Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,97

the thought of not seeing him at all? It’s hard to even imagine now.

“You’re thinking horrible things, aren’t you?” His voice is soft, concerned. He pushes up on an elbow, and as if he could read my thoughts, presses his lips against the soft skin along my hairline.

While his lips tingle against my skin, I try to think about the best worst-case scenario. We don’t have the houses at Five Pines anymore. This year’s house is temporary. And sure, maybe our parents will rent something together in the future, but if everything goes south with me and Asher, who’s to say they can’t get separate houses again? Surely my parents wouldn’t force me to share a house with an ex if they could avoid it. And if we weren’t forced together, maybe we would eventually return to something like normal. Something about having that backup plan in my mind loosens the tightest knots of dread inside of me.

A warm finger taps my temple as Asher says, “What’s going on up there?”

I can’t tell him the truth: I’m running through all of the possible outcomes of our future demise. But good news! There’s at least one worst-case scenario that doesn’t make my skin crawl!

Instead, I say, “I think our parents would flip if they knew we were together.”

Together. The word hangs in the air, and neither of us wants to touch it. I said it to lighten the mood, but it’s done the absolute opposite. I can feel the tension buzzing between us. The fingers that were idly tracing a circle on my back have stopped.

“Are we—” He sounds genuinely nervous for the first time since we left the pool yesterday. “Together?”

“I…” I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t fishing when I said it. I didn’t think it through, didn’t weigh the words ahead of time and consider them for three days, like I usually would. This is the verbal version of spontaneously hiding that frozen fish in his room. Being in his bed is doing something to me. Or maybe he’s finally gotten me to lighten up. And look what it’s doing to you.

“I think we could be,” Asher says. “Should be,” he corrects himself.

“Yeah?” There’s a little flutter in my stomach, and I’m not sure if it’s telling me to go for it, or warning me that this is the worst idea ever. Right now, everything feels equal parts scary.

“Are you going to make me say it … officially, or something?” He says it like he’s being tormented, but there’s a certain warmth to his eyes that tells me he would. That the idea of it doesn’t scare him one bit. He’s so much braver than I am. I add it to the long list of things that Asher Marin surpasses me at.

“Like a prom-posal?” I smile thinking about how funny it would be to see Asher plan some sort of elaborate set-up to ask me to be his girlfriend. Like the opposite of all of the pranks we’ve played over the years. “Did you ever do one of those?”

“Absolutely not.”

I squish up my nose in mock disgust. “Prom. Yuck.” But I am sort of surprised. Asher totally strikes me as the kind of guy who would do something elaborate and sweet for a girl. I think back to those stars on my ceiling.

Asher smiles. “I will, though, if you really want me to.”

I bite my lip to hold back the smile that would give away how incredibly giddy I am about the turn this trip has taken. “I don’t think we need to bring any more attention to ourselves while we’re still living in the same house.”

“Deal,” he says, but he looks unsure about it.

We lie in bed for another hour, until Asher leaves for the bathroom, and I contemplate how I went from coming here under duress to leaving with a boyfriend. Asher insists I shower first, and down the hallway, as I groggily stand in front of the sink, Will you be my girlfriend? is scrawled across the mirror in what has become our color. Red. The color of love notes, cherry Kool-Aid, and bleeding, broken hearts. The tube still sits on the counter—a much more expensive brand than our usual tube, obviously stolen from his mom. Sorry, Sylvie.

Before I get in the shower I pull the cap off of the tube, and write back one word, three letters. And just for now, I’m going to let myself not think about how badly this all