You and Everything After (Falling #2)(17)
“Yeah, like, you just bitch-slapped me in the face with your words. Word slap,” I say with a shrug. She holds my gaze after this and bites at the corner of her lip, her eyes squinting as she decides her next move.
“Okay, how’s this,” she says, leaning in a little closer, closing the gap in the invisible barrier she seems to have instituted when I started talking about kissing. “You can kiss me again…” I move toward her on instinct, but she’s quick to put her hand against my chest to stop me. I grip it, tightly, and meet the dare in her eyes. “But not until you mean it.”
There’s a fire in her eyes when she says this—one that I don’t disrespect, and don’t dare cross. It’s not threatening, but it’s serious, and I have this feeling churning in my stomach that Cass Owens is what Nate and I like to call a game changer. Her words have my heart racing, my mind worried that I can’t mean it enough, at least not yet. All of our playfulness from seconds before has ceased with this line she’s drawn, and I will obey it.
Holding her gaze, I lift to my mouth her hand I’ve trapped against my body, pressing my lips to her open palm. I don’t speak, and I don’t break our line of sight. But I don’t kiss her, either.
Chapter 5
Ty
My mom’s voice is consuming my ear as Cass slips out of my room with the shyest smile. Damn. I wanted to give her a proper goodbye. But that’s the Preeter parents for you. It’s like they have a special alarm that goes off and alerts them when to interrupt the best parts.
When I was a seventh grader, Mom had this way of driving up to pick me up at school right when I was about to get handed the porno mag from the cool kid whose dad kept a boxful under his bed. And in high school, there was no sneaking the Cinemax late-night shows on the big TV. Somehow, Mom would suddenly need to sit in the living room for reading, her back “bothering her in bed.” And Dad’s no better. Though his timing always seems more aloof, he was the king of flipping on the porch light right when your hand was about to find the right place underneath a girl’s shirt.
That’s what happened when my phone chirped at ten this morning. It kept chirping. And I knew it would keep chirping until I picked up. Persistent—that’s Cathy Preeter.
“No, Ma. It’s not too early. I was awake,” I lie. I lie through my teeth. I hate lying, and I’m a total hypocrite now, but Mom doesn’t count. Not when it’s for Cass. Not that my mom would lecture me over having a girl in my bed. ‘Cause hell, this ain’t the first time she’s interrupted that! She’d lecture me for wasting my day away, not getting an early start on such a “wonderful morning.” I’d trade in a thousand sunrises to spend another night like that.
“Good, that’s my boy,” she says. I grin at her verbal pat on my head, because I love it when my mother’s proud of me—even if I made up the reason for it today. “Your dad and I are coming in for the game in two weeks. We’ve got the box. Thought it’d be nice to take you boys to dinner. You know, do that parent-spoiling thing a little.”
“Spoiling’s good,” I say, lifting a T-shirt from the floor and sniffing it to make sure it’s clean enough. It isn’t. I toss it back into the closet and try the next one, which smells a little less ripe, so I pull it over my head.
“All right. Well, we have extra tickets, so if you—or your brother—you know…have anyone special you’d like to invite? We’d love to host them. And have them join us for dinner, of course,” she says, her voice in that super syrupy tone that she started to have the first time I went to a junior high dance. My mom loves the idea of her boys meeting the right girls. She’s a romantic. And it’s always driven me nuts, which is why I never take the bait and always show up alone. Every time…except this time. Maybe. I think?
“All right, we’ll see,” I shrug her suggestive questioning off because I haven’t asked Cass yet. And I still might not. I feel like I need to mean it—like Cass would say—if I were going to toss her into the equation with my parents. And I’m going to need to think that through a little more before I plant the seed in Cathy Preeter’s fairytale imagination.
“Nate, too,” she says, adding that last part because she knows how burned Nate was after his breakup with his high school girlfriend, Sadie. She was a bitch, and she proved me right about her when she cheated on my brother with his best friend.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. Sometimes, I think my mom forgets that her offspring are men, and we have a low tolerance for the gushy, mushy shit. “Hey, I gotta go, okay? Send cookies. And by cookies, I mean money. Love you!”
“Love you too, Tyson,” she says, and I hold out hope. “Oh, and bake your own cookies…sweetheart.”
Damn. Worth a try.
Cass
I have that hopeful grin on my face. I wore it all the way back to our room, and as much as I want to straighten out my lips and come across indifferent when I open our dorm-room door, I can’t. I’m just too…happy.
“Looks like someone had a good night,” Paige teases, still primping herself at the mirror. I saw her slip out of Nate and Ty’s room a little before me. I almost left then with her, but it felt too good to be there, warmly tucked under his heavy blanket with my back pressed against his chest. He did that thing where a guy strokes a girl’s hair; at least, I think that’s a thing? I read about it, and I’ve seen it on TV and movies. But I’ve never had a guy do that to me. All of my intimate scenarios have been…less personal.