“That’s not an option.”
“I’m already dead.”
“Everyone is.”
“You’re not.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to live again. With you.”
He blushes. “What if we could just treat these next months like the gift they are?”
“Sorry, but where you see a gift, I see gift wrap on a ticking time bomb.”
I’m pacing again.
His gaze follows me patiently. His calm resolve only frustrates me more. He can’t actually be serious about this. Give up the chance to live again—and be with me for real off this island—just because he doesn’t think Garnet will fight for him? No. He has to be with her. She thinks he’s into her again; he needs to roll with that, and I’ll just have to wait until he wins…then wake up and join him in California.
“Anne, come on,” he says, interrupting my scheming. “Stop thinking about tomorrow.”
“I’m thinking about tonight. I’m thinking about you tracking down Garnet and throwing yourself at her within the hour. Kiss her. Tell her you love her. Do whatever it takes to win your life back, Ben.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Not doing it would be crazy.”
“Come on. Be young and reckless with me.” He stops me mid-stride. “Just live in the here and now, where we’re together and we can be as connected as I’ve been dreaming about.”
Before I can list off the many, many head injuries he must be suffering from, he presses his lips softly to mine, then more powerfully. I stagger on the spot. He draws his hands down to my shoulders and, with a need that surprises me, pulls me about as close to him as a person can get without actually melting into him, which it sort of feels like I’m doing. I wonder if the lines around us are blurring, like they do when he holds my hand. To test the limits, I curl my fingers into his soft hair.
Definitely melting into him.
I’m kissing Ben Zin. I’m kissing Ben Zin. In the moonlight on an island, I’m kissing Ben Zin.
And he’s kissing me. His lips trail away from mine and run up my cheekbones, to my eyelids, and down my jaw, softly, wonderfully, to my throat.
Definitely melting into him.
I open my eyes to see his are closed. I close my eyes and imagine his open.
I think he says my name. And I’m pretty sure I say his. Warm shivers replace the cold ones. His lips find mine again. His breath is fast, and I’m not sure if I’m hyperventilating or holding my breath— air intake is, frankly, not high on my priority list right now.
It’s not until I begin to unbutton his shirt—just one button— that our eyes open. Ben looks at me, his face flushed, and grabs my hands, stopping me.
“Anne,” he breathes. Then he shakes his head.
“You’re right. It’s too cold out here. Let’s go find my dorm—we can kick Harper out. No one will see you.”
“That’s not what I meant.” With the most unusual expression, he steps back and releases my hands. He pats his hair back in place. “I don’t want to do this with you.”
THIS IS THE PART WHERE I DIE.
“Anne, I moved really fast once before,” Ben says, his tone pleading but firm. “And, God help me, I’d love to repeat that mistake right now, but it would be a mistake. I’d never forgive myself.”
I am standing with my hands still in the air, positioned where his top button was. I am a statue memorializing the purest moment of rejection any girl has ever known. A plaque rests at my feet: The Easy Girl. Somehow, this is what I’ve become, what he’s made me. Somehow, the boy is telling the girl she’s moving too fast. I’m that girl. Even though I’m not.
I drop my hands.
Embarrassment heats my skin, making me feel so hot all over, I’d take his blazer off if he wouldn’t think I was trying to seduce him. If I could die, I would be dead right now. Death by sexual shaming.
“Anne, please don’t take that the wrong way.”
It’s a line he’s made famous for me. Don’t take my cold shoulder the wrong way. Don’t take the implication that you’re a total slut the wrong way. He repeats my name, but he keeps his distance. I shake my head like it’s no big deal. I need to disappear. I need to rewind to the moment he first appeared at the top of the cliff and do this all over again, but this time I’ll make him feel like a sexual deviant.
“You’re angry.”
I shake my head again. “It’s cold. I should go find my room. Unpack. And stuff. I’m really sorry you got Garnet for a Guardian, Ben.”
“A-Anne.”
“Please don’t,” I whisper, stepping past him and shaking him off when he reaches for me. “I wasn’t suggesting what you think I was. I just liked… It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t leave,” he says, following me. “I don’t know why you’re taking this so poorly.”
You wouldn’t know, I think. You’re always the one doing the rejecting; I’m always the one receiving it.
“Good night, Ben.”
“Anne, please!” he shouts after me.
My head is in a daze as I rush down the hill, cross the quad, and run toward the girls’ dorm. All I can think about is Ben with Garnet. Sure, he talks like she was a proxy for me, but I’m damn sure that he got a lot closer to my would-be understudy than he’s willing to get to me.
I reach the girls’ dorm before he can catch up with me. I shove the door to the squat stone building open and dart inside, closing it behind me to distance myself from him. The whole way here, I could hear his breath as he ran a timid five or so paces behind me. He could’ve overtaken me at any point, but evidently he’s smarter than that.
The lights are dim inside the dorm. The stained-glass windows won’t let me see if he’s still outside.
“Doesn’t matter,” I whisper. I stare at the wall next to me. And then lean into it.
Here, with my forehead pressed against a copy of the Cania Christy Code of Student Conduct—featuring BS rules like no fraternizing with the villagers, who are basically gone now anyway—I close my eyes and see Ben with Garnet. Doing everything he says he doesn’t want to rush into with me. I relive the time I cowered at the edge of the Zin property and watched as, standing with Ben in his kitchen, Garnet lifted his hand to her mouth; there was nothing innocent about that. I’d be more than a little naive to believe they never slept together. Ugh. They totally did. They def-in-ite-ly did. Ben slept with Garnet. And the mechanics of it! I can’t help torturing myself with each painstaking step in a process I’m unqualified to imagine. The taking off of clothes. The selection of a suitable location. The spoken or unspoken agreement that this is going to happen. I squeeze my eyelids until I see bright orange dots instead of two intertwined bodies. Where I’d be a tense, awkward mess, they probably weren’t even shy about it. Garnet’s so damn confident, and Ben’s so impossibly gorgeous. They slept together. Naked. Skin to skin. Probably more than once. Oh, God. Probably