Page 98 of Let It Be Me

“I’m not.”

He lifts up my sunglasses and gazes into my eyes. “Then what are you?”

Just like that, my smile dries up and suddenly I want to cry. Lorenzo sees everything. “I don’t know,” I say. “Overwhelmed. Scared, maybe. I’m not sure I have it in me to do what I need to do.”

He nods, letting me feel what I’ve been trying to keep at bay. “Would it help if I told you I am sure?”

“I think so.”

“Because I am.”

“I appreciate your confidence, Mr. Cheerleader.” I muster a small smile of gratitude.

“I mean it. You’re magic, Ruby Hayes. You prove it to me every day.”

Emotion wells up inside me. Coming from anyone else, the words could mean anything and nothing, and it wouldn’t make a difference to me. Coming from Lorenzo, they mean everything. “Thanks, L.” I turn his hand over and glide my fingers over the donut tattoo.

“Is that your way of telling me you’re hungry?”

I laugh and take off my seat belt. “Yeah. Let’s go blow the twenty in my wallet on sugar and food dyes.”

“Oh mygod. Look at this!”I lift a plastic-covered photo from the cardboard box at my feet.

“Another baby Ruby photo?” he asks from the corner of my parents’ attic, where he’s poking through a plastic bin.

With my parents gone for the weekend, we’re taking the opportunity to dig through the attic to find a few of my belongings I want moved to my place. Actually, Lorenzo is taking the opportunity. I keep getting sidetracked by old mementos.

“No, baby Lorenzo,” I tell him, handing him our class photo from third grade. “Look how adorable you were.”

He takes it and cringes. “I was such a little pip-squeak. I look like I belong in kindergarten.”

“You’ve more than made up for it.” I smile as he stoops to avoid hitting his head on the slanted beams.

“So are we almost done up here? I found that poster you wanted.”

“You don’t want to stroll down memory lane with me?” I lower myself to the floor and sit cross-legged in front of the box packed meticulously with old photos, report cards, and art projects. “I can’t even believe my parents kept all this shit. This must have been when they still had hope.” I pick up a packet of folded papers, the dozens of letters Lorenzo wrote me during the summers I went to overnight camp.

“Memory lane sucks.” He leans over me, placing his hands on my shoulders, then letting his fingers slide slowly toward my breasts. “I can think of a few better things we could do with an empty house, can’t you?”

And there’s that voice—that irresistible low throb of a voice that I recognize from when I used to overhear him talking to a girl he wanted to fuck. I drop the photo back in the box as heat rushes through my body. “A few things? How many?”

“Let’s go count.”

I wakefrom a heavy sleep sometime later—much later, judging by the warm, orangey light stretching through the windows. The worn cotton sheets are like butter against my naked skin, and I curl into the pillow, tempted to fade back into sleep. Even with a nap, I’m spent from rolling around with Lorenzo, and only more sleep—or another round with Lorenzo—is the cure. But I want to fall asleep in his arms, and the other side of the bed is empty.

I find a pair of sleep shorts and pull on the tank top that was discarded on the floor, then head downstairs. Lorenzo isn’t there. I go back upstairs, checking the spare bedroom and even my parents’ room, but all are empty. I’m about to conclude he went to his parents’ house to help with party preparations when I hear shuffling overhead.

I pop my head into the attic, and it’s so obvious by the way Lorenzo’s smiling that he’s been waiting for me. He’s sitting backward in an old, scratched dining chair, arms crossed over the back of it, a small book in his hands. And he’s shirtless.

I look around, taking in the floor that’s been cleared of the bins and boxes we sifted through earlier. All that’s left are bare floors and a stack of folders. “What are you doing up here?”

His eyes flash as they dart toward the folders, which sit waiting ominously. “Check it out.”

I eye them suspiciously, then eye him even more suspiciously. His sexy, boyish smile has me on alert—and makes me want to jump his bones. “If this is gonna be like that time you faked a letter to me from Justin Bieber, be warned I’m much better at revenge than I was at age twelve.”

He chuckles, then rests his chin on his bare arm stretched over the back of the chair. “It’s not.”

As I take the last few steps, my mind runs through the possibilities. Did he spend the last two hours up here while I slept?

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