“Is your heart always this fast?”

Blake shrugs as I take my ear off his chest, where I’ve been dozing ever since we had sex. My first time. Our first time.

“Why? Is it bad?”

“It sounds like a jackhammer.”

He rubs his sternum as we both sit up. “It hurts a little,” he admits, “but I just thought I was tired.”

“Maybe you had too much tequila. Or you need your inhaler, or something.”

“Maybe.” He swings his legs over the side of the bed. “Let’s go downstairs and get some water. Probably just dehydrated.”

We get dressed and go raid his kitchen, snacking on the remnants of cracker boxes and splitting the one granola bar in the house. Blake finds a box of mac and cheese, then realizes they have no butter or milk.

“This is ridiculous.” I slam the fridge door so hard, the flour and sugar canisters on top rattle. “Doesn’t your dad ever go shopping?”

“No. It’s usually me.”

I feel stupid and mean, suddenly, because I should’ve known better. Blake’s dad is less of a dad, more of a roommate—and not a very good one.

“Let’s order a pizza,” I say, pulling a twenty from my purse in the hallway. It’s still tucked inside the graduation card my grandma gave me, but I make sure Blake doesn’t see that.

“Oh,” he says, smoothing it out against his pants. “Thanks. Dad didn’t leave me any cash.”

Of course he didn’t. I don’t say this, though. I just roll my eyes and he does too, because sometimes it’s easier to turn that kind of stuff into jokes.

We sit on the stairs. I order the pizza, extra cheese, the way we like. When I hang up, I realize he’s smiling like an idiot again, lost in his own thoughts.

“What are you grinning about?”

He scratches his neck. “I’m just...glad I finally got you.”

I laugh. If he notices how forced it sounds, he doesn’t show it. “Into bed, you mean?”

“No.” His face gets serious. “I mean, like…all of you.” He runs his tongue between his lips, thinking. “I’ve wanted you to be mine for so long, and now it’s—”

“Yours?” I interrupt. “Blake, look.” What’s going on? Why is this knot of panic unfurling in my gut, when just a few minutes ago, I loved the sound of those very same words?

“What I said in the laundry room, I meant it. We aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. We’re just…friends.”

“So?”

“So it’s weird, and—and super fast.” Out here, in full light and clothes, it’s hard to remember the dream-like fog from his bedroom. It’s hard to remember what, exactly, made me think of him so differently.

He’s just Blake again. When I stare into his eyes, the dance in my chest doesn’t thrill me, like it did on the couch in the dark, or upstairs in the glow of the sunset. It scares me.

I let things go so, so far. A few hours ago, I couldn’t even imagine kissing him. Now, in a single afternoon, he has my virginity. He almost had me thinking I was in love with him, which is insane. You can’t possibly go from just friends to true love after a few hours.

He managed to get more from me during one storm than any boy I’ve ever known—and each of those still left their scars. How much more would a breakup hurt, if it happened with Blake? I wouldn’t just lose a boyfriend. I’d lose my best friend.

“It isn’t fast,” he counters. “Not when you think about the fact we’ve known each other fourteen years. It might seem fast, because there’s no awkward dating and all that, but…isn’t that a good thing?”

My arm gets goose bumps again when he brushes it with his fingers. The fingers he touched you with. The ones he used to make you feel so….

“I don’t want to mess up what we have now.”

His eyes get dark. I’ve never seen a look on his face like the one I’m seeing now: pure fury and hurt. But mostly fury.

“What we have now,” he says, his voice so low, I can hardly hear him; I’m afraid to lean closer, “is you putting me in the friend zone every fucking day, and only letting me out when it’s convenient for you. And now you’re doing it again.”

I think I see tears in his eyes, but he looks so angry, it’s hard to tell. “Blake—”

“How many dates did you sneak out for where I covered for you?” he asks, getting to his feet. “How many guys broke your heart and I was there to fix it, like the sucker I’ve always been, huh?” He stops, panting, and rubs his chest. When he winces, I get up and start to reach for him, instinctive. We’ve always healed the other one’s hurt, or at least tried.

But now my feet are fixed to the spot. I can’t touch him. I don’t dare.

He’s right. There were times I asked more of him than a friend should. And I have kept him in that friend zone, the safe space where you’re less likely to lose it all, if things go wrong.

Yet, somehow, they still are.

“Hey, you’re the one who never told me how you felt.” Now I’m shouting, my voice strangled in the high ceiling of the foyer. He isn’t completely right. This isn’t all my fault. “How was I supposed to know? And now you expect me to accept it and automatically feel the same, just like that? Don’t get mad at me because you weren’t man enough to put your feelings out there.”

He rubs his chest again. Even that seems like an angry gesture, now.

“Get out,” he says.

The command is quiet, but it still hits me so hard, I have to blink at him until it makes sense. “Is that what you want?”

He looks beyond my head, not in my eyes.

“Well?”

“Yes,” he barks. “Okay? That’s what I want. Just go.”

My muscles are paralyzed. It takes me a long time to move, but when I do, I can’t get out fast enough.

I strip out of his clothes, right there in the hall, and gather my stuff from the dryer, pulling on each piece as I go. The pizza guy gets an eyeful of me struggling into my pants as I pass him on the porch.

It’s not until I’m almost home, my bike seat wringing water out onto my butt and legs, that I realize the rain has finally, totally stopped. The storm is over.

My brother Josh is in the carport with his busted-up shell of a Corvette. Pieces clatter to the asphalt as he culls this machine down to nothing, rebuilding from almost scratch.

I sit on our old tire swing and watch him a while. I wonder what’s easiest: building something up from nothing, or tearing down the old to find out what’s useful, what can be saved, and going from there.