Temptation: A Novel by Travis Thrasher Page A

understand. Maybe I need to come live in Asheville.”
    “Too bad your grandmother didn’t live around here,” I say.
    For a moment Lily looks at me, then she nods and smiles. “Yeah, too bad.”
    I want to ask about us, what we’re doing and what this means and if there’s some kind of chance—
    “Chris?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I see smoke coming from your ears.”
    I laugh. “That bad, huh?”
    “I see that mind spinning.”
    “Sorry, it’s just—”
    “ It is fine,” Lily interrupts. “Relax. I mean it. Relax. I’m not going to bite. We’re not going to do anything tonight, and we don’t have to worry about anything. You don’t have to tell me how much I mean to you, and I don’t have to ask how you’re feeling and any of that nonsense.”
    I kinda like that nonsense.
    “I’m just a girl. Okay?”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    Once again, I crack her up. “What?”
    “That was so unconvincing.”
    “Sorry.”
    She moves over and then moves her lips toward my ear. Then she bites me. Hard.
    “Ow!”
    I move and sit up on my knees, rubbing my ear. “Wha—”
    Lily sits up as well, laughing with a playful look on her shadowed face. “I’m going to keep doing that until you just ease up.”
    “I’m eased up—I’m relaxed.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “That killed.”
    “Good,” she says, then adds, “Oh, come on, be a man.”
    I raise my eyebrows as if to say something, but she just looks at me, waiting.
    “Yeah?”
    “I don’t get you.”
    “Join the club, pal.” She then slides up beside me as if we’re on a bus and have to cram next to each other. “You okay?”
    “That really hurt.”
    “Do I need to make it better?”
    I look at her and so badly want to say that yes, she needs to make it better. I want to have the James Bond reply that has a double meaning, but I just can’t. I’m just way too nervous to say anything.
    “You really are cute, Chris,” she says. “I’m not just saying that.”
    “So are you.”
    Her face grows serious, and she shakes her head. “No, Chris, I’m not. There are some things I am. Many things I am. But cute is not one of them. I was cute a long time ago. Not anymore.”
    I don’t know what to say. As usual.
    We sit there for a while and continue to look out at the lake. We don’t make out in outrageous passion, nor do we continue this playful back-and-forth. I picture it in my mind, but here and now we’re just sitting in the quiet.
    “See, it worked,” Lily says eventually.
    “What?”
    “The bite.”
    “What about it?”
    “You look relaxed now.”
    “Either that, or you gave me rabies and I’m slowly going unconscious.”
    She just laughs. “This has been a great day, Chris.”
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    She studies me for a moment. I wish I could read thoughts. Especially girls’ thoughts. Because I’ve never been able to figure out what they’re thinking.
    She’s thinking something big, but I can’t tell what.
    “Me neither,” Lily finally says.
    Later, after dropping her off and receiving a sweet hug that was just that—a sweet hug—I’m back at home in my bedroom, and I can’t stop thinking of her.
    Then it dawns on me. The text from Marsh. About relief and letting go.
    He’s right.
    This thought—these two words—terrify me.

33. A Voice from the Past
     
    It’s a funny thing about girls.
    Sometimes they seem to forget.
    Other times they seem to remember.
    The final week of summer school is fine, but fine isn’t on the same level as wonderful. Fine is riding in the backseat with your friends going somewhere fun. Wonderful is riding on your motorcycle with your girlfriend’s body draped around you.
    Somehow it seems like my some kind of wonderful has turned into some kind of okay. Not because of anything Lily does, but what she doesn’t do. The whole day we spent together never gets acknowledged. Not that I want a personal write-up of her thoughts and feelings about July 4—although actually, come to think of it,