“What’d your mom say?” he asks after a long time.
“Nothing.” I watch a small cloud race across the moon and continue on, followed by another big, puffy bank.
“You’re not going back there, are you?” Maddox asks.
I glance at him from the corner of my eye and lean up to take a sip of my beer, which is now tepid and almost flat. “Not unless you want me to.”
He scowls at the moon. “Do you want me to kill a cop?”
“No,” I say, lying back next to him. “I don’t want you to kill anyone.”
A silence falls between us, heavy with the question I can’t bring myself to ask. I know he must have killed people. I don’t really want to know, though.
“And I don’t want you to leave,” he says at last.
Those words hang even heavier, and I wait for him to amend it, to justify it.
“I don’t want you to leave…
If that’s the only place you have to go.
Until graduation.
If you want to stay.
Unless you make trouble between me and my brother.”
But he doesn’t say anything. For a long while, we just lie there, watching the clouds cover and uncover the moon. I can feel the heat of his bare arm crackling along mine even across the space between us. My fingers twitch, my palms tingling with the memory of his smooth skin under them. I ache for his touch, hope so hard my chest hurts that he’ll reach over and lace his fingers through mine.
After what must be an hour or more, he sits up and smokes again, then leans back on his elbows, watching the sky full of the moon and clouds and stars passing us by, like time moving over us as we lie still, suspended in this moment, on this roof, on this night.
“See that cloud covering the moon now?” I ask. “That looks like a big fluffy bunny, right?”
Maddox squints and tilts his head. “Where’s the ears?”
“Oh, and that one?” I say, pointing to a cumulous heap higher in the sky. “That’s my big fluffy castle. Hey, I think there’s even a princess in it.”
“Either you’re high as hell, or you’re fucking with me,” Maddox says.
“No, I’m serious,” I insist. “See, she’s leaning out the window, waving to her pet unicorn. Which is… Right there.” I point to a little shapeless blob of clouds, edged by silvery moonlight.
“Shut the fuck up,” Maddox says.
I bat my eyes and give him my most innocent look. “Just trying to live in the magical fairytale land inside my head.”
Maddox growls and pounces on me, his strong fingers digging into my ribs painfully hard. I yelp and struggle as he pins me, laughing and tickling me so hard I know I’ll have bruises. But I can’t help but laugh too, thrashing around as he keeps going, tickling me until I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.
“Stop, stop,” I beg, gasping for breath. I shove at his hands, flopping back and forth to free myself. Suddenly, his hot palms are on my bare skin, my loose tank having ridden up while we wrestled. He stops moving, his big hands circling my waist, his face hovering over mine. Our eyes meet, and the laughter dies on my lips. His own smile slips away, and there’s nothing between us. There’s just him and me, my heart beating so hard I can hear it, my breath coming quick, my chest rising and falling between us.
He leans a fraction closer, his gaze dropping to my lips. My lids flutter closed, my heart stopping with anticipation.
I feel him move away. My eyes fly open in time to see him stand and brush off his shorts. I sit up quickly, confused and hurt and disappointed all at once.
“It’s getting light,” he says, holding out a hand. “Mom’s home too, so the door’s open.Venga.”
What the hell?
My head is spinning at how quickly he turned it off, how abruptly it all ended. He’s right though. We stayed up all night, longer than I thought. I must have lost track of time when we were high, or talking, or tickling, or… Just being together. It was so comfortable, surprisingly easy to be with him when he’s not being a total dickhead. Is it because he thinks of me differently now, like a sister, as he told Reggie?