Page 83 of Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling

It’s Sunday morning, and we’re sitting on steps, looking out at the boats docked in the marina. We already walked the farmers market, sampling peaches and figs and buttery pastries from the stands, and now we have a stack of pupusas and a giant pineapple agua fresca with two straws between us.

I almost cough up a big bite of beans and cheese when she says those words, but instead I study her face, pointing to my full mouth as an excuse. Has she found me out? Are these weeks of pure bliss about to come to their tragic, but not unexpected, end? I shouldn’t be surprised... but I thought I would have more time.

But she isn’t angry. Her lips and jaw get tight when that happens, and she’s staring at me all heavy-lidded with her whole body facing my way. She doesn’tlooklike someone who’s realized that the whole personality I’m projecting to her is a fraud.

“Is that... good?” I ask tentatively.

“Yes, of course it’s good,” she says, beaming at me. “I just feel so lucky to be with you. You make me feel so special.”

“Youarespecial.”

“And see, anyone can say that. But you show that. Even when you’re so busy, with senior year and college applications and all this prep and negotiating for the podcast. You always make time for me.”

My stomach dips, and it’s not the good feeling I always get when she’s this close to me, her bare shoulders offering themselves up as the perfect place to plant a kiss and her hand on my knee. No it’s... guilt. And regret. Because no matter how good things get between us, there’s always this, my initial lies, tainting everything, like how one red sock can ruin a whole load of laundry. We started this friendship with her thinking I’m someone—well, it’s notnotme, but just to the left of me. That’s who she met, that’s who kept her interested. And that was all fine and okay when we were just friends, seeing each other on random holidays once a month. But now that we’re together, seeing each other as much as we can, it’s required more lies, more half truths.

“I still don’t fully get why it’s taken months for you to start your run on the show. Is it really that big of a deal? Seems like they’re making you jump through a lot of hoops.”

Like that.

I shrug. “Yeah, most people don’t know who Darren Lumb is, but for the people who do, he’s like... nerd Beyoncé. So if I want to be on a season of the show, I gotta go through the motions, and, like, kiss the ring or whatever.”

I can’t even explain it away to make myself feel better. This is a complete lie. I mean, Darren Lumbislike Beyoncé to D&D superfans, but he’s not making me fill out paperwork or negotiate anything. He invited me to come onRole With It,no conditions, easy as hell... and I turned him down. Even though talking to Darren and helping to shape a campaign onRole With Itwould be, like, the coolest thing ever, I just can’t let go of all the reasons I told Delilah that day back in May when he first made the offer. I’m scared to be out there online, to let go of my anonymity. I’m scared what people will say when they know my name and my face—my internet trolls and the ones in my real life. But how do I say that to Delilah, when it goes against everything she understands about who I am?

God, I wish I could rewind to that first night and stop myself from fronting and trying to put on airs. Just be like,Hey, I’m a huge nerd and very embarrassed by it, and that’s why I admire you, someone putting yourself out there, because I am terrified to ever be my true, authentic self in front of anyone except the three friends I play a tabletop fantasy game with every Saturday instead of doing anything cool.

But if I’d done that, we wouldn’t be here right now.

She wouldn’t be leaning in to kiss me, lips sweet with pineapple agua fresca.

“Sweetheart,” I breathe in between each kiss, and she pulls back with a mischievous smile.

“Is that gonna be our thing?”

I hold my hands out and whip my head around like I’m lost. “What? Huh? Who are you? Where am I?”

“Because if it is. Well... I like it. A lot.”

“Oh yeah?” I reach out and cup her face in my hand, stroking her cheek.

“Yeah. Even if that song is corny,” she says with a smirk.

I throw my head back in a laugh. “Oh!”

“But yeah... I like being your sweetheart.”

She leans her head on my shoulder, like it belongs there, and I know I’ll do anything to keep us just as we are right now.

Delilah

“What holiday is it today?” Reggie asks, his head resting on my pillow. My door is open and my mom is down the hallway, surely listening to every sound and ready to pounce at the first suspicious rustle. But even with those restrictions, Reggie here, on my bed, in my room—it feels intimate and right on the edge of something... more. Something I want. I wish we had figured out just how much we liked kissing each other when we were alone in that hotel room and didn’t have to stop.

“Who knows? And do we still need the holidays? It seems to me the universe has done its job.”

“I liked them,” he says, scratching the side of his cheek. I reach my hand up to the scar on the right side of his lips, an open-ended parenthesis. It’s become one of my favorite things about him because it’s so faint that I only see it now that I can get so close, like it’s a secret marking just for me.

He smiles and kisses my fingers. “But I guess I was usingthem... sorta like an excuse?”

“What, an excuse to get me to hang out with you?” I say with a wink.

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