the lights just how brown the stain must look. “A hazelnut latte, to be exact. Not, um. Something else. It’s been a very weird day.”
At this, the audience laughs.
“I’m going to read from the opening of a novel I’ve been working on. It’s short, and all you really need to know about it is that it’s… a romance novel.” A couple people whoop at this, and one person whistles. Maybe it’s Delilah. Maybe it’s Neil.
“Here it goes,” I say, and then it becomes easy.
* * *
Neil’s waiting for me outside, leaning against the brick building across the alley. When I finished, he held up his watch and stuck a thumb in the direction of the door. My heart is still pounding, my head buzzing. Woof, the adrenaline is wild.
“I fucking did it,” I say as I race over to him.
He’s beaming. “Yes you fucking did,” he says, matching my enthusiasm. “You were amazing.”
When I reach him, I fling my arms around his neck in a hug that clearly surprises him, given how his body jerks back at first. But then he relaxes, as though his body needed a moment to process what was happening, and his arms come around me, his hands resting against the small of my back. I’m grateful for the hoodie—I’m sweating like mad underneath it.
My face fits in the space below his ear, where his jaw meets his neck. Have we hugged before? This might actually be our first one. I move my hands to his shoulders, lingering on the soft fabric of his T-shirt. I wonder if he’s cold. If I should return his hoodie, the one I’m still wearing. He smells like a combination of rain and boy sweat—not entirely a bad thing—and underneath, something clean and comforting. I fight the urge to inhale deeply, to avoid sounding as though I am literally breathing him in.
“They didn’t hate it.”
His pulse shudders against my skin. “Because it was good.”
Slowly, we pull back from the hug, and I can’t believe I just did that, and I can’t believe Neil McNair was here to see it and that he’s happy for me. If we’d been friends instead of competitors, I wonder how many more hugs we’d have had.
It was a rush unlike anything I’ve experienced, getting to read my words in front of people. It might have been even better than hearing Delilah read. She listened to me, a complete nobody hoping to one day become a somebody.
“And Delilah’s following me on Twitter now,” I say, in part to distract myself from how badly I want to hug him again. “She flagged me down before I left, and she just took out her phone and asked for my handle, and oh my God, what am I supposed to tweet? She’s going to see everything. Maybe I should delete my account.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Is this what I was like when I met your parents?”
“No. You were worse.” I grab his arm to look at his watch. “What time is it?”
I have a phone I am perfectly capable of removing from my pocket, but there’s something adorable about the anachronistic way Neil checks his watch.
“Just past eleven,” he says. “We got the next safe zone message while you were up there.”
We read it together.
SENIOR WOLF PACK, LISTEN UP
HOW’RE YOU FEELING? HAD ENOUGH?
IT’S TIME FOR US TO GOLF WITH YOU
SEE YOU AT SAFE ZONE NUMBER TWO
The message links to a mini-golf course that isn’t too far away and asks us to meet there at 11:30.
“I need to sit down first,” I say, still shaky with adrenaline.
Since we have some extra time, we make our way over to a bench in the adjacent park. The cold seems to hit me all at once.
“Do you want your hoodie back?” I ask.
“You keep it.” He shifts until his hip is a couple inches from mine. I could fit two paperbacks in the space between his jeans and my dress. “It’s only fair, given that coffee stain.”
I’m not sure even a dry cleaner could save my dress after all the suffering it’s been through today, but I don’t know if I could throw it out. It’ll be a trophy from this night, a reminder of all the things I did but thought I couldn’t.
“Thank you so much,” I tell him. “For—for helping me realize I could do it.”
Ever so slightly, I scoot closer to him on the bench. I tell myself it’s because of the cold.