Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,65

who likes to give you hickeys?” I demanded.

“Oh my God,” Hannah groaned. “It was one hickey, you guys! Grow up!”

“We will if you will,” Abbie said with a little glower.

“What do you mean by that?” Hannah said.

“I mean, are you really finding it fun to hang out with someone who’s so . . . blond?”

“Whoa,” I said, swinging around to look at Abbie. I was always sensitive to hair-color pigeonholing. “Stereotype much?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Abbie said, jutting out her chin. “I just mean Hannah deserves someone less generic. More like . . .”

Just before I could say Josh, Hannah whispered, “Elias.”

I bit my lip and shot Abbie a look. Looking regretful, she put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Listen, Eliases don’t come along every day,” Hannah said. “But in the absence of one, I think I’m allowed to have some fun.”

She pointed accusingly at Abbie.

“You do it all the time!” she said. “You date like it’s a sport, just like swimming, but with more contact.”

“Yeah,” Abbie agreed. “But you’re not me.”

That, of course, was an understatement. Sometimes I didn’t understand how the three of us could be so very different—yet understand each other so well.

Hannah shrugged, grabbed the empty popcorn bowl off the coffee table, and headed for the kitchen, stomping on a couple marshmallows as she went. Which was another way of admitting that Abbie was right. Not that Abbie seemed to enjoy it. She flounced off the couch and headed to our room, stepping on more marshmallows.

I could just picture what Granly would say if she saw us smushing marshmallows into her Persian rug. I slid to the floor (which was easy enough because I was feeling a little weak and rubbery) and crawled around, picking up the flattened marshmallows. I scooped them into the skirt of my cute sepia-colored blueberry-picking dress.

Then I just sat still for a moment and tried to gather my thoughts. I heard a tinny ping come from the kitchen as another jar of jam sealed itself closed. That was followed by the soft thwack of one of Hannah’s textbooks hitting the kitchen table, then flipping open.

I found that the only thoughts I had to gather were ones of Josh, of the way his fingertips felt grazing my cheek, of the dimples that seemed to always go deeper whenever I was around. I pictured the black ink smudge he always had on his middle finger after he’d been working on his Allison Katzinger book launch poster. I could almost smell him, a smell that was warm and clean with a hint of vanilla (maybe from all the cookies floating around Dog Ear).

And then my phone rang, and I knew it was him, and I also knew—with a sudden, breathtaking certainty—that I was in love.

I loved Josh’s too-long arms and the little cowlick in his left eyebrow. I loved the way he slouched over his coffee cup, and I loved his cherry pie rut. I even loved the way he read books so differently from the way I read them—all businesslike and analytical, always thinking about whether they would sell or sit on the shelf.

But my feelings for Josh went deeper than the details. I just loved . . . him. The him beneath the surface, the him that maybe only I really knew.

I dashed to find my phone, which was on its way to vibrating off the kitchen counter. It felt a little sticky when I scooped it up. I fumbled as I snapped it open, and grinned when I saw Josh’s number on the screen and knew that I’d been right.

“Hi,” I said, not able to catch my breath somehow. I headed back toward the living room and waited for him to ask what had made me so out of breath.

Would I tell him? How do you tell someone something like that?

So, guess what? I just realized that I love you.

I shuddered and shook my head. Then I shrugged and smiled to myself.

The one thing I did know about being with Josh was that there would be a time and a way to tell him how I felt, and when it arrived, it would feel natural and sweet and right.

“So, was your mom excited about the jam?” I asked Josh. “Tell her not to put it out in Dog Ear. It’ll get gobbled up in a few hours. We worked too hard for that, right? Kerplink, kerplunk . . .”

My voice trailed off. The silence on Josh’s end of