How to End a Love Story(45)

“This is your room,” she says with slight amazement. She looks around with such naked enthusiasm, he feels an urge to take a picture of her—unvarnished Helen. “You have a whole couch in it.”

“Yep,” he says, leaning against the doorway as she inspects his bookcase.

“A lot of sci-fi,” she says, scanning his paperback collection.

“Hard fantasy,” he corrects reflexively.

She laughs, then glances up at him with a suggestive smile. “Dirty.”

He feels something twist in his stomach and turns instead to a box by the bed.

“This might be interesting to you.” He pulls out a thick, leather-bound yearbook. “I think there’s even an issue of the Ampersand in there.”

“You’re kidding,” Helen says, and hurries over.

“Knock knock,” his mom says, and they both look over at the door. Lisa holds a silver platter with a pot of coffee and cups. “Oh, you found your old yearbook—how fun!”

“Mom,” he says.

“I’ll leave this right here,” she says, and sets it down beside the couch. “Have a good night.”

She pulls the door half shut behind her. Grant shuts it affirmatively. He tries to ignore the mounting headache that’s been building since dinner, watching his mother reveal layer after layer of their home life to Helen. What did you expect when you invited her? Why would you bring her here? Grant ignores that too, as Helen flounces onto the couch with the yearbook.

“I don’t even know where mine is,” she says, tossing her legs across the couch cushions casually.

His fingers itch with a strange need to squeeze her stockinged calf. He nudges her over and sits on the opposite end of the couch instead, so her head is next to his thigh. She seems to interpret this as a transitional position and shifts back again until her head rests in his lap.

Well, fuck. His hands hover awkwardly for a moment as she adjusts her grip on the yearbook so they can both see it. Finally, his left hand settles in her hair, while his right hand steadies the yearbook.

“Oof, we really over-tweezed our eyebrows back then,” she murmurs, flipping through pages of senior portraits.

His thumb sweeps along her temple, barely grazing her eyebrow.

“Looks like yours grew back all right,” he says, and he feels the rumble of her laughter.

“There you are,” she says, flicking his senior portrait.

“Hm,” he says, and watches his fingertips slowly scrape through her hair. She closes her eyes and exhales with a contented little “hmmph” and he forces his fingers to stop before he does something stupid.

“Flip to the extracurriculars section. My arms are tired,” she says, nodding at the yearbook.

He takes the yearbook and dutifully flips the pages for her. She uses her freed hands to release her hair from its velvet scrunchie, then leans back into his lap and takes the book from him.

His left hand resettles of its own volition in her hair. This time his fingertips comb through and massage her scalp.

“I hated my outfit in this picture,” she says, studying a group photo of the school newspaper club. “My sister borrowed the shirt I was going to wear.”

“You looked cute anyway,” he says, his voice sounding gravelly.

Helen laughs and looks up at him. “That would have made my year, if you’d said that to me back then.”

Grant smiles and tips her chin back down to the yearbook. His right hand lingers there, then settles and brushes the knuckle of his index finger back and forth along her jawline. It might be his imagination, but he thinks she leans into his touch like a cat starved for affection.

She flips the pages until she finds the student council photos.

“There you are again,” she murmurs.

“Here I am,” he agrees, and his knuckles brush past her jawline to skate down her neck, lingering at her fluttering pulse point. He doesn’t imagine it this time—she leans in and rubs her cheek against the inside of his wrist.

“Do you remember what you ran your campaign on?”

“No,” he says, his breath caught as he drags the backs of his fingers along her face, sweeping light contact against her skin and lifting just before her lips.

“I do,” she murmurs, and the movement brings her full bottom lip in contact with the edge of his thumb.

He swallows, his thumb lingering just between her top and bottom lip.

“What?” he asks, unsure what they’re talking about.

She drags her lower lip along the side of his thumb and suddenly he’s never been so hard in his life. It’d be embarrassing if he wasn’t so turned on. She turns her face slightly and presses a slow, warm kiss over the top of his thumb. What the fuck.

“You said you’d reform the parking space lottery, and raise funds for new Astroturf on the football field.”

She looks up at him and he swallows hard.

“Oh,” he says.

He drags his thumb down past her lips and settles it at her collarbone instead, trying to cool the mounting hot tension in his gut.

“I interviewed your campaign manager for the paper,” Helen is saying, and he can barely make sense of the words. She taps at a girl in the group photo. “I think she had a thing for you.”

His hand expands and contracts at the base of her collarbone, flirting with the inch of skin just below the neck of her sweater dress.