She Drives Me Crazy(48)

“I’m obsessed with your dad. That bomber jacket he was wearing at church? Iconic.”

She watches me for a moment. “Come see the tree.”

She tugs on my wrist but quickly lets go. I follow her into the family room, where she sits on her feet next to the glowing Christmas tree. I hesitate before dropping down next to her.

“It’s fake,” she says. “My mom got tired of the needles.”

“Beautiful, though.”

I touch my finger to a golden light. It’s warm, then it burns. I reach for an ornament instead. It’s handmade from construction paper. The kind of thing a kid brings home from school.

“Oh my god,” I mutter, finding the faded photo glued to the middle. “Please tell me this is you.”

“Of course it’s me. Look at that style game.”

Little Irene wears a sparkly headband, polka-dot sweater, and toothless grin. She might be six or seven years old. There’s no scar in her eyebrow, but her eyes are exactly the same.

“Enough of that,” Irene says with a self-conscious laugh. “Here.”

She hands me a perfectly wrapped box. I rip the paper as gently as I can, acutely aware of her watching me. When I open the case inside, I find a black, thick-banded wristwatch in the exact style I would choose for myself.

“I—”

“I kept the receipt in case you don’t like it.”

“No, I love it,” I say breathlessly. “I don’t have a watch.”

“I know.” Her tone shifts to something more familiar. “I thought you could use something to help you run on time.”

Her eyes are dancing. I mean to look away from them, but the chance for that passes. I’m looking at her and she’s looking at me and it’s far too late to pretend otherwise.

She bites her lip. “Well—let’s see how it looks.”

She wraps the watch around my wrist. Her fingers on my skin are fire. I’ve never stopped to notice our hands together, the contrast of skin tones, the interplay of her polished rings and my bitten-down fingernails. She has a white scar near her knuckle that shines as clearly as the one on her eyebrow. Without thinking, I brush my thumb over it.

“Curling iron,” she says. “Seventh grade.” She twines our fingers together.

“My hands are sweaty,” I whisper, like I’m trying to give her a reason to let go.

“No shit,” she says with that sparkle in her eyes.

I stare at her mouth. I want so badly to lean in, but where would that lead? What would it mean?

“Scottie,” she says softly. “Don’t overthink it.”

“Overthink what?”

“Kissing me.”

I laugh unexpectedly, because it’s the most Irene-ish presumption ever. “God, you’re cocky.”

“I’m right.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Say you’ll go on a date with me. A real date.”

It hangs there in the air between us. I search her eyes and she lets me. The sincerity in them scares me so much that I have to look away.

“Scottie.” Her voice is a whisper. “I like you. It’s crazy and unexpected, but there it is. Something is working here.”

“You can’t like me. That’s not … we’re not…”

“What?”

I shake my head. “This whole thing started because we hated each other, and then we got into a car accident and I paid you to be my girlfriend.”

“Yeah, it’ll make a great story for our kids. Will you lighten up? We’re allowed to like each other.”

I turn my head away. “I don’t get it. You could have anyone.”

“So could you, asshole,” she says. “Why does anyone like anyone? We just do. It’s pretty simple.”

“But I’m—I’m a—”

“Ginger?” She tsks. “Yeah, it’s surprising to me, too, but I did have a thing for Anne of Green Gables in second grade.”

I laugh out loud. “Shut up.”

She smiles. It’s open and earnest and wanting. “I love when I get you to laugh.”

We look at each other again. My heart is drumming beneath my sweater. Irene inches forward the slightest bit, and so do I, and we hesitate for only a moment.

“Don’t overthink it,” she whispers again.

Our mouths find each other easily. It’s just as amazing as the kiss at the Emporium, but this time, it’s only for us. She lays her hand along my jaw and kisses me like she means it, and I am breathless and weightless and dizzy at the very fact of her. Lips and tongue and teeth, her hair and her skin and her perfume, but more than anything, her very essence, her fire and flaws and that steely determination to be better, to always be better.

I don’t let myself think about the things still unresolved: the tow truck and her cruelty and the hurt I can’t reconcile. But even more tangled than that, the pain I’ve been carrying that has nothing to do with Irene and everything to do with the last girl I loved and the crater she left inside me.

“Are you okay?” Irene asks.

I pull back and paw the tears off my cheeks. “Sorry. Just—stupid emotions.”

Her eyes flicker in the glow of the tree lights. “Do you wanna talk it out?”