Page 45 of Always Been His

I press the back of my wrist under both eyes and tip my head up at the October sky.

I’ve been telling Iris since middle school that I just haven’t found anyone worth kissing yet, and the truth sitting in this tree with me tonight is that the real problem is the exact opposite. Nobody has found me worth kissing. Nobody except Lionel, the boy who found me worth kissing for exactly fourteen seconds and then found me worth wiping off his mouth.

A branch snaps below me.

“If you’re trying to sneak up on me, Iris,” I say, keeping my eyes on the sky, “I can hear everything from up here.”

“Not sneaking,” Grayson says from somewhere below.

My stomach drops. Of all the people at this party who could’ve found me, the only one worse than Iris would be Iris’s older brother. I look down, which is a mistake. Because looking down means looking at him, and looking at him while I have tear tracks drying on my face, and a Solo cup ring on my jeans, and the fresh humiliation of Lionel Pryce still sitting on my mouth, is possibly the single most mortifying experience of my almost seventeen years on this earth. Grayson Douglas has never once in six years caught me looking anything other than completely fine, and I’ve worked very hard to maintain that, and now he is standing at the base of a tree I climbed so that I could cry in peace, and I’m undoing all of it in real time.

He’s standing at the base of the oak with his hands in his jacket pockets looking up at me wearing a gray Henley, dark jeans, and the country buzz cut he has kept since middle school. He is nineteen, broad across the shoulders, and he has the most irritating face I’ve ever had the misfortune of being in love with, which I am not thinking about right now because I have enough problems.

“Go away, Grayson,” I say.

“You’ve been up there for over an hour,” he says, leaning casually against the trunk like he is settling in. “Iris is asking everyone if they’ve seen you.”

“Tell her I’m fine,” I say.

“You want me to lie to my sister?” He clicks his tongue. “You know I don’t lie.”

“Tell her I’m fine anyway, because I’m telling you I’m fine, so technically the only one lying is me.” I look back up through the branches. “I’m fine. It’s her birthday. She should be living her best life.”

He is quiet for a moment. The bonfire flickers orange at the bottom of the yard, and I can hear a Justin Bieber song playing over the speakers. Then I hear the shift of Grayson’s boots in the grass.

“Lionel Pryce is an idiot,” he says.

My whole face goes hot.

Of course he knows. Of course, the gossip made it outside in the time it took me to climb a tree. That’s what happens at a party with forty people and a boy with a big mouth and an audience that was paying attention. Of course, the only boy I’ve ever liked in my whole life that wasn’t famous and living in California knows that I’m a bad kisser. Tonight can’t get any fucking worse.

“I don’t want to talk about Lionel Pryce,” I say, my voice coming out flat.

“Okay,” he says, simply. And he doesn’t push it, which is somehow worse than if he had.

We stay like that. Me in the tree, him at the base, the bonfire going behind us, and the October air moving cold through the branches. A leaf drops across the top of my head, and I pull it off without looking at it.

“I’m not a bad kisser,” I say.

The words come out before I give them permission. I press my lips together after, but they’re already gone.

“Okay.” Grayson chuckles, and I hear him shift against the trunk.

“I mean, he was my first kiss, and kissing is a skill, so like I just need to up my skill.” My voice catches on the last word, and I hate myself for it, my jaw going tight. “I mean I don’t even like him, and my eyes were open, and do you remember the leg pop from Princess Diaries?”

“Yeah.” He sighs.

“Well, there was no leg pop. It’s not like he’s the god of kissing, and I’m just terrible at it. I mean he’s alright.” I babble, running my thumbs in circles against each other. “But it’s not like it was great for me, so he’s a total⁠—”

“Idiot?” Grayson offers.

I peer down at him and immediately wish I hadn’t.

He’s leaning against the base of the oak with his arms crossed over his chest, the moonlight catching the sharp line of his cheekbones and the cut of his jaw, the October dark making him look like someone from a movie that has no business being set in Hamilton County, Maine. His buzz cut is growing out slightly, the dark blond at the top of his head just long enough to catch the wind, and his eyes are lifted to me with that steady crystal blue that has been making me feel like I am being studied under glass since the sixth grade.

The firelight from below throws warm gold across his shoulders, across the gray Henley that is doing nothing to hide exactly how broad those shoulders have gotten since last summer. And I’ve just told Grayson Douglas that Lionel Pryce was my first kiss, which means he now knows I’ve never been kissed before tonight, which means every single thing I’ve been carefully not saying for six years is sitting in the branches of this tree between us right now.

My face is on fire. “I didn’t want my first kiss to be like that.”