“It’s okay, Leah,” I murmur. “It was just a dream. You’re okay. Everyone’s okay.”
But she doesn’t say anything. I hear the door lock, and I sit up, suddenly wide awake. Vivi wafts in with the scent of campfire smoke and beer. She crawls up the bed, her body warm and suddenly next to mine. “Are you mad at me?”
“How did you get in here?” My room is on the top floor—just low-beam attic space with my bed and desk. She couldn’t have gotten up using the roof.
She sighs as if my common sense is exhausting to her. “Silas let me in. He fell asleep on the couch. Are you? Mad?”
“I don’t know.” I really don’t. And, right now, all I can think is that my mom or younger siblings will catch us in here. “I’m . . . confused.”
“Okay. About what.”
“I thought we had a good thing here. And then you strip down in front of every guy I go to school with? And you’re mad that I don’t like it? But then you freak out when I talk to another girl?”
Sound needier, Jonah, seriously. But I won’t take it back. It’s true.
“Jonah.” Her whisper shivers in the air between us. “I’m trying to live to the fullest; I’m trying to feel everything. I prioritize experiences over anything or anyone, and maybe that isn’t easy for you to accept, and I’m sorry, but that’s who I am.”
A non-apology. I didn’t expect one anyway—not her style.
Vivi shifts across my twin bed, straddling herself over me. She looks right into my face. “Jonah, I think you’re a wonderful person with a soul that reaches so far beyond your years. And maybe the humane thing to do would be to leave you alone because I’m not ever going to be some kind of dutiful, well-behaved girlfriend. But I don’t want to leave you alone.”
It is very, very hard to think with her on top of me. “Dutiful? I don’t even want whatever you just said.”
“Okay. Then how about you just let me be me, and I’ll let you be you. We’ll feel everything we feel and not apologize for it. If we get mad at each other, we’ll have it out. And then we’ll make up.”
That’s just it: Vivi does allow me to be myself. She never shoves me out of my sad moods. She never tries to talk me out of my frustrations. Vivi is all action—let’s go to the beach, let’s write a play, let’s build an ice-cream sundae bar at the house and then play Candy Land while watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with the littles.
She leans close to me, offering her lips for the taking. “Jonah. Make up with me.”
I pull her in and kiss her. With teeth against her lips. Because I’m still mad. And because we fit together. And even when we don’t, clashing only makes more sparks.
In the movies, the music always starts up right about now, slowly louder with a solid beat. When a girl sneaks into your bedroom, it’s surprisingly quiet. But everything sounds loud for fear of being caught—mouths against skin, pieces of clothing dropping to the floor. Heavy breathing and the drone of the thought, This is happening, this is happening. And eventually the sound of your own voice asking, Are you sure? What you get in return is, apparently, a muffled giggle and the words, Yes. God, you’re so cute. It kills me. You try not to think that it seems so casual for her. You try to convince yourself you feel the same. But you don’t. Your feelings fill the room like an angry fire. Your feelings for her could blow the glass out of the windows.
When I wake up in the morning, she’s gone. The sheets are pulled back from her side, and there’s a black Sharpie on the floor that I guess fell off my desk when I was fumbling around for a condom. It takes me until I’m getting dressed to notice, on the wood of my headboard where it meets the mattress, tiny letters: Vivi was here.
As if I’d forget.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vivi
For two weeks after the bonfire, everything I paint is midnight and gold and maroon and ballet-slipper pink. Passionate and deep and metallic. I rip up an old dress—black with thin gold stripes—and sew it into a crop top and high-waisted shorts that look perfect on me. My mom decides I can keep the Vespa if I always wear my helmet and repay my account with money I make from my job. At the pottery shop, I glaze broken pieces from the kiln and make them into a mosaic for Whitney. I teach the littles how to swing dance using online videos and my own pizzazz. We have a picnic in the backyard, we decorate cookies in the shape of suns and palm trees and beach balls, we build a sand fortress at the beach.