Boys smelled like goat cheese.
Thus, fourteen-year-old Eve Keller had put them into one category: NOPE.
No, thanks. They were all the same. Not for her.
That opinion changed on a brisk autumn day in late November.
Eve held the snack-size bag of Fritos between her teeth. She needed her hands free to unload her school iPad and science notes, but before she managed to unzip her backpack, the two guys throwing a baseball in her friend Skylar's backyard caught her eye. One of them she recognized. One of them she didn't. In their smallish Rhode Island town of Cumberland, coming across an unfamiliar face wasn't typical.
If she’d seen this newcomer before, she would have remembered.
He had a different way of standing. Braced for a blow. Chin up, hands half curled at his sides. Eyes narrowed as if suspicious of his surroundings, his demeanor very still and observant, while conversely, his black hair moved every which way with the wind. Something else that marked him as an outsider? He wore a jacket, instead of a hoodie, as was the custom with the local boys, even when temperatures dipped to the twenties.
As if sensing her curious gaze, the young man’s head turned and caught her staring from the kitchen window. Apart from a slight widening of his eyes—what color were they?—his expression didn’t change. But those hands completed their curl at his sides. Quickly, Eve looked away, surprised to feel goose bumps lifting on her arms inside her sweater sleeves, no idea she’d spend the next eight years holding back four words from being said aloud. Four words that would keep her awake at night, choking her at times.
I saw him first.
“Who is that?” Eve asked her best friend, Skylar, who was the only freshman at Cumberland High with an At-a-Glance business planner—and she had her nose buried in it now.
“Who is who?” Skylar asked, distracted by her color-coded to-do list.
“That big dude with your brother.”
Skylar’s brunette head popped up. “Huh?” She turned in her chair to follow Eve’s line of sight out the window. “I have no idea. Wait. Why is he kind of hot?”
Eve snorted and sat, ripping open her chip bag. “The hot ones are always the biggest assholes.”
The other girl snorted too. “If he’s hanging out with my stepbrother, that definitely tracks.”
Eve woke up the home screen of her iPad.
“Maybe he’s on Elton’s travel team,” she murmured, once more glancing out the window.
“Uh, yeah. No. Look at his form. Is this, like, the first time he’s ever thrown a baseball?”
“Maybe he’s a cousin on your stepdad’s side,” Eve suggested, refusing to be caught staring again. Although keeping her attention glued to her iPad screen was annoyingly difficult.
“Imagine you just called your new cousin hot.”
“Stop.”
“Stop being a pervert.”
They ducked their heads to muffle the sound of their laughter, though Eve put an end to her mirth a lot sooner than Skylar, not wanting to make it weird. Or make it seem like she was too invested. Their friendship was still new, right? Skylar might welcome Eve at her kitchen table to do homework today, but girls their age were fickle. They switched up friend groups as often as they changed their nail polish color. Skylar was already getting teased for hanging out with Eve and it was only a matter of time before that got old.
Ignoring the dread that sank low in her stomach, Eve fished out another Frito curl and popped the chip into her mouth.
“What do you think is going to be on the quiz tomo—”
“Oh my god, they’re coming in here.”
“What? Oh.” Eve clapped her hands together to get rid of the Frito salt, then ran what she hoped were five nonchalant fingers through her chin-length blond hair, surprised to find her pulse being weird. “Whatever.”
“Yeah,” Skylar breathed, her casual shrug looking more like a flinch. “Whatever.”