Make Me Hate You(38)

“Wow,” he said before he looked at me again. “What is this?”

I showed him my phone screen.

“WK+1’s Epic Playlist,” he read, and then he took the phone from my hand, thumbing through the list. “This is like every song we were obsessed with from 2010 to 2013.”

“I made it senior year,” I said. “Remember? We played it at our prom pre-party.”

“Your prom pre-party,” Tyler corrected.

“Hey, you came, too!”

“Only because you and Morgan forced me.” He shook his head. “Do you know how embarrassing that was? To be in college and going to a senior prom?”

I shoved his arm. “Oh, shut up. You loved it.”

He shook his head, eyeing the playlist one more time before he handed it back to me. “I do remember your dress,” he said softly, his eyes meeting mine for a brief moment before he tore them away. “You looked like a grown up that night.”

“As opposed to your little sister’s annoying friend?”

“As opposed to my friend who I didn’t realize had boobs,” he challenged, arching an eyebrow at me as he ogled the aforementioned boobs unabashedly.

My jaw hinged open, and I swatted at him before covering my chest to the tune of his chuckle. Morgan’s words played in my head.

I knew he had a crush on you, he had for years, but…

After a moment, I leaned back on my hands again, watching him.

And the longer I did, the more my heart raced in my chest, sweat beading at my hairline even though clouds had completely covered the sun now.

“Morgan told me.”

The words were out of my mouth before I could consider not saying them, and they hung between us for a long moment before Tyler turned his head, his eyes meeting mine.

“She told me about what happened that day after my mom left.” I swallowed. “About how you told her. About us.”

I watched a stiff swallow bob in Tyler’s throat, but he never shifted his gaze.

“I understand,” I said after a minute, sighing as I looked over the water — which wasn’t mirror-like anymore, now that the wind and clouds had rolled in — and then looking back at him. “I wish she wouldn’t have spoken for me, that she would have let you and I work it out, but I understand why she said what she did.” I paused. “And I understand why you said what you did, too. Why you told me…”

My voice faded, because I didn’t have to say it. He knew what he’d said to me just as well as I did.

The word mistake flittered through me like a cold chill.

Tyler watched me with eyes full of pain, his eyebrows hitched together, throat tight. But he didn’t say a word.

He didn’t have to.

I could see it — how he was sorry, how he didn’t mean to hurt me.

And now, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it all along.

“She wants us to be friends,” I added after a minute, smiling a little as I nudged his shoulder with mine. “What do you think of that?”

Tyler let out a breath, slow and easy, like he’d been holding it. The corner of his mouth hitched up. “I think I want that, too.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded, and something sharp ripped through my chest, but I subdued the urge to reach for it and digest it and figure it out.

“Me, too,” I said softly.

Tyler’s smile widened, and I smiled in return — just as a bolt of lightning struck overhead, immediately followed by a deep rumble of thunder that shook the entire dock.

Tyler and I exchanged worried glances, and then we were both up on our feet.

“Damn New Hampshire summer storms,” I cursed, tossing everything into my bag and throwing it over my shoulder as Tyler grabbed our towels. “How can it be perfectly sunshiney one minute, and then hailing the next?”

“You sound like such a Cali girl right now,” he teased, but I didn’t have time to smack him or flick him off before another crack of lightning and thunder hit overhead, and then, in the distance, the soft sound of rain in the trees.

“Fuck,” I whispered, and Tyler and I looked at each other once more before we took off sprinting toward the old house.

We hadn’t even made it off the dock before the rain reached us, and I threw my bag over my head — as if that would do anything — as Tyler did the same with the towels over his. I was trying to protect the clipboard with the playlist we’d just worked on while also saving myself from the downpour, but it was no use.

We squinted through the sheet of rain, hopping over rocks and exposed tree roots in our bare feet on our way to the house. Careful where we stepped on the rotting stairs, we ran as fast as we could up to the back porch — the porch that wrapped all the way around the old house — and once we were under cover, we dropped the soaked towels and bag onto the porch and flicked the rain off us.

When our eyes met, we both burst into laughter.

Mine came in an explosion, one so fierce my stomach hurt, and I bent over, unable to stop laughing to find relief. Tyler’s bubbled out of him — slow at first, and then at the same rate as mine, and he bent forward, too, watching me as we both succumbed.

“Real bright idea to go to the lake today,” he teased. “Did you even check the weather?”

“No,” I confessed, still laughing as the storm raged on around us. The rain fell in a heavy, slanted sheet over the lake, the yard, pelting what was left of the awning that shielded the porch. “But now I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”