super-intense red face.
“She knew him before I did,” Grace said to me, watching May disappear into Kieran’s awkward bear hug. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We wanted to make sure you were okay.”
A smile burst out of her like a symphony. “Kieran surprised me this morning. We talked yesterday afternoon, and then he took the twelve-hour bus ride from Buffalo—he got here at seven this morning.”
“Wow, that’s a long bus ride.”
“And he has to get back on a bus this afternoon at four, so he can make an exam tomorrow,” Grace said proudly.
As a rule Grace usually always seemed pretty happy. But around Kieran she was glowing.
She leaned against him. “Kier, I want you to meet my friend Penelope.”
“Hey,” he said, his voice so low and quiet I had to lean forward. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Good to finally meet you.”
“Yeah, you too,” I said.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, and for a second he looked uncomfortable in his body, like it was too big for him, but Grace leaned up against him, wrapping her arm around his waist, and he relaxed.
“Can’t you stay?” May asked. “You can come to the Nevermore release this weekend,” she said. “Kieran started Nevermore,” she added for my benefit.
“It’s finals next week,” Grace said.
Kieran’s face screwed up, like he was doing mental math. “If it wasn’t such a long bus ride . . . maybe if I left right after, I’d be back in time to study Monday morning . . .”
Grace interrupted him. “Kieran, no way are you missing finals for me. I still can’t believe you came down today. I’m the luckiest girl in the world, you know that, right?”
She stood on tiptoes and kissed him, and he blushed and she beamed.
“We should leave pretty soon if we don’t want to miss next period,” May said, nudging me. “Kieran, can we all hang out when you’re back at Christmas?”
He blushed again, and she happily hugged him, launching into a one-sided conversation about her latest copyediting dilemma. I could see the way he was truly listening, not just nodding for appearance’s sake, murmuring in agreement with May.
At one point he burst out, “Semicolons?”
“I know, right?” May said.
“Copy-editor humor,” Grace said. “By the way, thanks for looking out for me.”
“We were worried.”
“I’m okay now,” she said. “It took a while, but I got here.”
“It’s pretty romantic that Kieran’s spending twenty-four out of forty-eight hours riding the bus for you,” I said.
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”
I waited a second, trying to decide if it was my place to say what I wanted to say next. “Miles feels really, really bad.”
She sighed. “I know. He keeps texting and leaving me messages. I know he didn’t mean it. It’s hard sometimes, though, to see him being all impossible about things. It reminds me of how I used to be, and how unhappy I was,” she said, her face dark. But then she let out a relieved smile, like she’d narrowly escaped something. Maybe she had.
“I’ll call him later today,” Grace added. “But I figure it can’t hurt for him to sweat it out a little longer. Patience is not his strong suit. He could use some practice.”
I laughed. “You don’t say?”
She hugged me. “Thanks for coming, Pen. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, and enjoy the rest of the afternoon with Kieran.”
“Oh, I will,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Trust me.”
• • •
After the final bell, Keats was waiting for me. He looked tired, distracted.
He gave me a kiss, lips chapped.
Eph’s lips flashed through my mind—smooth—and I pushed the thought away.
“Hey, Scout. Sorry I had to bail on the Strand yesterday.”
I thought of his Wonder Wheel story and felt immediately guilty, though I wasn’t sure what exactly for.
“That’s okay. It all worked out for the best anyway,” I said, trying to really mean it. “How was Beckett?”
Keats frowned. “An asshole. He’s bailing on our trip.”
“What, no way!”
“Well, not totally bailing, I guess, but we’re not going for the whole summer anymore. Instead we’re cutting it back to two weeks so he can go to Bali with his white-trash girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I winced at the description.
“She’s one of Emily’s best friends,” he added, as if that made it all okay.
“Oh,” I said again quietly.
We started walking down the hall, and he was clearly still stewing, his face stormy.
“Well, at least if you’re only gone for two weeks, we’ll have more time together,” I offered. “And it’ll be awesome. We can go to Coney Island and watch movies in Prospect