Page 47 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
“Oh my god.” I draw upon all the acting talent I have in my body to open my mouth in shock as I read the product description on the side. “Cyrus, what the hell? I thought you called me over here to pick out the photos for the competition together. Were you planning on hooking up tonight?”
“What? No,” he says in a rush. “No, I swear—”
I lift the box higher between us. “Then?”
“It was there when we first checked into the room.” He winces. “I just didn’t want you to see it and assume—I wouldn’t even dream of …”
I let him suffer for a while longer before it becomes physically impossible to maintain my fake shock. “You can relax, Cyrus,” I say, cackling as I drop the condoms on the bedside table. “I was only messing with you. It’s kind of cute that you felt the need to hide this from me.”
His face turns an entire shade redder. “You should—we should throw them away.”
“Why?” I cock my head. Grin up at him, taunting. “What if you end up needing them? Better safe than sorry, right?”
“Do you talk to all guys this way?”
“No. Just you,” I say casually, sitting back down on the cushions, but I’m not teasing him. It’s the truth. If he were any other guy, I would be too wary, too cautious to joke about something like this. It’s almost always there, in every interaction I’ve had with guys since I turned pretty: the uneasiness in the pit of my stomach, the prickling dread that the conversation could take an uncomfortable turn at any second, the suspicion that while I’m thinking about them, they’re thinking about my body. But with Cyrus, it’s different. I might have felt tempted on numerous occasions to shove him or slam a door in his face, yet I’ve never felt unsafe. Somehow, I know that if I were to move closer to him right now, to press my lips to the most vulnerable spot on his neck and draw his hands down to my waist like I really, truly wanted him, he would still step back at once if I had a sudden change of heart.
Then I’m wondering how it would feel to actually do it— to kiss him. How his expression would change. Whether he would kiss me back soft and slow, or fast and urgent and breathless, if his fingers would tangle themselves into my hair or if he’s the kind to touch the back of my neck …
Oh my god.
Don’t be so weak and disgusting, Leah, I urge myself with a stern mental slap. Having feelings was not part of the plan. I should only be focused on making him want me—not wantinghim.
“Let’s look over the photos,” Cyrus says, and practically leaps away from me to grab three photos from the counter. Even when he comes back and dumps his photos on the couch between us, he sits down on the farthest end of it, two feet braced firmly on the floor like he’s acting out one of those in-flight safety videos. I’m not sure if I should be worried that he somehow looked inside my head just now and was scared off by the images playing there.
“You only took three photos?” I ask him. They’re all of trees—not even very distinct or interesting trees, but of the planted-everywhere-in-the-suburbs variety—and they’re so blurry I wonder if he’d pressed the shutter button by accident while he was walking around.
“Well, I would’ve taken more, but I was kind of sidetracked when my teammate disappeared in the forest,” Cyrus says, examining my photos while I examine his. “Though it looks like you were busy even while you were disappearing. This one’s beautiful,” he adds.
I look up, and he holds the photo out to me. Birds flit between the Polaroid frame, their white wings stark against the wash of blue sky, gliding one after another over the mountains.
“This one’s beautiful too,” Cyrus says, pushing another photo toward me. “And this one of the lake. You know what, I think we should just choose from your photos.”
“We can choose one of yours too,” I tell him, just to be a good teammate.
He snorts. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” I say innocently.
“Deny the fact that my photos could give the average citizen car sickness,” he says. “It’s fine. Photography isn’t really my forte.”
“You don’t need it to be,” I say. “You already have so many things.”
“As in … materially? Because I believe that’s Oliver. Did you know he has a backup Porsche for his backup Porsche?”
“That’s deeply upsetting. But I mean what Oliver was talking about on the train.” I collect the five chosen photos in a neat pile and bind them together with the hair tie on my wrist. “You found your thing—your calling, your passion, whatever you want to call it—years ago. You know what you’re good at, and you know what to do with it.”
His expression turns thoughtful. “Maybe that’s your problem.”
“You’re a problem,” I say automatically. “Sorry. Reflex. Do go on.”
“I feel like you always do things for the sake of something else,” he tells me. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” I say slowly. “But isn’t that everyone? Isn’t that, like, the point?”
“I don’t love literature because I think it’ll make me famous or rich somewhere down the line, or because it’ll be an interesting point of conversation at a party one day,” he says, and it’s as if he’s reciting my internal dialogue from when I was modeling, all the reasons I gave myself to keep going. Reasons that had once sounded perfectly valid to me. “I love literature because it’s meaningful to me.”
“Just that?” I ask in disbelief.
