Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(47)

“Me, too.”

I waited for him. This was an in. He could say “wear it inside now.” He could say “maybe you’ll wear it someday.” If he’d just given me something to hold on to, I’d take it. But he didn’t.

Suddenly, the jacket felt too heavy. I started to shuck it off but Will stopped me.

“Can I get a picture?” he asked.

I shrugged, and waited sullenly while he took his phone out. He held it up, then lowered it again. “Can I get a picture where it doesn’t look like you’re thinking of ways to drown me?”

I cracked a smile. “Sorry,” I said, and he crinkled his nose at me before taking a photo.

Once he was finished, I handed him back his jacket. “You should get back in before they notice how long you’ve been missing,” I said.

“Yeah. Make sure you wait a couple minutes before coming back, right?” He looked around us, then stepped toward me. He placed a hand on my chest and pushed me gently backward until I hit the wall, and then, even more gently, pressed his lips against mine.

It was probably a good thing I had to wait a few minutes before heading back inside, because it took about that long for me to collect myself.

When I got back to the table, Will, who’d been making his way through his milkshake soup, waved at me. “Mm, Ollie, I was just telling them about the other day in music class, when Ms. Ellison showed us that YouTube video.”

I sat down warily. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Anyway, it was the most patronizing shit ever, right? Like, it had all these clips of high schoolers comparing pop stars to classical composers. It’s like someone told Ms. E she had to try to ‘relate’ to us more.”

“Sure it wasn’t you, Will?” Darnell asked.

“Not me. Honestly, I find the classical stuff pretty interesting on its own.”

“Oh, God, they’re brainwashing you,” Matt said, grabbing onto Will’s arm in mock despair.

Will shrugged. “Hey, it’s better than German. What a useless language. Who even speaks German here?”

“Yeah, who needs a foreign language when you can just waltz up to people and sing at them?” Matt asked, but he was grinning. That was the thing with Will. Even when he was being teased, everyone was always laughing with him, never at him. He was the last person who should’ve been scared of being judged, when you thought about it.

“Music is a universal language,” Juliette said.

“See?” Will said, holding a hand out. “She gets it. Y’all are outnumbered.”

“Three versus, what, six?” Matt asked. “You call that outnumbered?”

Juliette looked to her left. “Lara? Niamh?”

Niamh, who’d been staring into the distance and propping her head up with one hand as though to keep it from falling into her milkshake, jumped and refocused. “Hmm?”

“Come on, Lara,” Matt wheedled.

“Hey, I stand with my girls,” Lara said. “If Juliette thinks music class is cool, then music class is cool. End of discussion.”

Will shared a mischievous look with me, and I couldn’t help but grin at him. Under the table I sent him a text.

Apology accepted.





16


From that point on, I guess Will and I were kind of seeing each other. I say “kind of,” because we never labeled it. That, and the fact that it was still a bigger secret than the aliens the government have locked in a warehouse somewhere. And let’s be honest, the government definitely has aliens locked in a warehouse somewhere. The government is just being coy about it.

And that’s what Will and I were doing. We were being coy.

Because coy meant “texting someone all day every day, calling each other to hear their voice, and making out in secret whenever possible, all the while pretending to be acquaintances,” right?

Right. Yeah. We were totally being coy, then.

This year was probably the first time it’d actually been a letdown to go on winter break. I’d gotten used to seeing Will in the halls, in the cafeteria, in Music Appreciation. Suddenly, all I had was social media, texting, and the once or twice a week we met up to go for a drive somewhere private.

That’s why, when he messaged me out of the blue asking if I was free one Friday night, I found myself calling Aunt Linda for permission for him to join me babysitting.

He arrived at the door armed with Twinkies, Doritos, and Pop-Tarts.

“What’s this?” I asked as he came in.

“Mom would kill me if I came around without bringing anything. And I thought the kids might like some junk food.”

“They’re in bed, thank God,” I said. “If you gave them any of that now they’d be up until six in the morning rolling around on the floor screaming nursery rhymes.”

“Oh. Well, how do you feel about eating all this ourselves, then?”

“Extremely positive, obviously.”

“Great. Also, they’re sort of celebratory, too.”

I paused by the door. “What are we celebrating?”

He shifted on the spot to readjust his hold on the junk food bounty. “I applied for the nursing program at the University of North Carolina.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I was tossing it around, but after we talked about it on Thanksgiving I decided I was gonna do it.”