I’ll be able to handle my end of things.
Then Smith begins forming chords. He goes slowly at first, while we both get the hang of him squeezing my hand and me responding with a strum. Amazingly, when Smith picks up the speed, I find myself falling into a rhythm and even anticipating the hand squeezes.
At first the music coming from the guitar seems like random sounds. Nice random sounds, but not a song. Until something changes and it begins to sound familiar. I can’t quite place exactly what the song is until we reach the chorus and Smith begins to softly sing along.
“I wanna hold your ha-a-a-and. I wanna hold your hand.”
I stop strumming, caught between laughter and . . . something else.
Smith stops singing and looks up at me with his too-intense eyes. “Bad song choice?”
I swallow. Shake my head. Try to say something else. Try to break eye contact. Try to keep pulling air into my lungs.
And fail on all counts.
I remember Uncle Rod struggling to play this ukulele and how ridiculously small it had looked in his giant hands. Still, he’d stayed at it longer than I had expected him to, and when I asked why, he’d grinned and said, “The ladies can’t resist being serenaded with a love song, Lennie.”
I’d snorted my derision. “Please,” I’d said to him. “I would never fall for that.”
But, of course, I’m sucked in after only one line of the song.
Smith’s free arm comes around me, drawing me closer while our eyes lock. A kiss is coming. It’s a foregone conclusion at this point, but we both draw out the moment, letting the anticipation build.
And it turns out I was right.
We weren’t really that tired after all.
A HIGH POINT
“Lennie,” Smith murmurs against our nearly joined lips.
“Present,” I whisper back, fully complicit in stretching this moment out like taffy.
Our joined hands are trapped between our bodies and I swear I can feel his heart’s mad thumping against my knuckles. Meanwhile, his free hand travels up my spine, pressing me closer. Unsure what to do with my own hand, I wrap it around Smith’s bicep, which I’ve admired more than once. His fingers curl around the back of my skull, tilting my head and tangling into my hair.
And then Smith freezes. His mouth goes still and he jerks his hand from my head so quickly that he yanks a chunk of my hair with it, while making this noise in the back of his throat that sorta sounds like blech.
“Ouch!” Rubbing at my aching skull, I pull away from Smith.
“Sorry,” he says quickly, reaching up to pull me back toward him.
I press my hand against his chest, stopping him. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“The thing with my hair just now.”
“It was nothing.” He reaches toward my hair as if to reassure me, but then stops and lets his thumb trail across my lips instead. “Forget it, okay?” He uses our linked hands to coax me back toward him until we are close enough for his lips to brush against mine and continue right where we left off.
Except. I can’t.
“Touch my hair again,” I murmur.
Smith pauses and with a sigh, touches one finger to a strand curled against my shoulder. As he does so an unmistakable shudder goes through him.
Grabbing hold of his wrist, I yank his hand up and press it to my skull. He immediately tears it away and springs up into a sitting position.
“It’s the Cheetos. Okay?” He wipes his hand against his leg. “Don’t be offended, but when we were shampooing our hair outside, you weren’t really scrubbing the way you need to do when—”
“Hold up,” I interrupt. “Are you seriously giving me a lecture on how to wash my hair?”
Smith pauses, no doubt considering if this might finally be a time when he should suck it up and apologize. But no. “When you get something like that in your hair, you can’t just do your usual wash technique. At your scalp it’s still kind of gritty and . . .”
“Gross?” I fill in for him.
“No, not . . .” Smith hesitates as my eyes narrow. “Okay, yes. A little gross. When I touch it, a faint wet cheese smell sorta drifts out. . . . It’s not that bad, really.”
“Oh, clearly. You’re practically gagging.”
“It’s not you. I’m sort of a hair freak. It’s a thing—”
“I know. I’ve seen your hair-care collection in your bathroom.” I roll my eyes, trying not to feel crushed. Even though I am.
“Well.” Smith clears