few books out, glancing at the covers, chuckling. If it weren’t Neil McNair, it would be adorable. Maybe it still kind of is.
Everything that happened to me in elementary school and middle school made it into a book somehow. The book where Riley gets her first period, the one that got some pushback from parents because apparently basic functions of the human body are taboo, is based on my own experience. I got mine on a sixth-grade field trip to a museum, and I told a teacher I thought I must have injured myself because I was bleeding—which in hindsight is strange because I knew what periods were. When she asked where I was bleeding, I pointed in between my legs, and she quickly found me a pad. I spent the rest of the day hoping no one would notice the bulge in my pants, which I was positive everyone could see.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I hope Neil doesn’t bring that one. As much as this kind of thing doesn’t usually faze me, I would really like to not discuss my period or Riley’s in Neil McNair’s bedroom.
“There’s this word in Japanese: tsundoku,” Neil says suddenly. “It’s my favorite word in any language.”
“What does it mean?”
He grins. “It means acquiring more books than you could ever realistically read. There’s no direct translation.”
“I love that,” I say. “Wait. What’s that in the back?”
“Nothing,” Neil says quickly, but I’m reaching for the familiar cover, the woman in a wedding dress. Vision in White by Nora Roberts. The romance novel I wrote about freshman year.
“Huh. Isn’t this interesting.” My grin cannot be contained.
He fists a hand in his hair. “I—uh—got it used. Later in freshman year. I thought maybe I’d been… a bit of a dick about it? I figured, maybe you were onto something, maybe I should read it if I was going to pass such harsh judgment on it. It’s the way so many people talk about romance novels, right? I was young, and I guess I thought it was cool to make fun of things I didn’t really understand? I wanted to give it a chance.”
“And what did you think?”
“I… liked it,” he admits. “It was well written, and it was funny. It was easy to get invested in the characters. I could see why you loved it.”
He is surprising me in so many ways.
“I’ll take it off my list of potential book reports. There are three more books in the series, though,” I say. “Wow. My head is just reeling. From everything.” I open it up, freezing when I land on the copyright page. “Wait. This is a first edition? Are you serious?”
He peers over at it. “Wow, guess it is. I never looked.”
I’m gaping. Neil has a first-edition Nora Roberts.
“Take it,” he says.
“What? No. I couldn’t,” I say, though I’m hugging it to my chest.
“It means more to you. You should have it.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” I unzip my backpack, and in my rush to reshuffle and make room for the book, a small foil packet plummets to the floor between us.
I have never before experienced the silence that comes over us. “Red” doesn’t even begin to describe the color of his face.
“Did… you have plans later?”
I am deceased.
“Oh my God. No. No,” I say, snatching the condom and stuffing it into my backpack. “It was a joke. Kirby was cleaning out her locker—she’d gotten it in health class—and I’ll just go die now. Leave me here with your books.”
If this had happened to any of Delilah Park’s heroines, they’d breezily laugh it off and crack jokes about it later. I can do that with Kirby and Mara, but not with Neil McNair. In the back of my mind—okay, maybe somewhere closer to the middle of my mind—I wonder if he’s had sex. Earlier today, I would have said absolutely not because of how he and his girlfriend were so cold at school. But after all that happened here in his house… anything is possible. I’m only just now realizing how little I knew about him.
“Please don’t die. I have to tease you about this later.”
“We have to go,” I urge, shouldering my saucy little minx of a backpack. “Shabbat.”
Before he opens the door, he glances back once, as though the image of me in his room is too strange for words. Honestly, everything that happened here is too strange for words.
Stranger, though, is the new kind of determination pulsing through me.