CHAPTER TWO

FAMILIAR FACES, NEW FEELINGS

 The Silver Spoon Diner sat on the corner of Main and Elm like a chrome-and-neon promise, its windows fogged from decades of frying bacon and brewing coffee.

 Anna pushed through the door at eleven sharp, and the bell overhead sang its same tinny song, the exact same note she'd heard a thousand times before, ordering milkshakes after school, grabbing burgers after football games, nursing coffees the morning after prom.

 Carly was already in their booth.

 "Anna!"

 The shriek carried across the diner, turning heads, making Anna grin despite herself. Carly had always been louder than the room could contain, bright in a way that made people want to orbit her.

 She was sliding out of the booth before Anna could cross the black-and-white checkered floor, blonde hair swinging, arms already open.

 The collision smelled like vanilla body spray and bubble gum, and Anna laughed into her best friend's shoulder, feeling thirteen again, feeling home.

 "I can't believe you're actually here," Carly squealed, pulling back to frame Anna's face with both hands, the way mothers did in movies. "Look at you! Your hair got longer. And what is this, eyeliner? College Anna is dangerous. "

 "I watched one YouTube tutorial," Anna said, self-consciously touching her eye. "It's probably smudged."

 "It's perfect. You're perfect. Sit, sit - I already ordered you a chocolate shake. Extra cherry, because I remember you exist."

 They slid into opposite sides of the booth, knees bumping the sticky table, and Anna felt the year apart collapse into nothing.

 Carly looked the same, same constellation of freckles across her nose, same chipped pink polish on her nails but there was something else too. A glow. A hum of energy that made her seem plugged into a higher voltage.

 "So," Carly said, dragging the word out like taffy as their waitress deposited Anna's shake, "tell me everything. Classes. Parties. Boys. Specifically boys."

 "Specifically no boys," Anna said, sipping the shake. It was too sweet, too thick, exactly right. "I dated a guy named Derek for three weeks. He pronounced espresso 'expresso' and tried to explain my own major to me."

 "Dead to me."

 "That's what I decided." Anna set the glass down, studying her friend. "But you, you're different. What's the glow? Vitamin D? New moisturizer?"

 Carly bit her lip, trying and failing to suppress a smile that could have powered the diner's neon sign. "It's Chris."

 "Oh?"

 "Oh, " Carly repeated, mock-offended. "Don't 'oh' me like you forgot I have a boyfriend. Anna, he's... God, he's amazing. We moved in together. Did I tell you that?"

 Anna's fingers tightened around her straw. "Moved in? When?"

 "February. His roommate dropped out and my lease was up, and it just... happened." Carly's eyes were soft, faraway, seeing something Anna couldn't. "He's so good to me, Anna. He cooks. He remembers my coffee order. He drove me to Chicago last month when I had a sinus infection because I was convinced I was dying and the Millbrook clinic was closed."

 "That does sound..." Anna searched for the word. "Devoted."

 "He's more than devoted. He's..." Carly leaned across the table, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "He's the one. I know I'm nineteen and my mom says I'm being dramatic, but I know. When he looks at me, it's like the rest of the world goes quiet."

 Anna felt a strange twist in her stomach. Not jealousy, exactly. Something more complicated. A preemptive ache, as if her body were mourning something before she'd even lost it.

 "I'm happy for you," she said, and meant it. "Really, Car. You deserve someone who looks at you like that."

 "He's meeting us at the lake at two." Carly sat back, practically vibrating. "I can't wait for you two to actually know each other. I mean, you've met, but now you're home home. For the whole summer. We're going to have the best time, the three of us. Promise me."

 Anna thought of her father's warning the night before. Be careful.

 "I promise," she said.

 ********** ********** **********

 The lake wore the afternoon like a jewel.

 Anna had changed into her swimsuit at home, an emerald green two-piece she'd bought on impulse in April and immediately regretted, and now stood at the edge of the dock, watching the water hold the sky in its dark mirror.

 The cattails rustled. A dragonfly stitched across the surface. Somewhere in the trees, a crow called out a rough, hollow cry.

 "Anna! Over here!"

 Carly waved from the far end of the swimming area, already waist-deep in the water, her blonde hair bright against the dark lake. And beside her, unfolding himself from a beach towel with the lazy grace of someone who'd never known awkwardness in his own body, was Chris.

 Anna had seen pictures. She'd FaceTimed with Carly while he occasionally passed through the frame. She thought she'd been prepared.

 She was not prepared.

 He was taller than she remembered, broad-shouldered and sun-browned, wearing nothing but faded navy swim trunks.

 His hair was the color of wheat fields at dusk, not quite brown, not quite gold and it fell across his forehead in a way that made her fingers itch to push it back.

 But it was his eyes that stopped her. Brown, she'd told her friends. Extremely average brown.

 They were not average.

 They were dark, almost amber in the afternoon light, and they locked onto her with an intensity that felt like a hand closing around her heart. The world did exactly what Carly had described: it went quiet.

 The cicadas, the water lapping against the dock, Carly's voice calling her name, all of it muted to a distant hum.

 "Hey," Chris said. His voice was deeper than she'd expected, rougher. "You made it."

 "She made it!" Carly splashed toward the shore, grabbing Anna's wrist and pulling her forward. "Anna, tell Chris about Derek the espresso moron. Chris, tell Anna about the time you tried to fix my car and nearly set the driveway on fire."

 "That was one spark," Chris said, but his eyes never left Anna's face. "And I did eventually fix the transmission."

 "After three days and a lot of cursing." Carly released Anna's wrist, seemingly oblivious to the way the air had shifted, charged like the moment before lightning. "Come on, the water's perfect. Anna, you have to feel this."

