Page 47 of Only Mostly Devastated

“Of course. You’re always there when people are upset or hurt, and you’re the one trying to make it better. Every time. It’s basically that, but in job form.”

Suddenly, Will was staring at me, and my stomach lurched. “You’re the first person to say that,” he said, taking the trophy from me.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Everyone else just says basketball, basketball, basketball.” Curling his lip, he put the trophy down on the bed behind us like he didn’t want to look at it anymore.

“No,” I said. My chest was tight, and my fingertips were buzzing with something. “Not if you don’t want to.”

He didn’t speak. He just kept watching me. His breathing had gotten louder. Or maybe I’d just tuned in to him. If I wanted to stop this I had to break eye contact now.Now.

But I didn’t want to stop this.

He leaned closer, and closer, and then he kissed me. The second our lips touched his hands flew up and around me, pulling me in as tight as he could. His fingers ran through the hair on the nape of my neck, sending me damn near into a frenzy, and I gripped his waist under his sweater in response. It’d been so long since I’d touched him, I’d forgotten how unreasonably warm and soft the skin there was. No one in history had ever had a softer waist than Will Tavares.

He tasted like sweetened condensed milk. He must have been sneaking some of that rum drink the adults were passing around.

How could I have gone all these months without kissing him? How had I gone without him?

I never wanted to again. Never, never, never.

“I missed you,” he whispered. He grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together, and when he went in to kiss me again his grip tightened.

“Do—” I started, but broke off at the sound of a floorboard creaking. Will launched himself back and snatched up Michael Jordan, holding the trophy like it waswaymore inexplicably interesting than anything I could’ve been saying. I didn’t have any nearby prop—he’d stolen mine—so I just sat up as straight as I could and focused on looking calm and not-at-all turned on. Just in time, too, becauseWill’s dad flung the door wide open without stopping to knock.

In hindsight, I can see how opening a closed door to see his son closely examining a trophy he’d had for years, while his son’s friend sat awkwardly on the bed with perfect posture and tousled hair, could’ve raised an alarm bell for Mr. Tavares. To his credit, if he did suspect something, he stayed pretty neutral. “Ollie, the little guy’s asking after you.”

Way to cock-block, Dylan.

“Thank you, Mr. Tavares,” I said. “We’ll come right down.”

Will nodded and placed the trophy back on the shelf.

As soon as his dad was gone, Will turned back to me. For a moment I thought he meant to kiss me again, but it was just to nod over at the doorway. “Guess the kids need to get to bed soon, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s a long drive back at this time of night for them.”

“Got it. Well, thank you so much for coming.”

It seemed like I was being unceremoniously kicked out. I stood up, and hesitated. “Hey, Will?”

“Yeah?”

“That definitely just happened, right? Like, we’re not going to pretend it didn’t?”

He took a second to reply, but when he did, his expression was mischievous.

“Oh, it definitely happened. Don’t worry about that.”

15

We’d wandered for a while, following the edge of the lake, just talking, before we settled down in front of a tree to finish our ice cream. The crowds had thinned and then I virtually disappeared about five minutes before, giving us some privacy.

Rivulets of melted mint ice cream ran down Will’s cone and over his fingers. He didn’t try to lick them off, not even as they started to drip onto his knees. I stirred my spoon around my own cup until it made a chocolate soup, while Will finished off the last bite of his cone. How anyone could eat that fast without brain freeze was a mystery. “You’re covered in ice cream,” I said.

He looked down at himself and tried to wipe it off his leg. All he managed to do was spread it in a sticky mess around his thigh. “Shit. One second.”

With that, he pulled his shirt off, took off for the lake, and jumped straight in, spraying water all over me.

---