Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,49

school on his first day back, her face so tight and scared that it was hard not to feel the same way when you looked at her, and when I thought of my parents watching me the same way, I suddenly wanted to go back inside and cry on the floor with Caro.

Instead, I grabbed the strings and tightened the hoodie around my face so Oliver couldn’t see my eyes. It smelled like the twins’ shampoo again, but also like Oliver, soap and salt air and just him.

“You’re a weirdo,” he laughed, trying to pull the strings out of my hand so he could see my entire face. “You look like a hobbit.”

“It’s my disguise,” I told him, blinking fast to keep the tears at bay.

“Well, considering that I just gave it to you, it’s a pretty terrible disguise.” Oliver tugged at the strings again and this time I let him unravel them so the hoodie opened back up. The moment had passed and I was okay again.

“Better not go into the FBI,” he said. “You’d suck at that job. No offense.”

“Like that was ever a plan,” I scoffed, then fixed the sleeves again. “Your mom has good taste.”

Oliver gave a half nod, half shrug, then looked back to the party. “So those are your friends,” he said, gesturing back toward the noise and light.

“Some of them. But Caro and Drew more than anyone, though. And, well, you,” I added hastily. “You’re my friend, obviously.”

“Yeah?” Oliver turned to look at me and in the faint light from the party, filtered through the gazebo’s lattice, his eyes seemed grayer, softer.

“Of course we’re friends, Ollie.” My voice was scratchier than I meant it to sound and I coughed a little. “I’ve had this . . . thing.”

“Thing?” Oliver repeated. “What thing?”

Stop talking, Emmy. Stop. Talking.

“It’s this note. I’ve had it since you . . . since your dad, that day.”

Oliver frowned a little and scooted even closer to me. “What note?”

“Caro gave you a note that day. She passed it to you in class.”

“What did it say?”

I smiled, suddenly embarrassed. Why did I keep it for ten years? We were just dumb little kids, it didn’t matter. Why was I even bringing it up?

“It said, ‘Do you like Emmy, Yes No?’” Now I couldn’t even bring myself to look at Oliver, I was so mortified. I was never drinking again, not if it made me start blabbering about ten-year-old memories.

Oliver, however, had a curious smile on his face, almost like he was fond of this note he didn’t even remember. “Well, what did I say?” he asked.

“You circled yes,” I whispered. “I mean, it’s stupid, it’s so stupid. We were seven years old, it doesn’t—”

“It matters,” Oliver murmured. “You kept it?”

I nodded again.

“I’m glad I circled yes, then,” he said.

I smiled back at him, and I realized that our faces were closer than they had been before, and the party sounded more muted, almost like we were drifting away from it. The stars tilted, the moon spun, and then my mouth was on his and we were kissing.

He tasted like beer, like warm apple cider. I realized that my hand was moving on its own, up to his sleeve and then cupping his shoulder. I hung on to Oliver as we kissed again because this time, he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Sorry,” was the first thing he said when we parted. “I’m sorry, Emmy, I didn’t—”

“Why the hell are you apologizing?” I whispered. My heart was a pinball trapped in my rib cage, my lungs a broken accordion.

“Because we’re friends. I don’t know. I don’t want to screw this up.” He was leaning in again, though, his pulse strumming like a hummingbird’s heart under my fingertips, and I leaned up to kiss him again before he could say anything else.

After a minute, I climbed into his lap. I had kissed a couple of boys before, but those kisses had been perfunctory and self-conscious. A quick peck for Josh back in seventh grade because everyone else was making out during the slow dance and I didn’t want us to be left out. A weird, clumsy make-out session on the bus on the way home from a field trip with Brian G. (We had seven Brians in our class that year. It got confusing. Not that I made out with all of them. Whatever, you know what I mean.)

But kissing Oliver? That was different.

Oliver had always been different.

His hands held my waist like I was going