---

“Can you believe school’s almost over? In a month we’ll be graduates. We’ll be grown-ups,” Sam said as we sat in the back row of the indie movie theater waiting for the film to start.

“We are grown-ups. And you are as of...” I pretended to consider, “…Today.”

She smiled. “Eighteen, baby. It seems crazy.”

“What’re you going to do with your new adulthood? Vote?”

Her eyes held mine. “Eventually. First, I’ll get you to take me to all my favorite movies and buy me my favorite foods and tell me how awesome I am.”

I glanced down at the roll of SweetTarts in her hand. “I thought that’s what we were doing.” My comment earned me a grin.

The lights dimmed and we turned toward the film, but concentrating on Casino Royale was harder than it should’ve been.

When she’d asked me to take her out for her eighteenth birthday, I didn’t dream of saying no. After hanging out for the better part of a year, movies at this theater were a ritual for us. The empty back row was a second home.

We had the same taste in movies too, preferring pulse-pounding superhero and action flicks over comedies or dramas.

But something had changed tonight, and it wasn’t her age.

I knew it when I took her to her favorite place for dinner. When we’d walked down here in the fresh spring air. When she’d stood next to me in the short line to get tickets, her face beaming up at me with a combination of happiness and resolve.

I reached for the roll of candy and unwrapped one.

“Cherry,” we said in unison.

She opened her mouth obediently and I tossed it up. She ducked to try and catch it but it bounced off.

“Shit. That was the last cherry. Where did it go?” she exclaimed in the dark.

I spotted it just above the neckline of her top. “Hold still.”

I bent over and picked it up with my teeth. When I pulled back her eyes were wide on mine. Then I took it from between my teeth and offered it to her.

“It’s okay. You can keep it,” she murmured.

“What? Because it’s been in my mouth?”

She shook her head.

You can get good at anything if you practice it enough. For months I’d been practicing hiding my feelings for Sam. I’d keep her at arms’ length when we hung out. I’d return her smiles but look away when my heart started pounding in my chest.

Her dad was right that she needed a friend.

But last week, I’d realized he was wrong about one thing.

“How’s your wrist?” I asked, my voice low over the movie soundtrack.

Her teeth flashed white in the dark. “Pain’s almost gone.”

Two weeks ago me, Max, Sam and a couple of other friends from class had been out on Max’s uncle’s boat, tied down at the pier, after dark.

I’d gone back to the car to get snacks and when I’d come back and heard a splash, I ran to the edge of the boat.

I stripped off my sweater, shaking. Kicked off my boots.

Max grabbed my arm. “It was a dare. She just dove in. Ry, what are you…”

I followed her down.

The water was black, and the kind of cold that grabbed you by the chest. But the fear in my gut over her outweighed the nerves.

I looked around in the dark, forcing myself down even as every cell in my body screamed to go up.

Something tugged on my arm and I shook it off.

Again.

Out of breath, I rose to the surface.

Sam’s face next to me, cast in shadows, was the most beautiful sight I’d seen.

“Sam. Are you okay?”

She winced. “I hurt my wrist diving in. It’s shallower than I thought.”

Our friends got us out of the water.

She started to shiver from the cold air and I grabbed her hand and pulled her below deck, snatching towels from Max on the way.

I started to unbutton the soaked shirt she wore but she stopped me. “What are you doing?”

“You’re freezing.”

“So are you.”

I wanted to wring her neck.

I wanted to grab her to me, wrap her so tight she'd never scare me like that again.

To keep from doing both, I turned my back starting to strip down.

“Why did you jump in?” she asked from behind me.

She turned away and was doing the same thing. I glanced down to see her jeans hit the floor.

“I was worried.”

“You know I can swim.”

“Yeah. Your dad told me one time at the pool…” my breath stuck in my chest. “He said you almost drowned.”

She turned back toward me. I’d stripped off my shirt, and I stood there in my soaking jeans.

