Unscripted - Nicole Kronzer Page 0,81
my chest.
“But he’s—here. I see it when you consider whether or not to say something to me. Whether and how to hold my hand. And before we ran here—I asked you to trust me, and you said his name. There’s something about him in the way . . . I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward.” He offered me his hand. I took it in both of mine and laid it palm up. Slowly, I traced all the lines with my finger. His breath hitched.
I wanted and didn’t want him to know. But I had told Jesse everything in my head so far today, and the hand-holding, the book jokes, even hesitating about trusting him—nothing had scared him away.
“He’s a terrible person,” I finally shouted.
Jesse nodded.
“And I’ll tell you,” I continued loudly, still tracing his palm, “but you have to promise me something.”
He nodded again.
I took a breath and met his eyes. “Please don’t stop looking at me the way you look at me.”
He smiled a little. “And how’s that?” he asked.
“Like . . . Like I’m not broken.”
He face dropped. “Did he break you?”
I considered this. “I don’t know. A bit. Not entirely. He—” I shook my head. “Promise me?”
He paused and adjusted his knees so he was facing me. “Can I first tell you why I like you?”
I smiled slowly. “Because I’m the only girl at Boy Scout camp?”
“No!” he groaned. “I was worried you’d think that. Do you think that?”
I shrugged and smiled. The wind changed direction and now it was blowing into the cave. We dropped hands and backed up as far as we could. The rain licked our boots.
“I started liking you when we ran into you hiking that first day,” he confessed. Now that we were deeper in the cave, we didn’t have to shout so loudly to be heard. “You’re funny. I’m sure you get that all the time, but it’s true.” He huffed out a laugh. “And your funny isn’t forced. I don’t see the gears working—it just—flows out of you. It’s not something you put on, it’s something that you are.”
I bit my lips and blinked back some surprising tears.
“And you’re pretty. But you said that thing when we were talking about hypothermia. Why don’t you just know this about yourself?”
I chuckled and shook my head, eyes back on the ground. “I look a lot like my mom, and I like that.” I gestured to my hair, which was currently wound up in a bun under a scarf folded into a triangle. “We both have this insane mane of curls with a mind of their own.”
He smiled and ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “You should see the vertical feats my hair is capable of when I let it grow.”
I grinned. “I like the way I look. But I don’t turn a lot of heads.”
“What is wrong with every guy you’ve ever met?”
Still smiling, I scooped up a pinecone from the cave floor and started picking it apart. “I don’t know. Boys are friends with me. They like me.”
“But they’re blind and also stupid.”
I laughed hard. “We’ve gone to school together since kindergarten. Some of us anyway. Maybe it’s difficult to think someone’s hot when you’ve seen them ugly cry at drop-off.”
He smiled. “Maybe. Their loss.”
I shivered.
He misinterpreted the cause of my shiver and reached over to rub my arm briskly a few times. “You’re also really kind. Most people think Ricky’s weird and just blow him off. But you listen to him. He likes you. He’s kind of my canary in the coal mine. If he likes someone, I know they’re good people.”
“Ricky’s easy to like.”
“He is not easy to like!” Jesse laughed. “But it makes me really happy that you do.”
We reached out for each other’s hands.
“Those are my reasons,” Jesse said, his voice sure. “Please note that ‘You’re the only girl I’ve talked to all summer’ isn’t on the list.”
“But it’s accurate,” I protested.
He shrugged. “You were bound to stand out anyway, Zelda.”
I peered at him, searching his eyes for the truth. He nodded.
Finally, I sighed, unzipped my backpack, and retrieved my detailed list of Ben’s crimes against humanity. “Maybe just read this. It explains everything.”
Gingerly, Jesse took the pages, and he began to read.
I watched his eyes dart back and forth across the page and grow darker the more he read. Sometimes he’d mutter under his breath. Twice, he swore. Finally, he folded the pages with shaking hands and returned them, his jaw clenched.