12. Grayson

Chapter 12

Grayson

I stand in my front yard, where Macy and I meet every morning. I hardly slept last night. I'd never felt more alive than when her lips were on mine, and it took every ounce of restraint to not knock on her door and pick up where we left off.

Usually she's here by now, so I decide to start stretching without her. I glance at her house several times. Minutes go by before the front door finally opens.

My grin quickly falls when I see wires hanging from her ears. She's wearing headphones. She merely glances at me before stretching, then she shoots off into a jog. I follow right beside her. "You seem chipper this morning," I say. She either ignores me or can't hear, which I realize was her intention of wearing the headphones.

This is our routine for three mornings.

I can't take the silence between us any longer. I grab her hand to still her running and she glares at me. I roll my eyes and grab the ear bud out of her ear.

She tries to grab it, but I hold it out of her reach. She yanks on the wire which causes it to slip out of my hand, but she doesn't put it back in her ear, so I consider it progress.

"What's going on?"

She states the obvious and says, "We're running."

"I know that, smartass." She doesn't supply me with anything else, so I say, "I knew things would change between us after you kissed me." I don't want things to change, at least not in the way that they have.

Her eyes widen as if she never expected me to bring it up. "I didn't kiss you."

I grin. "I knew you'd say that."

She's squeezing her fists, the first sign she's getting irritated.

"I think we can both set our pride aside for a moment and acknowledge the fact that you did, in fact, kiss me." I look off into the distance, remembering it. "I mean, you really kissed me."

She turns from me and starts running, so I match her pace beside her. "You've hardly acknowledged me since." It feels like my chest has been punched out. "You regret it." I stop running. So does she.

"How could I regret something I didn't do?"

"Fine, Macy. You didn't kiss me. I kissed you . Does that make you feel better?"

"Slightly."

"Okay, if that's how you want to see it, but you kissed me back."

She shrugs. "What are you, twelve? Who cares, it was just a kiss."

I chuckle at the way she tries to downplay what happened between us. "If Elliot didn't find us when he did, we both would've had our clothes off and gone home with sand in some really awkward places."

Pink creeps into her cheeks and she looks away. "You…"

"Me?" I bite back another smile, remembering a similar conversation in New York.

That must set her over the edge because she faces me then, anger and distain pulling at her expression. She marches forward and pokes me hard in the chest. "You presumptuous prick! I would never have sex with you, let alone desperately beneath a lifeguard tower like some hormonal teenager!" she shouts.

"Okay, I'm sorry." I hold my hands up, but she doesn't look any less angry. "I shouldn't have said that?—"

"Just when I was starting to think there were layers to you, you just proved that you're everything I assumed you to be from the moment we met." She marches past, her hair swinging behind her while she walks away from me.

I feel her words in every part of myself and it hurts . She despised me before, but now I've managed to make her hate me.