Page 71 of First Verse

She wags a finger at me. “Nice try. I spilled my guts, so now you have to. Quid pro quo or whatever.”

I groan. “Can we not?”

Not to be deterred, Lily shifts her laptop aside and leans forward on her elbows. “You have to talk to someone. Unless you’ve decided to tell your mom what’s going on?”

I shake my head.

With a self-satisfied smile, she sits back and crosses her arms over her chest. “Tell Dr. Aoki your troubles.”

I make a face. “Ew.”

She stares at me, and stares some more, until I heave a resigned sigh. As uncomfortable as it is for me to talk about my feelings to anyone—even my mom—I know I need to vent before I explode. Or, in my case, implode. Unfortunately the necessity doesn’t mean the words come easily.

When the silence tiptoes into the Land of Uncomfortable, I finally blurt, “It’s not you. This is really hard for me. Talking about feelings. Like I’m sweating right now.”

She nods, her lips twitching.

I keep rambling, my gaze bouncing around the room. “I’ve always been this way. Reserved, I guess? It’s not like my parents ever punished me for having feelings or talking about them.”

My mind latches onto an old, old memory, and it ejects from my mouth. “Wilder has a great-aunt on his mom’s side. Katherine. Growing up, I was super scared of her because she’d say weird stuff all the time. Predictions that always came true.”

Lily’s eyes widen. “Like what?”

“All sorts of shit. One year, she said it was going to be a white Christmas even though there was no snow in the forecast. It snowed Christmas Day.” I smile at that memory, then shiver at the next one. “Another time, she told my parents that Hunter shouldn’t climb on the play set in the Ashburn’s backyard. They laughed it off because my brother has always been super athletic and had been crawling all over that thing since he could walk. Later that day, he slipped on wet leaves inside the playhouse at the top and fell out of it. He broke his arm and had a mild concussion.”

“Whoa.” Lily rubs the goosebumps on her arms. “That’s trippy.”

I nod. “Anyway, when I was around five, I was running in the Ashburns’ backyard and tripped over a root. I hurt myself pretty bad. Scraped up my knees and face and was bleeding a lot. But I just sat there in a daze. Didn’t scream or cry or anything.

“Katherine was the only one who saw me fall. She didn’t ask if I was okay, just sat next to me and started talking. She told me about how when you build a dam on a river, you have to make sure there are outlets and spillways. If you don’t, when there’s a really bad storm, the dam will overflow and eventually crack. I had no clue why she was telling me this, obviously, but I finally started crying. She patted me on the head, helped me stand, and took me inside to my parents.”

Lily whistles softly. “I need to meet this woman.” She folds her hands beneath her chin and grins at me. “Is that your way of telling me I get to be your spillway?”

My lips tug upward. “I guess so. But I don’t know where to start.”

She hums in sympathy. “The last week has probably been super intense for you.”

“It really has.” I take a steadying breath, my eyes stinging. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Lil. What a normal relationship looks like. The three guys I’ve dated since high school have either dumped or ghosted me after a few months. Now there’s Wilder and this… thisthingbetween us. It’s so big and overwhelming. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

My throat clogs. I blink fast as the burning in my eyes intensifies, spreading through my sinuses.

“Keep going.”

The compassion in her voice opens another pressure valve, and my voice spills through it.

“He’s said so many things I’ve always dreamed of hearing from him. It’s been amazing. Healing. And it probably sounds naive, but he means every word. I’ve never felt so seen and heard, so accepted. Like even my weirdest quirks are somehow amazing to him.”

Lily makes a small sound. “It doesn’t sound naive, Ev. It sounds like he’s in love with you.”

Distantly, I recognize the words should make me feel something. Hope, maybe. But they don’t penetrate.

“Maybe he is. Maybe I’m in love with him, too—maybe I always have been. But can you love someone you don’t really know?”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

A few tears leak from my eyes, but my hands feel too heavy and numb to wipe them away.

“Wilder is like the deepest part of the ocean. Hidden depths upon hidden depths. There are parts of him I’m not sure he’ll ever let me see, parts I don’t even know if hecanshow me. But like I said, he’s also opened up to me. I know he cares about me, wants to be with me. And the sex is unreal—literally unreal. I seriously thought penetrative orgasms and squirting were myths.”

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