“It was right after my mom died,” she murmured. “It sounds crazy but I thought I could see her there, in the deep end. I tried to swim down to her. The next thing I knew I was being dragged out of the pool.”

Her towel wrapped around her body, knotted over her chest. I took my towel and wrapped it around her shoulders, needing something to do that wasn't staring at her.

“Your dad thought… he was worried you might have done it on purpose.”

She grabbed my hands, forcing my gaze to hers. Dark eyes flashed up at me. “Ry. I would never hurt myself. Not then, not now. I wouldn't do that to myself, to my dad…” she trailed off. “To you.”

If all I could have were moments like these—glimpses of her bare legs, curvy and wet; her full lips parted from the cold; the way she swayed under my hands through the towel—they would be enough.

Even though I wanted to trap her mouth under mine. To drag her down to the floor, touch her and hold her and tell her how fucking terrified I’d been that I was going to lose her. To prove to her for as long as she’d let me how badly I needed her...

She smiled faintly, her gaze losing none of its intensity. Her hair dripped water on the floor at her feet.

“My mom and I used to swim together, since I was a toddler. It was our thing. She called me sirenita. ‘Little mermaid’.”

“Sirenita,” I repeated.

Sam’s eyes dropped to my bare chest. “You were really worried?”

I nodded, tight.

She smiled. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I’d always thought being in love would feel good.

It felt terrifying.

Like the family trip we’d taken to the Grand Canyon one year. Treading close to the edge, watching pebbles bounce over as your heart hammered in your ears.

Now, in the back row of the theater on her birthday, the lights dim and the taste of SweetTarts on my tongue, a realization took hold.

For the past six months I’d been obsessed with a girl I couldn’t have.

For the first time, I officially didn’t care.

I could be there for her like this, as her friend, and it would be enough.

“Riley,” she murmured in my ear. “I have to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

Then her mouth was on mine. I was so completely off-guard I didn’t resist when her hands threaded through my hair.

Jesus.

She tasted like candy and temptation and everything I’d denied myself all year.

Her lips stroked mine, tentative at first. Then opening in invitation.

I reached for her, to push her away. Instead my fingers lingered on her shoulders.

Opposing forces clashed in my brain. The virtuous part of me that'd taken to watching over her. Protecting her.

The other part of me that wanted to haul her closer, to prove a theory that had been lurking in the darkest parts of my brain all year.

It took everything in me to pull back, especially when she made a little sound of protest that had my hand gripping the arm of my seat.

My thudding heart echoed in my ears, the volume from the movie becoming background noise. The wrongness of this washed over me, like a wave threatening to drown us both as I broke away to stare down at her, flushed and stunned.

I struggled for words. “Sam, this is a mistake. Listen. I care about you. A lot. But—”

“Stop talking,” she whispered. Even in the dim lights, I could see the horror on her face, the betrayal. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. That I wouldn’t feel this way again, ever. And I let myself go there, but some nights you're all I can think about. You're the only person that gets me.” Hurt filled her eyes. “Fuck, Lee. This really sucks, you know that?”

The light from the film played over her face, her smooth skin thrown into sharp contrast.

This was all wrong. I needed a minute. Hell, I needed a week. To catch up, to fucking think…

I reached for her arm. “Sam…”

“No.” She shoved out of her seat, spilling candy. “I can’t believe I did this. I was so stupid. I thought I'd go to Northeastern, and it'd be you and me, and maybe we could forget all the shit that happened in the past. Like this was our chance to put everything behind us. To make it, together.”

“You aren't stupid,” I said, my voice rising. “But—“

“Just forget about it. Everything. This whole night never happened.”

She grabbed her purse and bolted out of the theater.

“Fuck!” I shouted, not caring about the angry glances I drew. Shoving out of my seat, I started down the aisle and out the doors.

The lobby was empty.

I went outside to the street. No sign of her there, either.

I asked the woman selling snacks to check the girls’ bathroom while I paced. She returned a moment later hands lifted.

Sam was gone.