She blinks hard, eyelashes fluttering like sooty wings. “What?” Her lips are slightly parted, and I’d like to kiss them, but I’d also like to know what exactly she was thinking just then, if it wasn’t about Holly, Rebecca, and Zion. That furrow between her eyebrows is only acceptable if she’s scheming. Otherwise, it means she’s worried, and I don’t want Celine worried.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, the word landing too deliberately to be true.
“Cel…”
“Nothing, really.” Her fingertips brush against my wrist, finding the gap between my gloves and my coat with heat-seeking precision.
My stomach flips around like a carnival roller coaster. “Not fair.”
“You’re so easy.”
“Are you slut-shaming me?”
She grins. Slides her fingers into mine, leans into me, and just like that we’re officially holding hands in public. Like a couple. Like she doesn’t care. “Maaaybe. What are you gonna do about it?”
So much.
“Hey, look!” Raj calls. “They have a park!” He rushes ahead of us toward the little wooden play area, and Celine slips from my grasp—supposedly to follow Raj, but I feel a bit deflated. Sometimes I think she wants what I want, feels what I feel. Other times, it’s like watching her close her eyes and turn away.
Patience, I remind myself. Patience. It’s just that waiting is starting to feel a bit like lying. And I don’t lie to Celine.
“Guys,” Sophie is saying, “we’re supposed to be responsible and super-mature explorers here.”
“Who wants to play on the swings?” Raj asks.
Aurora squeals and runs to join him.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sophie gives me a look. “Do something.”
Celine seems to find this hilarious.
I sigh and look around until my eyes land on the park’s little green-and-gold sign. “It’s only for children up to twelve years,” I call.
“I could pass for twelve!”
“Raj. You have a mustache.”
“Says you”—Celine grins over her shoulder—“Mr. Five O’clock Shadow.”
“Get him, Celine!” Raj is gleeful.
I arch an unimpressed eyebrow at her. “Are you undermining my authority?”
“And what authority is that?” she asks with syrupy sweetness.
Sophie groans. “Jesus H. Christ. It’s like drowning in a bath of hormones.” Then she stomps into the park, picks Aurora up, and bodily carries her away from the swings.
Celine bites her lip and follows.
And I make a decision. Since I’m not going to sleep in my grotesque condensation-dripping tent tonight, maybe there’s something else I can do with that time instead.
CELINE
Aurora, Sophie, and I are packed like sausages in our tent, huddling for warmth and discussing campsite snoring etiquette.
“It’s not his fault,” Aurora says mournfully. “He could have some kind of condition.” It’s pitch dark, countryside dark, but I can imagine her expression of wide-eyed sympathy. Then our mystery neighbor’s earthquake-level snore reverberates through the campsite, loud enough you’d think the perpetrator was in here with us, and I imagine a little smile sneaking onto her face.
“Fair enough,” Sophie allows, “but I didn’t notice anyone on this campsite sleeping alone. So whoever’s next to him better roll him onto his side sharpish.”
“They must be used to it,” I muse. “Maybe they’re asleep right now.”
“With that racket?!”
“Maybe they find it soothing after decades of living and sleeping side by side in loving harmony. Maybe it’s like a lullaby and they can’t drop off without it.” I don’t realize that was a weird thing to say until both girls pause.
Sophie’s the one who finally responds. “Celine. What are you on?”
“The sweet drug of true love,” Aurora says.
“What?” I squawk. “What are you talking—” But before I can get to the bottom of that disturbing comment, a noise comes from outside. And it’s not a snore. It’s my name, whispered in a voice I know too well.
My heart perks up like a well-trained dog.
“That better not be Brad,” Sophie mutters.
Aurora dissolves into hysterics.
I tut at them and grab my phone, flipping on the torch and unzipping the tent with inhuman speed. “Are you okay?” I ask, just as the flap peels open to reveal a shadowy shape I recognize. The moon is full, and the clouds covering it shift away just as he smiles at me. Bradley Graeme by moonlight is a mind-wiping, pulse-pounding sight most people would pay to see for aesthetic reasons alone. But when I look at him—when I compare the light in his eyes to the scattered stars in the sky and find his brighter, when I wish I could touch every inch of him the way this silver glow does—it’s not just aesthetic. At all.
Lately, when I’m falling asleep, I have this weird half-awake fantasy of Brad giving me a tiny piece of himself and letting me put it in my pocket and keep it. I should really Google dream symbolism and figure out what that means—I could make a TikTok about it—except I’m afraid of the answer.
I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.
“Hey.” Brad pokes the tip of my nose with unnerving accuracy. “Pay attention. Want to go to the park?”
I flush hot and look down at myself. “Er, I’m wearing my pajamas.”
“Want to change?”
“We have a curfew.”
“Want to break it?”
I remember I am still going, inch by torturous inch, through the arduous trial of acknowledging and expressing my true feelings. “Yes.”
He beams. “Good. I’ll wait here. Wear your gloves.”
I roll my eyes, zip up the tent, and ignore Aurora and Sophie’s sniggering while I hurriedly throw on a tracksuit. And a coat. And a scarf. And gloves, because wearing all that without them would be weird, not because he told me to. When I crawl out of the tent and zip it up behind me, the campsite is still and quiet, except for the haunting hoot of a nearby owl, the ominous howl of wind blowing through the forest to the north, and the resonant snore of That One Guy.
Brad is waiting with his hands in his pockets, but as soon as I stand up, he hooks our arms together like he’s escorting me around a ballroom and we head slowly, cautiously, toward the park. “How is it this dark?” he asks.
“Well, at night, the sun goes away—”
He elbows my ribs. “The sun does not go away.”
“You’re such a pedant.”
“We would fly out into space and die.”
I tut. “You don’t know that.”
“Celine,” he says seriously, “if you tell me you’ve been swayed by a conspiracy theory against the existence of gravity, I will be forced to reconsider our—”
I think he’s going to say relationship—which would be a problem, obviously, because we’re not in a relationship. And that’s a good thing, a safe and sensible thing, so I’m relieved when he says, “reconsider our friendship.” I am. I am.