Underwater(50)

“But Taylor’s not mine. I just met her at school. She wanted to learn to surf, and it was easy to teach her.” He shrugs. “She told me all about how a bullet grazed her. She got lucky and she knows it. So now she’s trying to be this total badass, but I have a feeling she used to have softer edges. Am I right?”

“Very. I don’t even recognize the girl who showed up here today.”

“I don’t think she recognizes you, either.” I recoil, and Evan feels it because he squeezes my shoulder to keep me with him. “I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just saying the same thing I’ve always said: You’re not the only one. You’re not alone.”

I nod, not sure what to say. I spend so much of my life telling Brenda about that day and how it affected me and how it made me who I am, but I haven’t spent much time thinking about how it affected everyone else. It affected Taylor. It affected Evan. It affected Evan’s aunt and his mom. It affected Chelsea, Brianna, and Sage, and a million other people. That’s what Evan tried to tell me. I don’t own the market on having sucky things happen to me. I’ve thought about all those other people, but in some ways, it was easier not to think about them too much. I’m certainly not the only one who lost something that day. Lots of people lost a lot more.

“Here’s the thing,” Evan says. “We’re all just getting by, right? And sometimes it’s easier to do that with someone who understands than to try to do it by ourselves.”

“Oh, so you’re some kind of savior or something?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not in the business of saving people. Truthfully? I think I’d suck at it. But I am in the business of surviving, so at least there’s that.”

He shifts his leg underneath me, and I fear my weight has become unbearable and cut off his circulation. Thankfully, it turns out he’s simply moving to keep me where I am.

“So I have a question,” he says through the soft light of the room. “And I want you to answer me honestly, okay?”

“Um, okay. You’re scaring me. Is this like Truth or Dare?”

“Ha! You wish.”

“No, you wish.”

“Actually, I kinda do wish,” he says, squeezing my shoulder with a laugh. “So okay, then, truth: Are you my girlfriend?”

That’s so not what I was expecting and I go off-kilter a little. “I don’t know, am I?”

“Do you want to be?”

“I have to admit I’m a little rusty.”

He laughs. “That’s okay. I can remind you how it works.”

“Okay then.”

“Yeah?”

I smile. “Yeah.”

He shifts and I start to sink away from him until he grabs me and pulls me up onto his lap so I’m facing him, my legs draping over each of his thighs. My skirt hangs over our thighs like a blanket.

“I like it when you say that,” he says, his hand squeezing my hip.

“Yeah?”

I inch my mouth closer to his. He nods.

“Yeah?” I ask again.

He nods a second time and kisses me.

*

The music is playing and we’re lost enough in each other to drown out the world, which is probably why neither of us hears Evan’s mom come home until she’s banging around in the kitchen.

“Evan,” she calls. “I’m home.”

We pull apart. My cheeks heat. I try to pat down my hair as I scramble off his lap. Evan fumbles to tug his shirt back into place as he heads to the door of his bedroom.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“To say hi to my mom.” He looks at me like, Duh.

“But she’ll know I’m in here.”

“So?”

He opens the door just as his mom appears in the hallway. She looks surprised but not unhappy to see me hovering behind Evan in his bedroom.

“There you are. Hi.” She smiles at me, then looks at Evan. “I just wanted to let you know I’m home. Can you turn down the music?”

“Sure.” Evan opens the door to his room wider so I’m in full view. “Mom, you remember Morgan.”

“Of course. It’s so nice to see you again, Morgan.”

“Thanks. You too,” I say. “We’re just doing homework.”

My words come out really fast, making Evan do a double take. He grins at me. His mom claps her hands together like she just remembered something she has to do.

“Okay. Well. We’ve got a sink full of dishes, so I’m going to get to it.” She heads back down the hallway and into the kitchen.

Evan turns to me, stifling a laugh. “Whoa.”

“Whoa?” I narrow my eyes at him. “It’s not funny.” Evan might think his mom almost walking in on us is no big deal, but I don’t. The panic is already happening. I can feel the hum of it in my head and in my bones. It’s in my stomach and in my heart. I straighten out my T-shirt and grab my notebook. “I need to go. Like, now.” I shove everything into my bag and rush out his bedroom door.

“What? Why?”

“Your mom totally knows what we were just doing.”

“So? She was seventeen once.”

I try to picture Evan’s mom at seventeen. Did she have the same long hair and triple-pierced ears? Did she know Evan’s dad yet? Did she like school and football games?