I stare at him blankly.
“Ha ha, very funny,” I tell him.
Even though I have seen Zephyr sit on my bed hundreds of times, it still never squashes the butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling. I always have the fantasy that one day he will just throw me down onto that pink and white comforter with him, tell me that he loves me, and make love to me for the first time.
Part of me thinks that maybe by going to college he will start seeing me as less of a little girl version of myself.
Maybe I can pull a Sandy from Grease.
Get some leather pants.
Start smoking cigarettes.
That’ll make any man fall in love with you, right?
“I’m serious,” Zephyr says, bringing me back to reality. “We need to transfer. Maybe West Ford’s scholarship is still on the table for me. And you got in there. Let’s just make some calls.”
“Okay, now you’re starting to actually sound crazy. What is going on? We picked Hartford. We are going to Hartfordtomorrow.You’re just having pre-college jitters.”
Zephyr shakes his head and then plunges it into his hands.
He groans.
“I have a half-brother,” he tells me.
I blink at him. “You… have two brothers?”
“And a half-brother that I never knew about who is currently the best tight end on the Hartford football team,” Zephyr tells me in one long breath.
I just stare at him.
I have practically been a part of Zephyr’s family since I met him.
So this news is almost as big of a shock to me as it is to him.
“Holy shit,” is all that I can manage to say.
He brings his eyes up to meet mine again.
“You see why we need to transfer then, yes?” he asks, pleading at me with his gorgeous blue-green eyes.
I love that he keeps sayingwe.
When it came to colleges, it was never a question.
We were going together.
If a school wouldn’t take both of us, it would have neither of us.
So now that he wants to leave Hartford, he of course wants me to leave with him, too.
The only problem is that I think this is just too little too late.
I grabbed my desk chair and dragged it over to sit in front of Zephyr. I look him in his eyes and try to ignore the fluttering that is happening all through my body.
I’ve always been Zephyr’s anchor.
And he’s been mine.