Cricket looks amused. “I’m not lying. But . . . we should clean you up,” he adds.
He takes my arms and begins to help me stand. Nathan steps forward, but Andy grabs one of his shoulders. My parents watch Cricket rearrange the skirt of my dress to get me safely to my feet. He leads me to the bathroom attached to my bedroom. Nathan and Andy follow at a careful distance. Cricket turns on the sink’s tap and searches the bottles and tubes on my countertop until he finds what he’s looking for. “Aha!”
It’s makeup remover.
“Calliope uses the same kind,” he explains. “She’s been known to need this after particularly brutal performances. For the, uh,”—he gestures in a general way toward my face—“same reason.”
“Oh God.” I blink at the mirror. “It looks like I’ve been vomited on by an inkwell.”
He grins. “A little bit. Come on, the water is warm.”
We scoot around awkwardly until I’m positioned in front of the sink, and then he drapes a towel over the front of my dress. I—very difficultly—lean over. His fingers slide through my hair and hold it back while I scrub. His physical presence against me is soothing. The face powder, mascara, false eyelashes, and blush disappear. I dry my face, and my eyes find his in the mirror. My skin is bare and pink.
He stares back with unguarded desire.
Nathan clears his throat from the doorway, and we startle. “So what are we going to do about your hair?” he asks.
My heart falls. “I guess I’ll wear a different wig. Something simple.”
“Maybe . . . maybe I can help,” Cricket says. “I do have some experience. With hair.”
I frown. “Cricket. You’ve had that same hair your entire life. Don’t tell me you style it that way yourself.”
“No, but . . .” He rubs the back of his neck. “Sometimes I help Cal with hers before competitions.”
My eyebrows raise.
“If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said it was a seriously embarrassing skill for a straight guy.”
“You’re the
best,
” I say.
“Only you would think that.” But he looks pleased.
It’s in this moment that I finally register what he’s wearing. It’s a handsome skinny black suit with a shiny sheen. The pants are too short—on purpose, of course—exposing his usual pointy shoes and a pair of pale blue socks that match my dress
exactly.
And I totally want to jump him.
“Tick tock,” Nathan says.
I scooch past Cricket, back into my bedroom. He gestures to my desk chair, so I lift my skirts up and around the back, and I find a way to sit down. And then he finger-combs my hair. His hands are gentle and quick, the movements smooth and assured. I close my eyes. The room is silent as his fingertips untangle the strands from roots to tips and run loose throughout my hair. I lean back into him. It feels like my entire body is blossoming.
He leans over and whispers in my ear, “They’ve gone.”
I look up, and, sure enough, my parents have left the door ajar. But they’re gone. We smile. Cricket resumes his work, and I nestle into his hands. My eyes close again. After a few minutes, he clears his throat. “I, um, have something to tell you.”
My eyes remain shut, but my eyebrows lift in curiosity. “What kind of something?”
“A story,” he says.
His words become dreamlike, almost hypnotic, as if he’s told this to himself a hundred times before. “Once upon a time, there was a girl who talked to the moon. And she was mysterious and she was perfect, in that way that girls who talk to moons are. In the house next door, there lived a boy. And the boy watched the girl grow more and more perfect, more and more beautiful with each passing year. He watched her watch the moon. And he began to wonder if the moon would help him unravel the mystery of the beautiful girl. So the boy looked into the sky.
“But he couldn’t concentrate on the moon. He was too distracted by the stars.”
I hear Cricket remove a rubber band from his wrist, which he uses to hold a twist of my hair.
“Go on,” I say.
I hear the smile in his voice. “And it didn’t matter how many songs or poems had already been written about them, because whenever he thought about the girl,
the stars shone brighter.
As if she were the one keeping them illuminated.
“One day, the boy had to move away. He couldn’t bring the girl with him, so he brought the stars. When he’d look out his window at night, he would start with one. One star. And the boy would make a wish on it, and the wish would be her name.
“At the sound of her name, a second star would appear. And then he’d wish her name again, and the stars would double into four. And four became eight, and eight became sixteen, and so on, in the greatest mathematical equation the universe had ever seen. And by the time an hour had passed, the sky would be filled with so many stars that it would wake his neighbors. People wondered who’d turned on the floodlights.
“The boy did. By thinking about the girl.”
My eyes open, and my heart is in my throat. “Cricket . . . I’m not
that.
”
He stops pinning my hair. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve built up this idea about me, this
ideal,
but I’m not that person. I’m not perfect. I am far from perfect. I’m not worth such a beautiful story.”
“Lola. You are the story.”
“But a story is just that. It isn’t the truth.”
Cricket returns to his work. The pink roses are added. “I know you aren’t perfect. But it’s a person’s imperfections that make them perfect for someone else.”
Another pin slides into place as I catch sight of the back of his hand. A star. Every star he’s drawn onto his skin has been for
me.
I glance at my doorway to make sure it’s still empty, and I grab his hand.
He looks at it.
I trace my thumb around the star.
He looks at me. His eyes are so painfully, exquisitely blue.
And I pull him down into me, and I plant my lips against his, which are loose with surprise and shock. And I kiss Cricket Bell with everything that’s been building inside of me, everything since he moved back, everything since that summer, everything since our childhood. I kiss him like I’ve never kissed anyone before.
He doesn’t move.
His lips aren’t moving.
My head jerks back in alarm. I’ve acted rashly, I’ve pushed him too quickly—
He collapses to his knees and yanks me back to his lips.
His kiss isn’t even remotely innocent. There’s passion, but there’s also an urgency verging on panic. He pulls me closer, as close as my dress and my chair allow, and he’s gripping me so tightly that I feel his fingers press through the back of my stays.
I pull back, gasping for breath. Reeling. His breath is ragged, and I place my hands on his cheeks to steady him. “Is this okay?” I whisper. “Are you okay?”
His reply is anguished. Honest. “I love you.”
chapter thirty-four
Moonlight shines into my bedroom and reveals his fragile state. “I didn’t say it so you’d say it back,” he says. “Please don’t say it if you don’t mean it. I can wait.”
I rise and detach my gown from the chair. And then I help him stand, and I place his hands around my waist. I lean onto my tiptoes, rest my fingers against the back of his neck, and kiss him gently. Slowly. His tongue finds mine. Our hearts beat faster and faster, and our kisses grow hotter and hotter, until we burst apart from breathlessness.