Be the Girl(54)

“Don’t blame her. So do I.”

“Yeah, I guess. But with Cassie, we think she gets it, but then she goes and does something that makes us think she doesn’t. Like, a few months ago, my mom was scrolling through her contact list on Instagram and there was some dude in there. Cassie accepted him because his profile picture was of a little girl hugging a dog.” Emmett gives me a knowing look. “The guy’s entire feed is of him posing shirtless in front of mirrors in public bathrooms.”

I cringe.

“Yeah. So that’s what she was looking at every time she scrolled through her feed. She agreed that it wasn’t right, but she couldn’t figure out to take the next logical step and block him. So now she has to come to me or my parents every time she gets a follow request. We walk her through deciding whether she should accept it. We’re trying to teach her how to think critically, but that’s one of her challenges. Everything is black or white, absolute yes or absolute no for her. Anything outside of that, she has a hard time grasping.”

“Does she get a lot of requests from creepers?”

“No, thank God. She’ll get invites from kids she’s chatted up at school every once in a while. I make sure they’re not the kind who would drop mean comments on there, or be coming around to find things to mock her for behind her back.” He snorts. “Didn’t do the greatest job there, did I?”

He’s referring to Holly.

Does he know that she deleted him from her feed?

Does he care?

“So, how come your profile’s not protected?”

“I’m not worried about attracting predators.” He scrolls through the bullying website, searching for more nuggets of information.

“No. Just adoring female fans,” I mutter under my breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

His dimples divot his cheeks with his grin. He heard me, all right. “So, tell me something about Aria Jones from Calgary, since you’re basically a ghost online.”

I study my socks. “Am I?” I know as much, but is he confessing to sitting here in his room, perhaps lying in his bed, looking me up?

Out of mere curiosity?

Or interest? The more-than-friend kind?

My thrilled heart is at odds with the wariness creeping into my spine, of what he could probably find out about me if he knew where to dig.

I take a calming breath. “There’s not much to tell. I like running, and reading. And apparently, zucchini bread.”

He laughs and I laugh along with him, my chest warming. “What else do you want to know?”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” He asks it so casually. “Are you allowed?”

“Of course I’m allowed!” I sound indignant. Truthfully, my mom never knew about my two short-lived relationships. She was never present enough to notice the days where I was floating on a cloud, or the nights where I drowned my sorrows in tubs of mint chocolate ice cream.

Emmett sets his laptop aside and settles back against the rail of his bed. He swallows hard, the sound carrying through his bedroom. “Can we talk about it then?”

The elephant.

The air in his bedroom has turned thick with anticipation. “About what?” I hesitate, gathering my courage before I turn to meet his beautiful brown eyes, so open and earnest as they skate over my features, stilling on my mouth.

“About this.” He leans in, until the tips of our noses touch, his lips an inch away. He holds there a moment.

Long enough to give me the chance to stop this from happening, I’m guessing.

Long enough to make my blood rush to my head and my heart thump wildly and my breathing just … stop.

And then he presses his lips against mine.

Kissing Emmett is an out-of-body experience; it doesn’t feel real. His lips are somehow both warm and cool, both soft and firm. When the tip of his tongue touches mine for the first time, I realize I’m still holding my breath. I exhale and with it escapes the softest sigh.

Emmett leans further in, pushing me back to rest against the frame of his bed, the slight stubble on his face scratching deliciously across my chin and my cheeks as he kisses me deeply, with an expertise I can’t possibly match.

I’m dizzy when he finally pulls away.

“Is that going to be okay, with your mom? You know, because you’re fifteen.”

“Almost sixteen,” I manage in a harsh whisper. And Emmett will be turning eighteen in less than three months. We’re not even two years apart. “That was unexpected.”

He grins, still leaning into me, his fingertips grazing my cheek. “Really? I thought you had figured it out.”

“What? No!” I giggle with disbelief, my head swimming in shock. “You said you wanted to stay single. You know, because you’re leaving next year?”

“Yeah. Next year. Plus, you never let me finish what I was going to say.”

I pull my bottom lip into my teeth to hide the stupid grin that threatens to surface. “What were you going to say?”

His brown eyes settle on mine. “Just that the first night I came to your room with the boxes, I thought you were adorable.”

“Yeah. Right.” I roll my eyes. “Aria with a green face.”

He laughs. “You were. And I liked running with you, and hanging out with you. And I didn’t expect to be breaking up with Holly, so I couldn’t see myself with anyone else at first. But, I don’t know … Zach kept asking me if I’d mentioned him to you at all, and then he said he wanted to ask you out to a movie. I got jealous.”