“What’s up?” I say into the phone and rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger. I can’t yell at him with Reed right here. I’ll save it for later. “Mo?”
“I did it,” he says. He sounds out of breath. Or scared.
“Did what?”
“I talked to my mom. I asked her if she’d, you know, give consent.”
I suck in all of the air in the room. I’m such a ditz. He said he was doing it tonight, and I totally forgot. “And?”
“And it was messy.”
“So . . .” My heart is falling, everything slipping from me, and my thoughts are blurred but not too blurred to understand. Whatever I was feeling before this phone call is gone because that’s it, the only chance Mo has, shut down by one weak woman who doesn’t care about her own son. I feel tears spring to my eyes, then panic to blink them away before Reed sees. “So that’s it.”
“No. She said she’d do it. She wants me to stay.”
Suddenly I can hear what I didn’t before: The tremor in his voice isn’t fear. It’s excitement. Relief rushes through my veins, and I’m back to wanting to kick Mo in the shins. Hard.
“She said she’ll come to the courthouse with us tomorrow morning and sign whatever she has to sign.”
“Tomorrow morning,” I repeat. What he’s saying makes sense and it doesn’t. Too many contradictions: Mrs. Hussein said yes, but knowing her, she might back out, but Mo will talk her back into it if she does, and we’ll get married, which means Mo’s practically safe, but of course we’re both totally screwed if anyone finds out. And the marriage will be the biggest contradiction of all—pretending to love each other when, well, we actually do love each other. I don’t know whether to laugh or sob. “That’s . . . amazing.”
“I know.” His voice is jittery, and the words are coming too quickly. “It’s soon, but I don’t trust my mom not to flip out and tell my dad if we wait too long, and I know he’s going into Louisville to say good-bye to a few colleagues.”
“Um, I have to work at noon,” I say slowly, strangely numb. I don’t mention that I was planning on going to Myrna’s for more brushes in the morning—it seems unimportant, less than unimportant, now that I’m trying to wedge a wedding into the schedule. “Is that enough time? How long does it take to get . . .” I stop myself in time. Reed is looking at me. I can’t believe his lips were just touching my neck.
“The courthouse opens at nine,” Mo says, “so based on how long all my other courthouse weddings took, I’d say you should be fine. Oh, and I think we should do it in Taylorsville, just in case. It would be too easy for someone to find out if we did it here.”
I’m not listening. Reed has turned away from me and is holding his hand out to another ribbon of color, tracing the indigo current now.
“Annie? Hello?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m just . . . relieved.”
“I know,” Mo says. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time since my dad told me we were leaving. So tomorrow is okay?”
I release a shaky breath. “Yeah.”
He laughs, a weird un-Mo-like chuckle. “Can you believe this?”
“Yes. I mean no.” Reed finishes tracing the indigo wave and comes back to the center of the room. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
“Sure. Wait, are you still at that baby shower?”
“Sort of.”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, call me later. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight.”
“Okay, bye.”
I slip the phone back in my purse. “Sorry about that,” I say, my brain circling and circling for a lie that makes sense, but I can’t even remember what I said aloud.
“What’s amazing?” Reed asks.
“Hmm?”
“On the phone. You said, that’s amazing.”
“Oh, right.” I swallow, and miraculously the lie Mo told my dad lands on me. “Mo’s been trying to get some special student visa. He just found out he can stay.”
“That’s great,” Reed says. “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to faint.”
“No, I’m fine.” I sit down on the bed because I’m not entirely sure I won’t faint. “It’s just such great news, I . . .”
He furrows his eyebrows and I’m almost convinced he knows I’m lying, when I realize it’s more likely he misunderstands what Mo means to me.
I stand back up and take two steps toward him. I can’t explain it properly. He needs to meet Mo, see us together, to understand that Mo isn’t a threat. Except now more than ever, I don’t want him to meet Mo. But that doesn’t make sense either, because a fake marriage that nobody will ever know about is not going to change anything between anybody. My head hurts.
My phone chirps. A text. “Sorry, I have to check it,” I say, pulling the phone back out. Of course. “It’s my parents. They’re on their way home.”
“Your phone doesn’t want us alone together in this room, does it?”
I grin. “I guess not. I’m also guessing you don’t want to meet my dad.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, trust me, you don’t.”
He shrugs. “I should be getting back anyway,” he says, and leads the way into the hall. He takes one last look over his shoulder at the mural. “Will it be done before the end of the summer?”
“Why?”
“So I can see it before I go back to school.”
Two months. That doesn’t seem long enough, not for Reed or the mural. “I hope so.”
I follow him, but at the top of the stairs he turns around suddenly and I almost bump into him. I’m an inch from his chest, close enough to feel heat pulsing from his body without actually touching him.
“What?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’m whispering, except that he’s so close I don’t need to use my voice. Or maybe I’m afraid the electricity flowing between his body and mine will vanish beneath anything louder.
He answers me with his eyes. I can see the kiss coming, feel the intensity in his gaze as he lifts my chin.
I close my eyes. The rest is about touch and texture: his smooth warm lips on mine; a finger lighter than a whisper tracing my jawline and the length of my throat; another hand, firmer, almost insistent on my lower back pulling me forward, forward, forward; a rush of heat when my body hits his.
I’m not sure what I thought kissing Reed would be like, but it’s not this. The shy, bookish Reed from work, with glasses and endless patience for rude customers, wouldn’t kiss like this. The glasses are off now, but I don’t know when or where they went, and he’s cradling my head in his hands. I’m leaning in to him, letting him hold me up because the alternative is melting under his lips and sliding to the ground. His mouth is hot, but I’d rather be burned from the inside out than push him away. I hear myself sigh, but I’m too far gone to be embarrassed. I don’t think Chris Dorsey ever made me sigh.
He pulls back gently. I don’t open my eyes yet. I can hear that he’s as breathless as I am, still feel his chest heaving up and down. I’m scared that when I do open my eyes, he’ll be shy and it’ll be awkward and that minute of perfection will start to fade.
“Annie,” he says.
I open my eyes and he’s looking at me, just a hint of a grin on his face. Not awkward at all. We stare at each other, silently acknowledging the truth: That was not a first kiss. No nose bumping, no excess saliva issues, no rhythmical difficulties in the least.
We need to do that again.
He bends down and picks his glasses up off the floor, where someone—Him? Me? I have no idea—tossed them, and takes my hand. “Just so you know,” he says as we walk down the stairs together. “I usually do okay with dads.”
“I’m sure you do. But he’s not . . . it’s not . . .” I abandon the attempt to explain, letting my starts hang
