Page 27 of The Lies We Play
“You’re doing that thing where you lie with grammar.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re freezing.”
Before I can argue, he pulls his sweatshirt over his head.
This is a terrible development.
His T-shirt lifts with it for half a second, and I see a narrow strip of skin at his waist, the carved line of his stomach, the casual unfairness of an athletic body existing without apology. I look away so fast I nearly give myself a moral injury.
He holds the sweatshirt out to me.
“Here.”
“I don’t need—”
“Livia.”
Just my name.
I take it because I am cold and because refusing it would be pretending this is not exactly what I want.
The sweatshirt is warm from him.
That is the first problem.
The second problem is that when I pull it over my head, the world goes dark for half a second, and all I can smell is him. Clean laundry. Cold air. Soap from a locker room shower. Something warmer underneath, like cedar and skin and the inside of a boy’s bedroom if the boy had grown into a man who knew how to keep his hands to himself.
I get my head through the collar and try to look normal.
I don't feel normal.
The sleeves cover my hands. The hem falls almost to my thighs. It should make me look ridiculous.
It probably does.
Creed looks at me anyway.
Not in a way that makes me feel ridiculous.
In a way that makes my face heat up so fast, I want to walk directly off the roof and into traffic, except that would be dramatic and inconvenient for everyone.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Nothing.”
“That was not a ‘nothing’ face.”
“I don’t have a ‘nothing’ face?”
“You have several. That was not one.”
His mouth moves again. The almost-smile.
“You look warm,” he says.
