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This makes him laugh. “I was not hot by any means. Very tall and lanky. Bad cystic acne, too. Not popular with the girls—cheerleaders or nerdy ones—by any means.”
I giggle and reach out to touch one of his first place competition diplomas, running my fingers over his name. The thought of Will not being appealing is just absolutely ridiculous.
“Things got better in college, though. I went to a nerdy school so I fit in perfectly. How about you?”
I shrug. “High school wasmeh. I didn’t have much of a life, always doing odd jobs here and there while my mom was still alive, you know? In a messed up way, things got better when she passed. My grandmother took over and I had less on my plate. Still, I never went to college. It wasn’t an option for me. By senior year of high school, I could tell my grandmother wasn’t holding up too well, so I became the main breadwinner. She lost her mind when I told her I wasn’t going—the plan was to get a degree from a junior college first and then wrap it up at a four-year—but it got to the point where she needed too much help, and there was no way she could deny it coming from me.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to do the things you wanted to,” he whispers.
“Don’t be. My grandmother saved my life, basically. Or actually. I wanted to give back to her and if that meant not going to school, then that was fine.” It’s Will, the person I feel most comfortable with, and still it’s hard to talk about my grandmother. “It took me ten years or so, but I finally got to a career that I like and am good at, right? At least I’m here. And that’s the bright side.”
He heaves a frustrated sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “You and your fucking bright side. I wish just for one fucking day you wouldn’thaveto look on the bright side or the silver lining. I wish that for one goddamn day every single side of your life were bright. That it would be covered wall-to-wall in silver and you wouldn’t have to look for any kind of lining.” Will’s voice is almost a growl, the frustration clear. His hands fist at his side as his jaw ticks. Meanwhile, my heart sprints toward a finish line that doesn’t even exist.
And even though my heart rate is also raised,Itry to calmhim. “Hey, it’s fine.” I put a hand on his shoulder and he relaxes his bicep.
A silence passes between us, both revisiting our pasts—and each other’s.
“Those aren’t prints on the wall, by the way,” he murmurs, breaking the silence.
“What?”
“The things on the wall? You said they were prints. And they’re not. I sketched them.”
I drop my hand—and my jaw—and turn to look at him. “What?” I look between him and the prints, each one more impressive than the next. I stand closer to examine the one closest to me—a satellite—drawn in a fine-tip black marker. I take in the dedication he put in every single one of those lines, in the shading of the curve of the satellite, and the detail of the lights and buttons.
“These are incredible.”
“They’re okay.” He shrugs, biting the inside of his cheek.
“No, no. Seriously. They’re amazing. Truly.”
Will smiles softly at me and takes a step closer, standing beside me to stare at the same print together. His scent fills my lungs, the notes of it intoxicating. I can feel the air buzzing between us, though maybe that’s just me, close to bursting out of my skin for all that I feel for him. In seconds, I’m full of need, aching to wrap my arms around him and beg him to just hug me back.
Instead, I break the moment with a joke.
“So… you can draw? Can you draw me like one of your French girls?” I ask, batting my eyelashes at him in an exaggerated motion.
He laughs and shoves his hands in his pockets, dark eyes warm as he traces my body from top to bottom. “I… don’t usually draw people.”
“Usually or never?”
“Not never. Just… not usually.”
I purse my lips at him, cross my arms in front of my chest. “So, theoretically, you could?”
“I could, yes. To the best of my abilities.”
I laugh once at his almost nervous hesitation, the quiet and careful way in which he strings his words together. I decide to run over to his bed and throw myself atop the—yeah, you guessed it—Star Trek sheets. “So. Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack,” I repeat.
I get in position, lying on my back, with my hands thrown behind my head à la Rose—a position which inadvertently causes me to push my chest out. Again. Something Will definitely notices. Again.
His eyes darken, they trail up and down over my body slowly. And suddenly, I feel my smile slip because I can feel it like wildfire, scorching my skin.
I clear my throat once. “Or… I mean, you don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
He shakes his head and takes a seat at his desk, rifling through the top drawer for a pen. When he finds it, he searches in the next one until he pulls out an old sketch pad. Once he reaches a blank sheet, he uncaps the pen and turns back to stare at me once more. Except this time, he holds his gaze with mine.
“You ready?”
