Page 46 of The Art of Us

Kal stopped and tugged at her hand so that the distance between them moved from several inches to nonexistent. “I have a confession to make,” he said, his breath warm on her lips in the cold night air. He maintained eye contact. His thumb traced the curve of her cheekbone.

“Yeah?” Could she breathe? No. Ireland was drowning in him. In his warmth. In his gift of the stars.

“I was really mad at you for ignoring me all those months you sat by me.”

Ireland winced. “Sorry. I wasn’t sure if I was—”

“Sticking around. I know. I’m glad you decided to stick around because I really, really like you.”

“I really, really like you too,” she said, her lips brushing lightly against his as she made her own confession. He then pressed his lips to hers, his kiss tender, careful, as if she were some fragile bit of crystal that could shatter at the slightest touch.

The thing was ... she didn’t feel fragile. She felt strong and capable. She wrapped her arms around him, her fingers in his dark wavy hair, and kissed him with greater insistence.

In this place where the stars tracked the time, Ireland lost time completely. Had they been there a whole minute? A half hour? A day? It felt like eternity in an eyeblink.

When they broke apart, his forehead leaned on hers as he gave a low laugh. “Wow,” he breathed. “Just wow.”

She could not agree more.

He drove her back home, and it wasn’t until he was pullingup in front that Ireland realized she actually considered it her home. They walked to the door hand in hand and he kissed her all over again, and the universe felt good and right and perfect.

Ireland entered the house and was slammed with a charge of tense energy from the people inside, shattering her euphoria. Mara was fighting with her parents. Again.

Maybe the universe wasn’t good or right or perfect after all.

Chapter Sixteen

Kal

Kal drove home with a grin perma-plastered to his stupid face. That girl though ... she completely owned him.

The next day at school and several days after, he spent every moment he could with Ireland: in between classes, during lunch, and for a brief moment before and after school. Ireland couldn’t do anything with him after school because she’d decided to take on a waitressing job at the Washington family’s most local café in addition to the time she spent on Saturday mornings helping to make the bread.

She said she wanted spending money and a savings account, which he could understand, but it seemed like an emotional nail puncturing a tire on the way out of town for a road trip to have her get a job just as they were getting to know each other—getting tolikeeach other.

Ireland had promised she would meet him at Geppetto’s on Friday and that she could go out with him Saturday night, but by Wednesday, he wasn’t sure he could wait that long to spend actual time with her. The few minutes here and there weren’t enough.

“Still keeping up with your pen pal, I see,” he said Wednesday afternoon. Ireland was supposed to be cleaning up for the day, but she was instead creating another piece of the wildflower field under the tree. Kal had started doing the cleanup so she could work. He had to admit, from an artistic point of view, thework that the lipstick writer and Ireland created together was interesting.

The carefully written pink-lipstick message that Ireland now contemplated was tucked into the petals of a flower that had been made to look like reflective shattered glass shards. “Someone broke my mirror,” the message read.

Kal toted the art supplies to the back room. He was starting to worry about the conversation between Ireland and the mystery writer. This cry for help made it seem like the person needed an intervention, more than what Ireland could do with a paintbrush. He wondered why the principal wasn’t doing anything about it. But maybe the principal wasn’t paying close enough attention to the mural to know that one of her students was literally screaming on the wall. There was also the fact that there wasn’t much the principal or any other adult could do. The artwork was anonymous, and even though the art club kept a close eye on the mural to make sure no one did anything that broke the rules, the mystery artist remained in total stealth mode. Kal worried about what it would do to Ireland if the person on the other end of these messages ended up hurt in a real way and Ireland found out about it. Would she blame herself like he blamed himself for Brell, even though there was logically nothing more she could do than what she was doing?

He worried that Ireland would spiral like he had. He wanted better for her than the guilt he carried for himself.

When Kal came out of the back supply room, Ireland was still working. He watched her painstakingly paint the words that made up another flower stem and leaves. He waited until she was done before he peeked at the finished product. “Not broken irreparably. Your mirror is like a pond. A pebble might ripple the surface, but no one can truly shatter a pond.”

“You have the heart of a poet,” he said softly.

“I wish there was more I could do.” Ireland stared at her response to the shattered mirror-flower message.

“You’re doing as much as you can. Especially since you don’t know who it is,” Kal said.

Ireland made a noncommittal noise low in her throat as she scrambled to her feet. “I know. I better go. Mara doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I’ll walk you out.” He’d parked not too far from Mara’s car.

Mara wasn’t alone at her car. She had her friends with her. Kal held Ireland’s hand in his and felt her grip tighten around his fingers as they approached. When Tinsley started talking, he understood why Ireland had tensed.

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