Breathless - Jennifer Niven Page 0,69

but that I don’t know how to feel. That I want to understand how she felt after her first time with Yvonne because I have no idea what I’m feeling.

When I hang up, I have a new notification. Wyatt has sent me a text. Hey. You home yet? Been thinking about you. After all the time I spent creating a deep and thoughtful inner life for him, after making him greater than himself and greater than Mary Grove, Ohio, and greater than all boys everywhere, after all the possibility and almostness and maybe, I feel nothing.

I start to text him back, but I don’t have anything to say because I’m not interested in him anymore. I’m interested in someone else.

Before I leave, I set the Kleenex box on the counter in front of Terri.

“Sorry about that little scene. I miss my friend and I’m also getting my period….”

She lays her book facedown. “You’ve been hanging out with Jeremiah Crew.” And it sounds like an accusation. If she’d said, I know you used to masturbate to Wyatt Jones, I couldn’t be more surprised. “Look here, it’s none of my business, but you should be careful.”

“Careful how?”

“Experience tells me that boys who get in trouble stay in trouble. And he might be on a bit of a clean streak lately, but trust me, it won’t last.”

I always wonder about people who feel compelled to give advice, as if they know you, as if you’re someone who can’t find her way in the world on her own. I want to say, It’s none of your business who I hang out with or what kind of fun we have, but Terri means well.

I thank her for looking out for me, and then I get out of there as fast as I can.

* * *

I walk to the beach and I can see a group of tourists coming up from the ferry. Checking in like it’s a normal day. If this were a movie, there would be some sort of heart-tugging song playing as I mooned around, but there’s no soundtrack unless you count the cicadas.

Boys who get in trouble stay in trouble.

I try to push Terri’s words out of my head. On the outside, the day is passing like any other. Miah is at work. My mom is at work. Jared and Wednesday and Emory and the rest of the island staff are at work. Guests are walking or biking to the beach or Rosecroft. The Park Service trucks are toting visitors up to the north end.

I wish I could go back to the night before last. I wish it was still ahead of me, that it was happening tonight. I want the chance to try to hold on to all of it—Jeremiah and me, naked together for the first time—longer. No one told the night before last that it was a historic occasion. It just passed in regular time, like any other.

Did I like it? Yes and no. Was it like I imagined when I closed my eyes and pictured Wyatt or Miah or Mr. Rochester? Yes and no. I didn’t have multiple orgasms like in the movies. I actually didn’t even have one, although I was right there on the edge, or at least in the general neighborhood. But there were fireflies and the room spinning. Do I feel closer to him because we had sex? Did it make me like him more? I don’t know. It’s complicated. I definitely feel more tangled with him.

You should be careful.

You should be careful.

You should be careful.

I walk for miles on the beach because I can’t sit still and I have all this energy to burn. The thing is, much as I try, I can’t get him off my mind.

I wonder if he’s thinking about me now.

And now.

And now.

* * *

In the afternoon I’m walking back to Addy’s and I see him—Miah. He is standing on the broad white porch of the inn, and my heart starts doing these wild Cirque du Soleil leaps, but then I see he’s standing with a girl. He’s leaning against one of the white columns and she’s got her hand on his arm and he’s laughing, and he leans in and says something in her ear, and now she’s laughing. So much leaning and laughing.

And then she turns and I see it’s Wednesday, and in that instant I feel so stupid. Hot boy on remote island equals he can have anyone he wants. This kind of thing

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