Page 3 of Only in Your Dreams

I can’t seem to pull together any other words, so I raise a hand between us.

Zac’s gaze lifts as I twirl a stemmed four-leaf clover between my thumb and forefinger. The way I always do, at least ten times a year. Our pre-game ritual since we were fourteen, and I’d caught Zac nervously pacing the quiet halls of our high school before his first game, dressed in his gear from head to toe. A quarterback unable to coax himself out onto the field with the rest of his team.

“Can’t let you leave without it.”

He holds out his hand, accepting the clover. Staring down at it like I’ve just poured fairy dust into his palm. He swallows. “I don’t know how I’ll make it through a game without one of these.”

“You’ll pull through. This happens to be a very special four-leaf clover. I spent all day doing all kinds of crazy voodoo magic over it.”

“You’re saying it’ll never wilt?”

“It’ll wilt, and you definitely want it to,” I tell him. “Because it so happens that the person who’s carrying it when it wilts will inherit its magic. They’ll throw a million touchdowns every game. Ace all their exams. Never get a hangover.”

With a soft laugh, Zac folds his fingers over the clover. Tucks it into his pocket. He’s still not quite looking me in the eye. His shoulders are still deflated, and a prickle builds at the back of my neck.

Like I’m missing something.

Like it’s staring me in the face, but I can’t make it out.

Zac slides a hand into the pocket of his jacket and produces a new pack of shoelaces. They’re red, the same ones he wears on his cleats.

“What are you doing?” I ask when he rips open the package.

“Giving you your present.”

“You bought me a pair of shoelaces?”

“No, I didn’t,” he says. “You were right. I forgot to get you a going away present and I’m feeling like a pretty big jackass over it. Hold out your arm for me.”

When I do, he loops a red lace around my wrist. Once, twice, three times. Double knotting the bracelet in place.

“Now do me,” he says, holding out his arm and the other lace. With lightly shaking fingers, I loop and double knot it around his wrist.

“There,” he says, with a breath. “I didn’t get to do voodoo magic on it or anything. But maybe whenever you feel down or… or if you ever miss home? Maybe you look at it and know that someone here is thinking about you. Missing you.”

I think I might be suffocating.

Intense, all-consuming weight builds in the pit of my stomach, floating upwards, blocking off my airway as I stare into his eyes. How they peer down at me, fixed on mine like he feels them too. The flurry of unsaid words now surrounding us. Words that mean nothing in isolation, but that, if I could just figure out in which order to string them together, could maybe change everything.

Because this hardly makes any sense to me. Other than the weekly ten minutes we spend alone when I deliver his good luck charm from September to February, I’m the third in his friendship with Parker. The spare.

Except, right now, I feel like the one.

How many times have I wished he’d look at me like that?

We’re standing so close our socked toes are touching. And I’m filled with the most overwhelming urge to run my fingers through his hair. Feel the stubble along his jaw. Touch the lean muscle he’s built up from years of quarterbacking our high school football team to a full-ride college scholarship.

“Kiss me.”

The words leave my mouth long before my brain processes them. I wait for the kick of humiliation. For the regret, the urge to say something to erase the words. When none of that comes, all I do is stare.

Zac has gone completely still. I can’t get a good read on his expression, but I can tell he’s holding his breath.

“That’s not funny.” He says it so quietly I can barely hear the words over the sound of my own heart.

“I’m not being funny. I want to kiss you.”

Zac swallows hard. Once. Twice. “You’re not fucking with me?”

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