Out of My League - Sarah Sutton Page 0,58

he said, pulling out his cell phone. “You know, to capture the moment.”

“And so you can post it,” I teased with an eye roll, settling in beside him so I could get in frame. “I swear, I think you’re obsessed with social media.”

I stared straight into the camera lens as he held it above us, his head coming in close. The soft scent of him washed over my senses, making me feel imbalanced.

Even though I knew this wasn’t real, I found myself pretending that it was. Just for a second. Pretending that Walsh really liked me enough to buy this float and hang out with me on the Fourth of July. Only me. I pretended that Scott didn’t exist, and the article didn’t exist, and it was just the two of us.

I tried to push the mental image away. When he lowered the phone, though, I looked over to find him already watching me, gaze steady.

Lost in the world of pretending, everything shifted. It was like I’d been looking at this situation with a pair of binoculars, and as I shifted the focus on it, everything become crystal-clear.

Electricity hummed along my skin, zapping me at each and every point our bodies touched. My arm and his arm, his ankle on my leg. And I just wanted closer, closer.

Kiss him, a voice whispered in my head, one that had been conjured by my “what if” thoughts, tempting and irresistible. You know you want to. What would it hurt?

My heart skipped a beat. What would it hurt?

A loud, earth-shaking boom exploded into the sky, and I jerked against Walsh’s side. Quickly, I put my slushy down on the grass, leaning against the float as an even louder noise roared in the sky, color lighting the ground around us. The next firework burst in a colossal mass of blue and purple, screeching as it burnt out. As it reverberated, a shudder went through my entire body.

“That one was pretty,” Walsh said softly from my side, raising goosebumps on my arms.

And we laid like that, listening to the fireworks boom overhead, watching the colors dance across our skin. If someone looked at us, they would’ve seen a couple lying with each other, enjoying the fireworks in the comfort of their backyard. No one would have guessed we were faking it all.

I added this moment to the list of things Walsh could never know. He couldn’t know about the article and he could never know that this didn’t feel fake to me. He could never know I’d thought about kissing him—if only for a moment.

But as Walsh shifted closer, his hand brushing mine, I allowed myself to entertain the idea that I wasn’t the only one who felt those things, felt that way. If only for a moment.

Chapter Sixteen

My opinion on Mom and Dad’s divorce changed drastically from how I first felt, and I was certain they would be happier with my amended response. No longer was this the best thing that could’ve happened to the family, not in my eyes. I found myself close to tears at the idea of it, weighed down by what could happen.

Things were always subject to change with them, but with the paperwork passing back and forth, I started to fear they were serious.

The other night, I’d inched downstairs to get a glass of water and saw something I wished I hadn’t. Dad sat in front of the TV, still dressed in his clothes from work even though it was way past his usual bedtime. I opened my mouth to say something, to let him know that I was there, when he put his face into his hand and made a muffled noise, low in his throat. My chest tightened at the sound, the quiet sob, and I sprinted as silently as I could back up the stairs.

Yeah. I wasn’t thrilled about the divorce at all anymore.

It’d been a week and a half since the Fourth of July, and Walsh and I had hardly seen each other. Last week, the team had two away baseball games and then something called “team bonding nights” in preparation for their final game coming up—which, according to Walsh, included bad pizza and crude jokes. Not something he was interested in but, as captain, was forced to attend.

We’d only seen each other twice, and those were the days that we walked dogs.

I tried to convince myself that it was okay. The Back to School newsletter was nearly complete. I had my body paragraphs written