Page 60 of Dropping the Ball

“I—”

“Push play.”

He shakes his head but reaches for the remote. “Just so you know, Tuck is definitely dead, but she’s going to be a zombie. That’s the trope. If the brain or heart stops, the zombie stops.”

“Okay, go.”

It plays out exactly like he tells me, and for the next hour, he predicts everything that will happen. My anxiety drops, but I still hate the grossness.

“Oh, pacing shift,” he says. We’re down to a nerd named Jasper and a likable girl named Penny, who Micah has alreadytold me is the Final Girl, who has never done anything mean or wrong to anyone, ever, so that means she’ll survive.

He pauses the movie as Jasper and Penny reach the edge of the dark woods. “Forest of doom, so there will be zombie jump scares, and I can’t predict them. I can watch the rest later.”

I think about it. “Penny will kill all of them and face Zombie Chrissy?”

“Of course.”

“I would like Zombie Chrissy to die.”

He smiles and hits play.

After two or three scares that don’t make either of us jump, we’re getting to the other edge of the woods, and I, very stupidly, relax. Jasper and Penny step out of the forest near the lake, victorious, and they stop to catch their breath and do that relieved, hysteria-tinged laugh of what-the-crap-just-happened. The more they laugh, the more it makes them laugh, and even I’m smiling as they—

WHOOSH and—

“AaaaaaaahhhHHH!” A blur of zombie evil yanks Jasper backward and scares me so thoroughly that I dive for Micah. He catches me with a muffled grunt but recovers quickly, settling me on his lap and tucking my head under his chin, hands shielding my eyes from the screen.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs, not loudly enough to drown out the wet ripping and tearing sounds as Penny also screams in terror and Jasper screams in pain. “I should have seen that one coming. I’m sorry, boss.”

More nasty horror movie sounds.

I cover my ears and burrow my head into his chest. “Tell me when this part is over.”

“You got it.” His arms are firm around me as he narrates what’s happening. The rhythm of his voice is calming, and I focus on it. This is the third time I’ve been in a position to absorbthe vibrations in his chest against my cheek, and it has become a favorite sensation. My own heart rate is slowing.

Slowing, but pounding harder.

A minute later, Micah lifts my hand from my ear. “We’re safe. They’re setting up for the final battle.”

That’s too bad. I don’t have a reason to be in his lap anymore. I start to push up, but Micah flexes enough to keep me there. A wordless request for me to stay.

I answer by relaxing. It doesn’t feel like a thing that needs to be fought.

He slides an arm beneath my legs and stands, lifting me before claiming my corner. He stretches out, back against the armrest, one leg resting on the floor, situating me in the vee of his legs, my back pressed to his front.

I have to turn my head and rest it against his chest to watch the movie, but I’m not mad about that either.

We watch Penny promise Jasper to get help and leave him with a flare gun they found. Over the final half hour, she discovers that Dead Jules disappeared because she was abducted by Prissy Chrissy and the former camp director after catching them in an affair. They knocked her out and threw her in a lake. She survived and collapsed in the woods, where a fungus infected her, and she became a zombie. She is the biggest, baddest, wiliest zombie, and she’s about to go for Penny when Zombie Chrissy appears. They fight. Zombie Jules wins and takes out Zombie Chrissy. Penny feels sorry for Zombie Jules but knows what she must do. Surprise! She pulls out asecondflare gun! Skipping the squelchy details, Zombie Jules is now Dead Jules for real.

But I can’t swear to these plot points, even though it’s not a complicated story. I’m too distracted by Micah.

His jeans rasp lightly against my forearms as his thighs become my armrests, contracting and rolling when he tenses or shifts.

He toys with my hair, sifting tendrils through his fingers. Every strand he grazes pings a corresponding nerve in my spine, shooting pleasure bolts out to my fingers and the soles of my feet, up to my cheeks, and all through my core. I swallow my breathy Chrissy sounds. I don’t want to distract him into stopping.

What am I doing? There isn’t a single part of me that isn’t touching some part of Micah. Of the guy who could hijack my train of thought without trying when he was only seventeen. I’m older and wiser, but so is he. And he’s seasoned now.

His finger brushes my ear while he gathers another lock of my hair, and a shiver runs down my back.

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