Summer Boys by Hailey Abbott

Author:Hailey Abbott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Scholastic

16

Sometime in the middle of the night, Beth woke up with the eerie feeling that someone was watching her. She rolled far enough over in bed to see the illuminated outline of her bedroom door. It looked like it was cracked open. She knew she’d closed it. And then something shifted at the foot of the bed.

“Shit!” Beth gasped.

She shrank back against the headboard, making out the figure in the bright moonlight sifting through the window. It was George, sitting on the edge of the mattress, one hand in front of his face, shushing her, and the other beside her knee. Beth’s heart was beating a mile a minute. “Jesus, George, you scared me.”

“I was trying to figure out whether I should wake you,” he whispered.

Beth rubbed her forehead, trying to orient herself. The glowing red numbers of the clock said it was 3:13 A.M. She’d gone to bed right after they’d gotten home from the party, around 1:00. What was George doing in her room two hours later?

She swallowed as she stretched out her legs again. Her skin felt hot. George crawled up to her left side and lay on his stomach, resting his upper body on his elbows.

In the darkness, Beth could see his outline and the glint of his eyes, but not much else. Even in the pitch-black darkness, he was adorable.

“What’s up?” she asked, calmer now.

George ran both his hands through his hair and let out a deep, resigned sigh. “I don’t know.”

The way he said it was serious. Beth felt paralyzed. There was something big happening here. George was lying on her bed. It was dark. It was the middle of the night. There wasn’t the usual “old pal” comfortability between them anymore. There was a tension so palpable it felt heavy.

“Weren’t you hanging out with Cara?”

“She went home. It’s not…it doesn’t matter.” George picked at some invisible lint on the blanket covering the parts of Beth that were covered. “I came up here because I just had to talk to you.…” He sidled over to get a little closer to her.

Beth swallowed. “About what?” Her head was throbbing, and she knew it wasn’t a symptom of a hangover. She had the dawning suspicion that things were about to change between them forever.

“We’ve been friends for a long time.…”

She tugged the blanket up against her chest. What was she going to do if he tried to kiss her? All she knew was that she had the urge to touch his face, his neck. He seemed to have taken on some different aura. Suddenly, George was somebody she didn’t completely know.

“You mean a lot to me, you know that?” he said.

Beth nodded. George cleared his throat and went on.

“And I’ve never had a girlfriend. I mean, I don’t want things to change between us.”

“Sure, I understand,” Beth agreed, hypnotized. The word girlfriend practically gave her an electric shock.

With a jerk, George straightened up and pulled his legs in so he was sitting Indian style. Beth sat up, too, her face floating close to his.

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