Page 69 of Past Tents

I turned in his arms to face him. “Do not let them convince you of that. It’s real and I’m glad you’re dealing with it.”

On a long blink, he nodded, but the anguish on his face told me there were complicated layers he still hadn’t shared. Did he want to share them with me?

“Ally,” he whispered, tipping his forehead against mine. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I felt that sinking feeling again in my gut. Reining in my expectations, I reminded myself of everything I knew about Clay. He moved quickly through life, never got pinned down, didn’t have relationships. “It’s okay, Clay. I’m not expecting anything. You don’t have to worry.”

“That’s not the thing I’m worried about,” he ground out, shaking his head.

“What, then?”

He took a step back and his eyes washed over me like a painter studying a subject and deciding where to put the first daub of paint on a canvas. Assessing, undecided, appreciative. He shook his head.

“Clay, you can talk to me.”

He stared at the ground for so long I began to worry the earth was receding beneath our feet, so I looked down as well. I saw Clay’s feet move, but then I felt them standing toe to toe with mine. His hands cupped my face and he kissed me again, harder this time. All the unanswered questions satisfied with this kiss. It was wet, deep, so swoony. I had the sense of falling, tilting off my axis and into an abyss, a black hole where nothing exists except this kiss.

And that’s where I wanted to stay. But I also wanted to understand what was troubling Clay, which is why I was the one who pulled away this time.

“Talk to me,” I insisted, taking a step back so he couldn’t scramble my brain with another kiss. “Why do you look like you’re in pain each time you kiss me?”

He made no effort to look less agonized. “Because I’m scared that each kiss you give me might be the last. Because I’ve wanted you since I showed up at my friend’s house years ago and understood what it meant to fall for someone at first sight. Because I might want you, but I need you more.”

“I need you too.”

He shook his head. “Stick with me.” It was a plea, but I nodded like it was a basic fact. I was falling in love with him, so I saw no other choice.

Clay threaded his fingers between mine, and I leaned my head on his shoulder as we walked. I’d stick with him, even if I worried that he didn’t feel the same way about me as I did about him. Even if he’d end up leaving.

We went back into the house to say our goodbyes. Clay’s mom embraced me warmly and asked me to come again soon. It was such a strange contrast to the way she’d treated her own son so coolly all night long.

“I love your son.” The words slipped out, but I meant them. I wished I’d told him first. Wished I’d been able to formulate the simple three-word phrase when I’d stood in the yard moments earlier, but this final bit of indifference from his parents pushed me to say what I knew I felt.

Clay squeezed my hand, but I didn’t look at him, keeping my eyes focused instead on his mom.

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Clayton said, clapping his son on the back. “I hope he’s smart enough to feel the same.”

“He is,” Clay said, dipping his face next to mine and kissing me on the temple. Plucking one of the stems from his mother’s vase, Clay gazed at the bloom before presenting it to me. His arm circled around my waist. “He loves her too.”

My heart cracked open when he said the words. Not because I needed to hear them, but because I could see how much Clay needed to say them. He needed to believe in us, and for the first time, I felt like he did.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

ALLY

“This looks great,” I told Carrie Layton as I stood over her shoulder, reviewing her page design for the sports section of the yearbook. She’d overlayed sheer images of students playing their sports on top of the requisite team photos. A baseball player’s bat making contact with the ball. A soccer player shooting a goal. A gymnast mid-somersault off the beam. The action shots in the background brought the team photos to life.

She’d devoted the next page spread to more action shots, each one with speech bubbles scattered around the photo with imagined crowd cheers and commentary:Great shot!Homer!

“I was trying to give it a little action, make it feel like the sports were happening,” Carrie said, assessing the page to see if she’d accomplished that.

“That’s how it feels. It’s a good choice aesthetically, as well. People will stop and look at these pages because they’re interesting,” I said.

“That’s what I’m hoping. Normally, people kind of skim past the sports pages because they’re just team photos, but these athletes work really hard. They deserve better.”

“They do.”

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