Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,58
him. “Because I, um, I texted you. Today.”
“Hey, Mom?” he called.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Did I get Emmy’s text today?” There was an edge to his voice, like this wasn’t a question he should be asking.
Maureen sighed heavily from the front seat. “Honey, you’ll get your phone back on Monday before school. We talked about this. He missed his curfew last night, Emmy.”
“Let him explain it, Mo,” Rick murmured from the front seat.
“No phone until Monday,” Oliver told me, his voice cheerful but his eyes anything but happy. “So no, I did not get your text. And I couldn’t text you, either.”
That last sentence went over everyone’s heads but mine, and I smiled despite myself. “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
“Right?” Oliver asked. We were speaking our own language at this point, grinning like idiots at each other. “What did your text say?”
“Oh, I just wanted to know if you had a good time last night, that’s all.”
“I had a great time,” he replied. We sounded like we were performing a skit about the two most blandly cheerful high school students in America. “Really great.”
“Emmy, can you please tell Drew that next time Oliver needs to be home by eleven?” Maureen looked at us again through the rearview mirror, her “mom face” firmly in place. “I don’t know what his parents think is appropriate for a Friday night, but Oliver’s curfew is eleven o’clock.”
Oliver knocked his knee into mine this time. I didn’t need a body-language expert to explain what he meant. “Yeah, of course,” I said. “Drew’s not great with time.”
“You just don’t know what could happen,” Maureen said, and the double meaning in her words made everyone, even Molly and Nora, go quiet for the rest of the ride.
Oliver never let go of my hand.
Once we pulled up into their driveway, I had a plan. “Hey,” I said as the twins started to frantically unbuckle themselves like their car seats were on fire. “Do you have that book that I loaned you for English?”
Oliver didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, yeah, totally,” he said. “Come on up, I’ll get it for you.”
“You’re so sweet to loan him your things from last year,” Maureen said. “Molly, no, do not eat that Cheerio from the floor. I said no.”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s not a problem.”
As soon as we were out of the car, and while Rick and Maureen fumbled with the girls and empty juice boxes and bags, Oliver and I disappeared inside and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “I am so sorry!” he whispered, even though we were the only ones in the house. “She went ballistic when I came home last night.”
“What’d you say?”
“Just that Drew and I met up at the movies.” We hit the landing and booked it into his room. “And it let out later than I thought it would. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention you at all.”
“God, thank you. My mom would—”
“I know, I know. Basement, Dickens, gruel.”
“Exactly.” I closed the door behind us, then turned around and smiled at Oliver. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, then gathered me up and kissed me hard.
It took all the coordination in my body to hang on to his sweatshirt sleeve, but I managed to stay upright. He tasted even better than he had the night before, this time without the fog of alcohol between us, and I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer, dizzy with the sort of longing that was now hitting me like a freight train.
“I was kind of freaking out,” I admitted when he pulled away for a second. “I thought . . .”
“You thought I was a douche canoe,” he finished.
“Yeah, kind of,” I giggled. “But not anymore. Quick, hurry, before they find us.”
Oliver pulled me closer, tighter than ever this time, and kissed me again. The only way I could describe what kissing him felt like was, like the last day of school, knowing that months of freedom and sunshine lay before you, the feeling that you could do anything you wanted and time stretched out in endless possibilities. That’s how I felt in his arms, like the future was limitless just because he was there. He was finally there.
We heard the door from the garage slam open, followed by, “Girls, do not slam the door!” We pulled apart once again. “Quick, which book do you want?”
“I don’t care, anything,” I said, and he shoved a copy of Mrs. Dalloway at me. “Wait, wait!” I whispered.