Page 38 of The Love Interest
“I’ll tell you anything. What’s up?”
I exhale, yet it doesn’t release the cramped, cold feeling in my chest. I have to warn him about me. Otherwise this will all be over in a few weeks and he’ll be dead. The other option is that he’s playing me, and if that’s the case, I need him to know I’m not falling for his act.
“Why did you tell me your whole plan?”
He doesn’t flinch, not even for a second.
“Huh,” he says as his eyes widen. “I guess I did. Put that on the list of stupid things I’ve done.”
“Don’t lie. If you were that stupid you never would’ve made it through the tests at the LIC.”
“You think I’m playing you?”
“I’m not an idiot, so yes, I think you’re playing me. I know what our relationship is. Hell, it’s pretty much all I can think about sometimes. And then nights like this come along and my guard goes down and I start having a good time until you do something suspicious like tell me your whole plan and then I feel like an idiot. Because we’re rivals, Dyl. We aren’t supposed to get along. And if you think I’m not going to use everything you just told me against you, then, well, I think you underestimated me. Trust me, I’m not a threat you can dismiss.”
He closes his mouth and turns to the left. When he looks back, his eyes are slightly glassy. “You’re one of the very few people on earth I can be honest with. I know that’s not something you can give me in return, and that’s fine, it’s who you are, but I’m not built to lie. It turns me into a man I hate. So, trust me, I know I could be handing you the gun that shoots me. I really do. But I can’t keep lying to everyone all the time. You… you’re a vent. Telling you the truth keeps me sane.”
“Please don’t call me a vent.”
He looks down and chews his bottom lip.
“I prefer controlled burn,” I say.
“Done. Now that that’s out of the way, CB, do you want to go for a drive with me? I promise I’m not playing you and I promise you won’t regret it.”
I nod. “Lead the way.”
Together, we leap down from the roof and cross the damp grass to his car. It’s a black convertible. It’s not sleek like most modern ones: it’s big and boxy, and it looks a little bit like a monster.
“I want one,” I say.
He opens the passenger door for me. I step inside and sit down. I can feel the cold, smooth leather even through my sweater. It smells dry and earthy and perfect.
“I’d let you drive,” he says as he gets situated in the driver’s seat, “but Judy would have an absolute fit. She thinks this car is like the ultimate way to make Juliet fall in love with me. Like, she’d take one look at it and instantly throw herself at me. If I crashed it they wouldn’t need a Stalker. Judy would rip me apart all on her own.”
I lean back in my seat. There’s no headrest, so my head sits against the top of the seat. I curl my body slightly so that my cheek rests against the leather.
“I don’t want to talk about that. Just drive.”
And drive he does. The world around me turns into a blur of darkness, broken only by the glowing golden orbs of the streetlights. We drive over a bridge, high above a vast stretch of navy water. I turn my head and look at him.
He’s staring forward, his face set once again in a determined look, the same one he used when he was reading from the book of poetry. Both his hands are gripping the steering wheel tight. Without moving his head, he moves his hand down to grab the stick shift, and his foot kicks forward, changing gears. The engine makes a soft roar and the car surges forward.
The sight of him makes me smile.
My eyes widen, and I sit up straighter.
Crap. Ohhhhhhh crap.
I like him.
The realization crystallizes in my mind, making every encounter I’ve had with him make so much more sense than it previously did. Or maybe it’s not so much a like, but I definitely feelsomethingfor him. Something more than most guys feel toward other guys.
I imagine him laughing on the plane, then I picture myself looking at him and recall how the sight of him laughing made me laugh harder. Nope, there’s no need to lie to myself. I like him.Crap!I like him.Good job, brain, you can’t have him, so you decide you want him. Typical.
The scary thing is that I’ve felt something like this before, back at the LIC. It was for Toby, a Nice a year older than me who had floppy brown bangs and a deep voice that didn’t match his skinny body at all. He took me under his wing when I first arrived, and he even insisted on calling me Sam, because his philosophy was that everyone should have a proper name. I didn’t know it was a crush at the time; I was pretty sure I was straight. I just thought I really, really wanted him to like me, because he was cool, popular, and knew more aboutStar Warsthan anyone else. I should’ve known what I felt was actually something, as the mere thought of him was enough to make me grin, and I did go hard when I saw him take his shirt off before an examination.
I cried when he left, and then the feelings faded until I pretty much forgot about them. I just thought it was a weird thing that happened once and would never happen again. Yet, here we are, starting round two.
