something interesting about that. Unsettling, but in a good way, like when a stranger looks you right in the eye.
I feel suddenly nervous.
“I need to stick these in the oven,” I say, standing abruptly. “The paint needs to set.”
There’s this springing in my chest. My pogo stick of a heart.
When I step back outside, Reid suggests going on a walk. If I want to.
And yes, I want to.
So we do. We fall into pace together, our strides adjusting automatically. It’s getting grayer outside, with heavy-hanging clouds like wet diapers. That’s how Nadine describes it.
“So, are you doing any other projects for the wedding?” Reid asks as we come up on Laurel Avenue. He reaches out to press the walk button.
“I’m making a fabric garland for the ceremony space.”
“A fabric garland.” His dimple flickers. “Are we sure that’s a real thing?”
“Oh, we’re sure.”
“I need a visual,” he says.
I pull out my phone. And then I text him the link to “Let Me Google That for You.”
He stops walking to check my text. I don’t think he’s actually capable of texting and walking at the same time.
“Psshhhh—very funny.” He grins. And then he hugs me. It’s kind of a one-armed, sideways, squeezy hug. It’s over before I can process it, but now my insides are one big shaken Coke bottle.
“So, I—” he starts to say, but then the sky dims so suddenly, it’s like someone flipped a switch. The first few raindrops plunk down slowly.
Then the sky splits open.
“Um,” I say.
“Should we make a run for it?”
“I think we have to.” I look up at him—his hair clings slickly to his forehead, and rain slides down his nose and his cheeks and the lenses of his glasses. “Can you see?”
He laughs. “Can you?” And then, carefully, he reaches forward, pushing my wet bangs to the side. My breath catches in my throat.
“Okay, let’s run,” I say quickly.
He grabs my hand, and there’s this pulsing tightness below my stomach. We run all the way back to my front porch, our clothes soaked through, hands still intertwined. The rain is still coming down so forcefully, the drops seem to ricochet back up off the pavement. It smells wet. And it sounds like stepping into the shower.
He laughs. “So, that was—”
Don’t be careful.
But then the door opens. Our hands spring apart.
It’s Cassie. And her eyebrows are raised to unprecedented heights. “What is this? A wet T-shirt contest?”
“Yes.” I grin. My heart’s still pounding.
“You both lose,” she says. But she looks at me quizzically.
And I can read her thoughts as clearly as if she said them out loud.
AND NOW I CAN’T STOP thinking about it. The rainstorm. All of it. My brain has turned the whole thing into a hazily lit movie reel, Valencia-filtered, to a soundtrack of Bon Iver. I keep remembering the way our hands looked, laced together. My arms, covered in goose bumps. Reid’s fingertips on my forehead, sliding my bangs aside.
This is crazy, but I almost think he might have kissed me. Or I could have kissed him, and he would have kissed me back.
So this is what it’s like not being careful.
I feel vaguely nauseated. Like a weirdly pleasant norovirus. Kind of the halfway point between vomiting and becoming a sentient heart-eye emoji.
Which means it’s probably time to officially declare it: crush number twenty-seven. Reid of the Sneakers. Reid of the Cookie Dough Obsession. Reid of the Year-Round Mini Egg Relevance. I mean, I don’t even know how to explain him.
It’s too soon. I’m too in the thick of it.
I want him to text me, even though I know he’s at work. He’s probably unpacking picture frames at this very moment. But I can’t stop checking my phone.
Nothing. Miles of nothing.
I try to lose myself in my garland, cutting slits into the ends of the fabric. The cool thing about cotton is that you don’t have to cut the entire strip. If you rip it in the right direction, it comes apart in a straight line. I need approximately fifty billion fabric strips for this garland. Which is good, because my hands need fifty billion distractions. If I’m ripping fabric, I’m not sending embarrassingly honest texts to Reid.
Reid, I don’t think your sneakers are a liability.
Reid, you should have kissed me in that rainstorm.
Maybe I should have kissed you.
The weirdest thing is this compulsion I feel to say it out loud. I want to yell it into the tunnels of the Metro and make it my Facebook status. I want to look Reid right in the face and say it. Reid, I just like you, okay?
I think he might like me, too.
Except maybe I’m misinterpreting. Or maybe he does like me—but what happens after that? We’d kiss. Okay. We’d have sex. I don’t know. Even if he likes me, I’m not sure he’d like me naked.