“I’m Allegra. Let me know if you need anything else. Another color or size, just give me a shout.”
A shout was the least of what I wanted to give her, but I managed to nod before completely losing my grip behind the closed dressing-room door.
What just happened?
I hung up the shirts and sat down on the bench, my face in my hands, willing it to just go away. I’d been floating on a cloud all morning—more specifically, since last night . . . the cottage . . . saying good night in Grayson’s car. Every time I thought about one of his slow, deep kisses, it was like a buzz through my body, a yummy ache that could only be filled by seeing him again.
Not like this.
Not like this.
There was a knock at the door.
“Wren.”
“Go away. Go away. Go away,” I whispered into my hands.
“Wren, please. Open the door,” Grayson whispered.
I was instantly flushed, hot. The door seemed so far away.
“Please,” he said.
I got up, opened the latch. He came in and shut the door behind him. We stood there, about a foot apart.
Looking at each other.
Grayson’s eyes were wary as he studied me. As if I might claw at him. I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t. I felt duped. All the wonderful feelings I’d been carrying around taunted me now, made the night before feel like a pathetic lie.
“What?” I asked.
“I know this looks . . . bad.”
I struggled to take a normal breath.
“Wren, if I knew—”
“Knew what?” I asked, voice catching, my throat so tight it hurt. “That I’d be here?”
Brooke had spent the morning on the phone scouring the tri-state area to find a retired gold Pandora charm she wanted to buy her future mother-in-law for Christmas, before she and Pete headed back to DC for their final exams. Her “shopping quest,” as she called it, took us twenty minutes away to the Pandora store in the Staten Island Mall. While Brooke ran to get the charm, I ran to Hollister—not my usual go-to place, but I had a leftover fifty-dollar store gift card from my sweet sixteen that I’d been saving for something special. My date with Grayson seemed like the perfect occasion to blow it on. Even a gal who didn’t make NHS could appreciate the irony of the moment.
“You’ve got every right to be pissed, but I swear it’s not what it looks like.” The words were laced with sincerity. I hated myself for caving, even tilting in his direction the slightest bit. The image of them leaning together flashed through my mind again.
“And what is it?”
He put his hands up to his face, covering his eyes, praying, maybe, for an answer that would help me not feel so shitty.
His head tilted back as he ran his fingers down his face and heaved an exasperated sigh.
“I’m doing a favor for Luke.”
“Luke? Really? Because he has trouble talking to girls.”
“I am here because of Luke, but I can’t . . . I can’t go into it right now.”
“You touched her hair,” I said, stepping back. “The way she looked at you—”
“No, Wren . . . I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . . I’m a total jackass, okay? Don’t—”
“Grayson, I need to go. My sister’s waiting for me, and I came here to . . .” I couldn’t even finish.
He reached for me then, his eyes soft, remorseful. I wanted to believe him, to forget that any of this happened.
“Wren, last night was amazing,” he said, touching his forehead to mine, closing his eyes. His hands were around my waist, drawing me in to him. And there was that scent, that earthy, spicy shower-gel thing that took me back to the night before, the way my body had felt underneath his. “You have to know there’s nothing I would do to screw that up. Nothing.”
I put my forehead on his shoulder. I wanted to believe him. Knew somehow that I could. He relaxed into me, breathing out, pulling me closer. My hands snaked around him. Our mouths found each other, becoming more insistent as neither of us pulled away. We moved until we hit the wall of the dressing room, bodies pressing together, like no time had passed since our after-work tryst. I never thought I’d be the kind of girl who made out in the Hollister dressing room, but there I was, sliding my hands into Grayson’s back pockets, pulling him as close as he could get.
“Everything okay in there?” Allegra called.
“Mmm-hmm,” I answered, my mouth still on Grayson’s.
I heard her flip-flop away. We stopped, straightening up.
“Now what?” I asked.
“I’m going home,” he said.
“And your favor?” I asked, not wanting to bring the jeggings-clad Hollister goddess back into it but not wanting to be a complete love-starved doormat either.
“Screw Luke,” he whispered, kissing me again. “We’re still on for tonight?”
“You will explain all of this to me, right?” I asked.
“It’s complicated, but, yeah I’ll, um, try.”
Complicated . . . was this what he was talking about at the cottage?
“See you later then,” I said, motioning for him to leave. The thought that he might go back out and continue his conversation with . . . that girl . . . crossed my mind, but I decided to trust him for the moment.
“Later,” he said, kissing me. He tugged on his jacket, straightened himself up, and walked out, closing the door behind him.
I turned toward the shirts I’d picked out, catching my reflection in the mirror. My chest was flushed, the echo of Grayson’s kiss still making my lips tingle. I took a breath to compose myself and left the dressing room.
Brooke was on a bench out front, sucking down a ginormous cup of lemonade, apparently one of the few things that didn’t make her nauseous, Pandora shopping bag next to her.
“Hey, let’s go,” I said, joining her. When she saw I was empty-handed, she frowned.
“You were in there for half an hour and found nothing?” she asked. Another lovely side effect of pregnancy was that she’d transformed into a total bitch. My mother, who, even if she hadn’t accepted the fact that she was going to be a grandmother, had at least softened to it, gave Brooke a wide berth and expected me to do the same.
“Wait until you come visit me in January. The shopping in DC is so much better.”
“I thought I was coming for a college visit,” I said, sitting down next to her. This brilliant idea had been discussed during her and Pete’s dinner with the parents. I had the sinking suspicion Brooke was gunning for me to go to Georgetown more for babysitting purposes than higher education, but the thought of an actual college visit—even if it was to a reach school—made me excited. At least I’d have something to tell Mrs. Fiore in our second strategy meeting.
“The college visit will take an hour, two at most; then we’ll have fun.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I slid it out, checked my messages. Grayson.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
For someone who claimed to be doing a favor for someone else, he was awfully regretful. I promised myself I wouldn’t get so caught up in his kiss that I let him get away with not telling me what this supposed favor was about.
I thought about what Ava had said to me in the hallway at school, how she and Luke just gravitated to each other when they were in the same place. Was that what Grayson and I were doing? Gravitating? Could I handle this relationship if it was just a physical thing?
“You realize that about one percent of the population can wear pants like that,” Brooke said, wrinkling her nose and motioning toward the store in front of us.
No surprise, she was talking about her. The Hollister girl stood on the porch of the store. She had one of those see-through purses that shop employees needed to carry and kept searching up and down the length of the mall, frowning. The hollow feeling in my gut told me this had something to do with Grayson, and I felt a momentary obligation to tell her that he’d left.