Page 37 of Just Friends

The grin she gives me is brighter than starlight and just as dazzling. I can’t help but stare. Sunrise looks good on Hazel. The early morning light is turning her golden everywhere, making her skin look like soft satin. I want to drag my fingers up the length of her arm and see if she’s warm like sunshine, press my mouth to the curve of her neck and see if she smells like apples or something she brought from home. I wonder if the cinnamon and sugar taste sweeter on her lips. If the coffee is stronger. If she makes everything more vibrant like the way I think she does.

“Thanks for coming here with me,” she says, pulling me from my thoughts. Cinnamon sugar falls into her lap as she takes another bite. Her eyes are soft on mine, those tiny, faint dimples peeking out as she chews.

I tighten my hand on the thermos to hold myself back from reaching for her, the warmth seeping through the metal to warm my fingers. “I’ll go anywhere with you, Hazel Lane.”

There’sahummingbuzzbeneath my skin, an energy in my veins, as Alex and I make our way down Main Street. The sun feels like a warm embrace, making sweat prickle on the back of my neck. But the breeze off the river is enough to lift my hair and send it swirling around my shoulders every few minutes.

“Are you going to buy anything?” Alex asks as we stop at another one of the tables lining the street. This one is covered in an assortment of vintage items that remind me of playing at my grandma’s house before she passed.

“I’ll buy as many things as you’re willing to carry,” I tell him, my lips curving into a cheeky smile.

His fingers trail across the table, curving over trinkets. “Oh, so nothing, then?”

When I fix him with my sternest glare, a laugh rumbles from his chest. It’s the kind of achingly familiar laugh that’s almost nostalgic, like ice cream cones on the first day of summer vacation or sleepovers at your best friend’s house, where you stay up all night, talking in the dark about anything and everything.

“This is pretty,” Alex says, picking up a gold necklace. The metal glints in the sunlight as it gently sways in his hand.

I sidle next to him, our shoulders brushing. Nestled in his palm is a delicate gold butterfly pendant. The wings look brittle, and they’re curved, as if in flight.

“Oh,” I breathe, gently tracing a fingertip over the dainty pendant. “I love it.”

Alex’s eyes flick to me. They’re not solid brown today. They’re flecked with moss green and deep bronze. “Yeah?”

I trail my finger over the wings of the butterfly. It feels so thin and brittle beneath my touch, almost as delicate as actual butterfly wings. “It’s beautiful.”

“We’ll take it,” he tells the elderly woman sitting on the opposite side of the table. Deep groove lines appear on her face as she smiles.

“I can get it,” I interject as Alex pulls his worn leather wallet from his back pocket.

He waves me off, pulling out a crisp ten-dollar bill and placing it in her withered hand. After the woman returns his change, flashing him that same charmed grin that every woman seems to make in Alex’s direction, he makes a swivel gesture with his finger. I spin around so my back is to him and lift my hair off my neck, the light breeze immediately cooling the dampness gathered there.

The tiny, intricate butterfly settles in the hollow of my throat. Alex’s hands are gentle, soft, quick brushes against skin that I can somehow feel in the pit of my stomach. It’s…disconcerting, yet somehow also exhilarating. There’s a tug in my abdomen when his knuckles graze against the smooth curve of my neck, an off-beat thump beneath my sternum when the tips of his fingers slide over the bumps at the top of my spine, a catch in my breath when he skims the shell of my ear.

“There,” Alex says, and I think his voice might be raspy.

When I turn, his eyes are focused on the butterfly that has slid from the hollow of my throat to settle above the ties of the floral top I changed into after our hike. “Beautiful,” he murmurs.

The husky scrape of his voice sends an unfamiliar pulse through my blood, that same unwanted bolt of desire from last night that threatens to buckle my knees. I swallow heavily, and his gaze tracks the movement. I can feel it as surely as a touch against my skin. When my tongue darts out to wet my suddenly dry lips, his eyes go hazy, like heat rippling over pavement in the thick of summer.

“Hazel!” someone yells, snapping my attention away from Alex and whatever trance we’ve fallen into. It’s like a bucket of cold water being poured over my head, banking the warmth spreading through my middle, leaving me irritated and anxious. My hand presses into my stomach, trying to calm whatever fluttering started there.

A mop of short, curly ginger hair pushes through the crowd, and I immediately recognize Wren. She’s clad in an emerald green corduroy overall dress that hits midway down her freckled thighs, and the pale yellow short-sleeve button-up beneath it is covered in bright flowers and birds. I’m not tall by any means, but when Wren throws her arms around me, she barely reaches my shoulder.

“Hey,” I say, the breath knocked out of me by the force of her hug.

She backs up, her tiny hands gripping my cheeks on either side. “You look beautiful,” she tells me, and a pleasant warmth spreads through me at the compliment, unlike the spiking, pulsing heat I felt when Alex said the same thing just moments before.

“Thank you,” I say, fingering a lock of her red hair. “You do too. I’m loving this haircut.” For as long as I’ve known her, Wren and her sister, Rae, have had matching manes of enviable red curls that hang to their waists, but this short bob, cropped to hit just below her jaw, seems to suit her even better.

Twin candy apples appear on her cheeks, lively and bright red. “Thanks. It was getting too hot to keep it long when I’m helping coordinate events at the farm.”

Itishot today, but it’s just shy of too warm instead of stifling like it is back in the city. Spring has only just turned into summer, and the days alternate between sweltering and almost chilly, sunny or gray with rain.

Wren’s gaze catches on Alex behind me, and a grin lights her face. Wren has this way of blooming like a springtime flower every time she smiles, like her happiness can’t be contained to just her face. It radiates out of her every pore.

“Is this Alex?” she asks, her eyes darting back to me.

For some reason, embarrassment pricks at me like an errant needle, but I can’t pinpoint why. Forcing it down, I say, “Yes, sorry. Alex, this is Wren. Wren, meet Alex.”

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