I twisted my lips, holding up a finger. Silas held up the phone while I hovered my finger over the green button. “Luke,” I said into my own phone. “Run for cover.”
“What are you doing?” Luke asked.
I pushed the green button, cringing when I did. I knew how badly it hurt and I didn’t want to do that to North, but he was acting crazy.
From my phone came a string of curses in the distance from North. Luke hollered back at him, something I couldn’t understand. Luke breathed heavily into the phone. “What did you do?”
“I zapped him back.”
“What?”
“Is he still yelling?”
“Yes,” Silas said, as he held his own phone to his ear. Silas moved to sit back in the tub, putting an arm behind me. I sat back, putting my head on his shoulder as I half listened to Luke scuffling on the phone and Silas talking to North on the other side.
“North,” Silas said, “no, she’s fine. Stop yelling at Luke. Stop yelling at me.”
“Swap phones? “ I asked him.
“Yeah,” Silas said, handing the phone off to me and taking mine.
“North?”
Heavy breathing into the phone. “What?”
I bit my lip, unsure. He did sound angry. “Are you mad at me?”
Pause. “No.”
“Are you mad at Luke?”
Another pause. “No.”
“Are you mad at Silas?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
North grunted. “He shocked me.”
“No, he didn’t. I pushed the button.”
Pause. “Oh.”
“Are you mad at me now?”
“Maybe.”
I half grinned. Maybe it did work. I looked up at Silas, watching his face as I spoke. “North?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still like me?”
North grumbled. “Yes.” Pause. “Do you still like me?” he said in a quieter tone.
Was he trying to hide it from Luke? “Yes. Can you please stop yelling at people?”
“I guess.”
I said goodbye and hung up. Silas was already off the phone with Luke. I held the phone over to him. He took it and dropped both his and mine on a dry spot nearby. He turned around again. I put my head against his shoulder again, pulled my knees up to my chest, and wrapped my arms around my legs. Silas’s fingers dropped over the crook of my collarbone.
“I like my phone,” I said, “but could we not have them for a little while?”
Silas chuckled. He pressed his cheek against the top of my head. “Sorry, Aggele. All families have rules. One of ours is you have to have your phone on you all the time.”
“What’s the other rules?”
“Don’t get into trouble,” he said, and poked me in the ribs with a finger.
I grumbled, rolling my head against his shoulder. “I keep trying not to. It isn’t working.”
Silas stretched his free arm over his head, and flexed his legs in the hot tub. “Let’s just try to get through the evening without any more zapping.”
My hand absentmindedly moved to my chest, where I almost still felt the buzz of the electricity through it. I hoped North’s zap didn’t hurt him. I hated to think of how many times they were zapped or I’d done it without realizing it could hurt. Maybe it was different if it was in their pockets, but what if they were holding on to it?
We settled into a peaceful quiet, watching the game. Silas’s fingers traced along my collarbone. The football game switched into the third quarter. The tub bubbled and churned around us.
I started to get that stomach flipping feeling again. My cheeks heated up. I didn’t want to look up because I wasn’t sure I could look at Silas right now. His hand against my shoulder and my head on his arm, I stared at the game feeling highly sensitive again. The silence grew uncomfortable to me and I yearned to think of something to say that would break this feeling, but nothing sounded right and my mouth felt glued together.
The hot tub shuttered around us and the jets shut off.
Silas grunted next to me. “All right, Aggele Mou. Time to get out.”
I moaned. “Aw.”
Silas laughed, pulling himself away and standing, stretching and turned to look down at me. “You’re going to cook your insides up if you stay in too long.”
My eyes widened. Was he serious?
Silas climbed to get out. I turned, standing slowly and he reached for my hand to pull me out to stand next to him.
My head started to black out in a dizzy spell. I pushed a palm to my forehead as I wobbled on my feet. “Whoa,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Just a little dizzy,” I admitted.
“Did you eat today?”
I understood what he was asking, but I ended up simply staring at him as my brain was a big too foggy to remember at the moment.
Silas smirked at me and turned to fetch the towels. “When’s the last time you ate anything?”
“I had coffee this morning.”
“Nothing else?”
“Luke made me a sandwich at work. I’ve been busy.”
“That means it’s dinner time,” he said, tossing a towel at me. “I swear, girl, if I wasn’t standing on top of you, you’d die.”
I rolled my eyes, bending over to dry off my legs before I wrapped the towel around myself. Silas kept his eyes on me as I did, leaving me with my cheeks heated and my heart fluttered.
Complicated Dating
Silas held our phones and his keys and I hung onto his shirt as we started out. Once we were outside again and weaving our way around the ponds and crossing sidewalks, I shivered against the coolness in the air. I clutched his shirt to my body to keep the breeze off. The sudden change from the hot tub to the cooler air dazed me enough to make me feel like I was sleepwalking.
Another guy walked along the path toward us. I wasn’t paying attention to him, instead looking around at the pond we were passing. Silas moved closer beside me, taking my hand.
“Yo, Si,” the guy said, sparking me out of my daze. “That’s your girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” Silas said, his fingers tightening around my palm.
I did my best to hide my surprise. Girlfriend? Why would he care to say it to a complete stranger? We did it at school. Did it matter to do so outside of there?
“Cute,” he said, and he moved past us, the conversation dropped.
My heart was racing. Silas didn’t say anything about it. He stared ahead, leading the way back to his apartment. My lips felt glued shut and I couldn’t formulate the question to ask. Did he say it just to end the conversation quickly? Was he trying to imply that he considered me his girlfriend?
Would he take my silence as a sign I was interested and didn’t mind being considered his girlfriend even outside school?
The questions hovered around my head like the gentle breeze that followed us back to his apartment. He opened the door, and I shivered against the blast of cool air. His air conditioner was running full blast.
“Do you want to go shower?” Silas asked, closing the door behind us. “I’ll take care of dinner.”
“You’re going to cook?”
He flashed a grin. “Something like that.” He led the way down the hall and stopped, opening a door and stepping inside.
It was the bedroom I’d glimpsed at earlier. There were a couple of baseball posters on the wall. Sporting equipment leaned against a corner, along with baseball bats of various types, a couple of gloves and other gear. There was a computer desk with a closed laptop, a tool belt sitting on top of it.
Most of the room was taken up by a massive bed, bigger than I’ve ever seen in person. It was square, with a tall, wood headboard and matching footboard. The bed was unmade, revealing cream cotton sheets and a thin dark blue blanket draped over, half hanging on the floor. A single thin pillow sat in the middle. There was another flat screen television hanging on the wall opposite the bed.