 Anna waded in, the cool water shocking against her calves, then her thighs. She dove under to escape the moment, to escape those eyes, and surfaced to find Chris swimming toward her with smooth, powerful strokes.

 Up close, she could see the faint scattering of freckles across his nose, the small scar bisecting his left eyebrow.

 "Carly missed you," he said, treading water an arm's length away. Close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in those not-average eyes.

 "She talked about you constantly. It was Anna this, Anna that. I feel like I already know you."

 "Scary prospect," Anna managed. Her heart was beating too hard for swimming. "I'm not that interesting."

 "You'd be surprised what seems interesting when you're listening to someone who loves you talk."

 The words were warm, genuine, but something flickered in his expression, a shadow, a tightening of his jaw, and Anna felt an answering pull in her chest, as if a string connected them beneath the water's surface and someone had plucked it.

 "Chris!" Carly called from the shallows. "Come help me flip the raft. It's stuck on something."

 He broke eye contact first, the spell shattering, and Anna let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

 By three o'clock, the sun had moved into its lazy descent, painting everything in honey and gold. They'd dragged the inflatable raft to the center of the swimming area and now floated in a loose triangle, Carly lying on her stomach, Chris leaning against the side, Anna half-in, half-out of the water with her legs dangling in the cool dark.

 "...and then Professor Halloway said, 'If I see one more essay about the American Dream as it pertains to Gatsby, I will personally ensure none of you ever dream again,'" Anna finished, making Carly laugh loud enough to startle a heron from the reeds.

 "He sounds terrifying," Carly said.

 "He's a teddy bear. He just has opinions about Fitzgerald."

 "Chris doesn't read." Carly kicked water in her boyfriend's direction. "I've been trying to get him into something other than those weird mechanic manuals for months."

 "I read," Chris protested. "I read the news. And menus."

 "Menus don't count."

 "They do if they're French."

 Anna laughed, and Chris caught her eye, smiling in a way that made her stomach flip. He was different when he looked at Carly, open, adoring, quick to touch her shoulder or tuck her hair behind her ear.

 But when his gaze drifted to Anna, it carried a weight that made her want to sink beneath the water and never come up.

 "Snack time," Carly announced, sliding off the raft and swimming toward shore. "I brought those weird chips you like, Anna, and watermelon. Chris, grab the cooler?"

 "I've got it." He hoisted himself onto the dock in one smooth movement, water streaming down his back, muscles stretching under sun-warmed skin.

 Anna looked away, cheeks burning, not wanting to drool over her bestie's boyfriend, she pulled herself up more clumsily, wrapping her towel around her waist.

 They settled on the beach blanket Carly had spread beneath a willow tree, the leaves filtering the light into shifting patterns across their skin.

 Carly chattered about her job at the daycare, about her cousin's upcoming wedding, and about the new boutique that had opened where the hardware store used to be.

 Anna listened with half an ear, reaching for the bag of salt-and-vinegar chips at the same moment Chris did.

 Their fingers brushed, she felt her heart skip a bit, her breath went still.

 It was nothing. A half-second of contact, skin against damp skin, his knuckle grazing her palm. It should have been nothing.

 Instead, Anna felt it like a current, a jolt of heat that shot up her arm and exploded in her chest, leaving her breathless, changed. The air went sharp.

 Her vision tunneled. For one impossible second, she smelled pine and earth and something wild, and beneath it, the unmistakable scent of him, clean and warm and right in a way that made her teeth ache.

 She jerked her hand back. The chip bag rustled, loud as thunder.

 "You okay?" Chris asked. His voice had gone strange, low, rough, almost a growl.

 "Fine, I'm okay," Anna said, too fast. Her fingers were still burning. "Just... static electricity or something."

 "Or something," he repeated, and his gaze dropped to her hand, to the place where they'd touched, and she saw his throat move as he swallowed.

 Carly emerged from the cooler with a Tupperware of watermelon slices, oblivious. "Here, Anna, I cut these into stars because I know you hate the triangles. Remember when we were ten and you cried because Mrs. Gable cut the fruit wrong at her pool party?"

 "I didn't cry," Anna lied, taking the container with fingers that trembled slightly. "I was expressing artistic dissatisfaction."

 "She cried," Carly told Chris. "It was very dramatic. I had to give her my last Ring Pop."

 "And we've been friends ever since," Anna said, popping a watermelon star into her mouth. The sweetness exploded across her tongue, ordinary and comforting, but her heart wouldn't slow down.

 She could still feel his touch, imprinted on her palm like a brand, sending impulses down her spine, she glimpsed at Chris and looked away bitting her lower lips a bit.

 Chris accepted a slice from Carly, leaning in to kiss her temple in a gesture so easy, so habitual, that Anna felt the sharp bite of something that definitely wasn't artistic dissatisfaction.

 Carly beamed, threading her fingers through his, and Anna looked away, toward the water, toward the horizon where the wheat fields began.

 She told herself it was the heat. The long drive. The disorientation of being home.

 But when she glanced back, she found Chris watching her over Carly's shoulder, his eyes dark and unreadable, and the warmth in her chest spread like wildfire, terrifying, unstoppable, already beyond her control.

 "Anna?" Carly asked, tilting her head. "You went quiet. What are you thinking about?"

 That your boyfriend's touch felt like destiny, that I'd want his palms roaming all over my body, that I can't fucking get him off my thoughts.

 "Nothing Carly," Anna said,

 forcing a smile, a pain filled one. "Just happy to be here."

 But the lie tasted bitter as alum, and when Chris finally looked away, the loss of his gaze felt like a physical wound.