Page 27 of I Would Stay Forever
“Stripping now, Novak?” a voice asked to my right. I jumped in surprise, accidentally knocking over the bottle of water that had been by my foot.
“Crap!” I muttered. I crouched down to pick it back up, but most of the water had already come out. At least I was outside so I didn’t have to worry about spilling it over anything important. I guess this grass was just going to get a little bit of extra hydration tonight. I looked up again, holding the shirt to my chest so that whoever it was wouldn’t see me standing there just in my bra.
I probably should have guessed that the person would be Dean—who else would follow me into the darkness?
He was standing at the crack between the two houses, silhouetted by the street lights. Once I looked at him, he walked forward casually with his hands in his jeans pockets, looking way too comfortable with the bizarre situation we’d found ourselves in.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, trying to look over his shoulder, my eyes scanning to see if anybody had seen him coming this way, but I couldn’t see anybody on the street behind him. They were all too far over to the side, hidden by the houseright now, and I hoped that none of them had noticed where he had gone. Even if they did, I wasn’t sure anybody would really care.
“I saw you sneaking out of the house. Figured I’d check what you were doing,” he said, nodding down at the shirt that I was still holding up against my chest. “Washing your shirt in the dead of night?”
I rolled my eyes. “First of all, it’s not the dead of night,” I said, even though it had gotten very dark by now. It was getting to the time of year where the sunsets were happening at what felt like ridiculously early times after the long days of summer. “And if you must know, Zoey spilled her drink on me. I’m just trying to get the stain out of the shirt.”
He held his hand out like he wanted me to hand over the shirt, which was so not happening since it was the only thing stopping him from seeing my entire bare upper body. My calves were starting to burn from crouching, so I stood up but I kept the shirt firmly pressed to me.
Dean wiggled his fingers. “Come on, hand it over. I’ll help you.”
I took a step back, as if I thought that he was going to wrench it out of my grip. “I’m really okay.”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. “Come on, don’t get modest on me now. I’ve seen you in a bikini loads of times.”
I guess that was true, with our backyards facing each other. It was kind of inevitable whenever I went out to the hot tub or to tan, he would notice. But this felt different—I was just wearing my bra. Even though it was actually one of my more full-coverage ones that probably covered just as much as a bikini, I still felt self-conscious, even standing in the dark.
“I’m really okay.”
“Come on,” he goaded. “I know a secret trick that will help.”
“Yeah right. You just want to see me naked, don’t you?”
He cracked a grin. “Can you blame me?”
Oddly, I found myself smiling back. This is what it used to be like between us—the teasing jokes that we both knew were never that serious, but we threw back and forth all the time. It became harder to joke around with him after this summer, when every time I looked at him, I thought of that night. I wasn’t sure when exactly that had changed, but I had the same feeling in my chest that I had that morning—the feeling that Dean and I were…friends.
I hesitantly dropped the shirt from the front of my chest, ready to hold it up again if his eyes lingered too long. But he didn’t even lower his gaze; he kept his eyes on my face as I handed the shirt over. Then he picked up the water bottle by my feet, even though most of the water had emptied. I watched as he turned the shirt inside out and poured water over the spot where the stain was.
“It’s better to pour the water from the inside instead of the outside so you’re not pushing the stain further into the fabric,” he explained. I barely listened to what he was saying, but I watched him all the same as he wiped it out as much as he could. Like me, I knew he wasn’t going to get the whole stain out the same way I couldn’t, but I appreciated any step forward. When he finished, I expected him to hand the shirt back to me, but he paused with an odd look on his face.
“Can I have it back?” I asked slowly, holding my hand out. He didn’t react right away and I realized what position he had put me in here—I was hidden away in a dark alley without my shirt that I’d handed right over to him. If he walked away right now, he could just leave me stranded here. Sure, I could call one of the girls, but they’d have to go all the way home to get me a new shirt. What would I do in the meantime? And how would I even begin to explain this situation to them?
My panicked thoughts were interrupted when Dean pulled off his own shirt. But then it led to a whole new panic. He knew that I was only not wearing a shirt because I was dealing with mine, right? He knew that this didn’t mean anything else.
“Dean, I don’t?—“
“Here.” He held out the black T-shirt. I stared at it, trying to comprehend what it meant, and trying very hard not to look at his abs like I had the other morning. I suddenly had a flashback to when I had been standing there in my pajamas and he’d been shirtless. How had we ended up in an equally embarrassing situation once again? “You can’t go back into the party wearing the wet one and you can’t go back without a shirt at all.”
I blinked a couple times, wondering if I was completely misreading this situation or if he was actually offering me his shirt. He stared back with a neutral expression, the black shirt hanging between us.
“But what about you? You can’t go back in without a shirt either.”
“Sure I can,” he said with a disinterested shrug. “The girls would love it.”
I looked at his shirt, then at his face, then at his abs. I guess he wasn’t wrong that nobody would mind if he wasn’t wearing a shirt. I was pretty sure there were a few guys out there who weren’t wearing one either, especially the ones hanging around the pool. And sure, I’d probably look like an idiot wearing a guy’s shirt instead of mine, but I would look like just as much of an idiot wearing a soaking wet one.
I slowly took the shirt from his hand, surprised by how soft it was. It would be more comfortable to wear, that was for sure. I weighed it in my hands for a moment, just staring at it. Were the questions this would elicit worth it?
“You put your hands through those two little holes and then that big hole is for your head,” Dean explained like he was talking to a child.
I glared at him. “I know how to wear a shirt, thank you.”
