Then I motioned her down with my fingers. “Come here and look at this.”
“What if there are spiders down there?” I couldn’t see her nose crinkle, but I could hear it in her voice. “What if they climb into my hair?”
I chuckled quietly. “They’re just as scared of you as you are of them. Come on, I won’t let them crawl into your hair. You can put your head on me if it would make you feel any better.”
She let out a deep sigh before settling down perpendicular to me and setting her head on my stomach. I was all at once hyper aware of her coconut scented hair and the warmth of her head against my stomach. Something wild fluttered in my gut.
“Whoa, that’s really pretty,” she said, staring up at the stars. “I kind of wish they’d let us camp out here some night. It’s nothing like the sky we see back home.” The vibration of her voice against my stomach did strange things to my body, making my dick thicken.
I grunted in response. “It’s weird that we’re only half a day’s drive away from where you live. I wish I could go there.”
“No you don’t. Trust me. There’s not much to see. But I wish I could see where you live. I’ve never been outside of California.”
My fingers reached out on their own to tangle in a strand of her hair. It was soft and smooth, the way I had started to imagine her lips would feel. “One day I’ll bring you to New York.”
“I could never afford something like that,” she said quietly.
“You wouldn’t need money. You’d be my guest.”
She didn’t say anything more as I smoothed more of her hair out across my stomach. “What did you think of my song?”
Her head shifted slightly as she took a deep breath. “It was…wow, Roman. I can’t believe you wrote that. Not because I don’t think you’re talented enough to do it, because you are. It’s just…you’re special. I mean your voice and the way you can strum a guitar when you just learned how to play…you could be the next Justin Bieber one day.”
When I laughed extra hard, her head bounced. “I’d much rather be the next Jimmy Page.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, her voice quiet as if embarrassed.
I pushed my fingers deeper into her hair, lightly massaging her scalp. “I-I w-wrote that s-song f-for you.”
The world ended.
Not really, but bile surged against my throat. My heart screeched to a painful stop. The stutter I spent years keeping at bay was back, and Isabelle wasn’t saying anything. I sucked in a painfully hard breath, waiting for her response. I was sure she was going to stand up and run as fast as her legs would carry her.
“I kind of guessed you did,” she said in a soft voice.
Then she sat up. I almost burst into tears like a little kid, knowing she was getting ready to run. I had screwed things up and lost my best friend.
But then she leaned over me, her hair making a veil around us. Her eyes were shining down on me through the darkness, wet with tears. “That was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
Then she gathered her hair behind her head, leaned down, and pressed her lips against my cheek. They were soft, warm, damp with tears, and filled with an unspoken promise to love me no matter if I stuttered or made a fool of myself in any other way.
That was the summer I knew without a doubt that my life would never be the same.
I was madly in love.
Chapter Five
ROMAN
I checked my watch for what felt like the hundredth time and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. If I didn’t see Isabelle soon, I was going to implode.
There’s no doubt about it, the last nine months had been a living hell. After having an epic summer with Isabelle, it only seemed logical that I’d return home to a nightmare. Eric had opened his big mouth and told my parents that I had a “gift” for writing music. Naturally my mother ran with the news, scheduling piano lessons, sessions with a private instructor, and the auditions on Broadway I’d been fighting against for years.
The news had the opposite effect on my father. He thought pursuing a career in music was “utterly useless” and “a total waste of money.” He insisted it would only bring down my grades if I added one more “hobby” to the list, and told me it was either music or sports. I picked sports, because I didn’t want to be known as “that guy” around my friends—the one who wore makeup and tight pants while performing on a stage. My decision made my mother as angry as I’ve ever seen her. After I returned, they fought for weeks on end about what I should or shouldn’t do with my life, as if I were only a spectator. Finally, right before Christmas, my father moved out.