Chapter 1: Rainy Afternoon 🌶️

The ceiling fan over the senior wing turned slow, useless circles. The air it pushed had no temperature to it.
Outside the long windows, the sky had gone the kind of low, swollen grey that meant Charlotte was about to come down on them whether they were ready or not. School had let out an hour ago. The classroom was empty. June Halsey was slumped over her desk, asleep.
She was dreaming. There was a voice in it — steady, low, the kind of voice she had to lean closer to hear. Almost gentle.
Cool, like wind across her arm.
She shifted against her elbow. Her lashes lifted, slow.
A little light. Then air, moving across her cheek.
When her eyes focused she realized someone had sat down at the desk next to hers and was fanning her face with a folded review packet.
She jerked upright. Wiped fast at the corner of her mouth, ducked her chin.
No drool. Thank god.
“Sorry, I —”
“Sorry, I —”
They said it at the same time. She kept her eyes down and let him go first. After a beat, the boy across the aisle finished his sentence.
“It took longer than I thought. Ms. Connelly asked me to check the senior key. You don’t have to wait next time. You can just head home.”
“It’s fine,” she said. Her voice came out small.
She’d only just woken up. Her dark eyes felt hazy, like there was a thin film of sleep still in front of them. The corners of her eyes looked damp. There was a deep pink ridge along one cheek where her face had been pressed into her arm, and a faint shine of sweat at her hairline and at the tip of her nose. She’d slept hot. Her body had probably sweated through her shirt too.
“Tate,” she said. “Let’s go.”
He looked at the line of her neck at the edge of her collar.
A small bead of sweat had slipped down her skin, tracking the curve of her throat, soaking into the cotton.
His Adam’s apple moved. His fingers, resting on the desk beside him, curled in. He gave a small nod.
“Yeah.”
She stood, still half-asleep. She rubbed at her eyes, didn’t really see what was in front of her, and walked straight into the desk in front of her — would have, all the way — except his hand was already at her wrist, catching her aside.
He’d only needed to nudge her out of the way.
When he grabbed her he put a little more force into it than he’d needed to. And then his front was lightly against her — the soft warmth of her body, the faint clean smell of her — right there in front of him before he could think about what he was doing.
He felt unsettled.
The truth was, he’d been doing badly with this for a while now. Against her body — slim, soft, quiet in a way most girls weren’t — his body kept embarrassing him. Whenever the guys got going in the locker room, talking shit the way guys did, his head would slide somewhere he didn’t want it to slide. The full curve of her chest under her uniform. The white slip of thigh that showed when her gym shorts rode up at practice. He could carry a single image of her around for days and remember it sharper than anything he’d ever studied for.
It made him feel like an animal. He couldn’t control when he got hard. He ended up jerking off most nights just to be able to sleep.
He hid it well. He didn’t want her to see any of it — didn’t want her to think he was the kind of guy who only thought about that. He was scared that if she saw it, she’d run.
In the hot quiet classroom, the two of them had only touched for a second. Then they were apart.
“Thank you,” she said, soft.
He let go of her wrist — firm, immediate. He lowered his voice. “No worries.”
It came out a little hoarse. He hadn’t expected that.
She didn’t look at him.
He didn’t think he could have looked back at her yet, anyway.
—
She was half a step behind him on the way out, slim and quiet, her bag against her hip.
In the breezeway the wind had teeth. The cicadas had gone quiet outside the upper school. The sky over Eastover Avenue was the dark green that meant a thunderstorm was coming and probably soon. He could feel the pressure of it on the back of his neck. The breeze that hit them had something cold and wet in it.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Feels good,” she said. She shook her head.
He looked back at the sidewalk. His hand floated half a second over hers, then went into his pocket. He rubbed his thumb against the seam, hard.
It was four-thirty. The downtown light rail rattled along the elevated track across the boulevard, its windows lit yellow against the dark sky. People moved past them on the sidewalk with gym bags and to-go cups. The wind was cooler now. She kept her eyes on her shoes.
She didn’t know what to say to him.
She never knew what to say to anyone, really. She’d always been shy — the kind of shy where she had to gather herself up before she could speak to people, even ones she’d known a long time. With Tate it had been getting easier. He was her boyfriend.
Except lately she’d been hearing things. Bianca Russo — varsity volleyball, the prettiest girl in their year — apparently also liked him. Last week she’d written him a letter and handed it to him out in the open in the hallway. Brazen about it. Bianca played volleyball. So did Tate. Tate played basketball — he was the one the whole team built every play around. Someone had even seen him at Beech Mountain in winter doing freestyle skiing in his goggles, sharp and clean. Tate gave the impression of being smart at everything, good at everything, easy at everything. He was a brain and a jock and a face all in one boy.
Tate had everything.
June didn’t.
She had never felt safe in this. She always felt like he was going to break up with her at any moment. The anxiety wasn’t unfounded. She’d been a preemie. Her body had been weak her whole childhood — she’d been on some kind of medication almost every year as far back as she could remember. Tate loved being outside, loved moving. He probably preferred the kind of girl who was bright and quick and full of life. When he was with other people he talked more than when he was with her.
If this kept going, he was going to figure out how dull she was.
She pressed her lips together. Her thoughts were all over the place. She couldn’t ask him about any of them. She’d never been able to ask anyone anything.
He’d been quiet lately. He was thinking about something.
He had to be thinking about that letter.
He had to be thinking about how to break up with her.
—
Three months ago, she could still see it.
March. The spring wind had been sharp. He’d asked her to come downstairs to the side of the building — she’d thought he was walking her to a teacher.
He’d stopped under a magnolia tree at the corner of the academic wing instead, half-hidden by the leaves. The wind kept knocking the leaves into each other, rustling. Gold light came through in pieces and scattered across his shoulders.
He’d been in his lacrosse warmup. She’d never noticed before that his arms looked harder than other boys’ arms. He’d lowered his head a little — because of her height — and the leaf-shadow moved across his shoulder and the side of his face. His jawline looked clean. But his eyes looked tired, like he had something heavy on his mind.
“Sorry to interrupt your study hall,” he’d said. “I just — I’ve been watching you for a while. I wanted to know if maybe you’d been noticing me back.”
It came out straight and out of nowhere. After he said it, his face went red. His fingers — she could see them at his sides — were shaking, a little. His voice shifted as he forced the rest of it out.
“June,” he said. “I want to be your boyfriend.”