Everly After by Rebecca Paula Page A

except for her.
    I kneel first, my hands on my knees. She snaps a picture, then waves her hand for me to lie down, so I do. I don’t know if she’s ever had a camera in her hands before, but it doesn’t stop her from crawling over me to snap another. At this point, I couldn’t care less. She’s straddling me, wavy hair framing her face, the sun shining through until it glows gold.
    “What are you doing?” I can’t hold back my smile. She does this—mixes me up and confuses me. Her fingers rest over my mouth at my question, and she studies me, then snaps another photo.
    The song is playing, but it sounds worlds away. I’m with Everly, and it all disappears and it’s fucking heaven and terrifying all the same. My heart speeds up like I’m riding shotgun with a convoy through Tangi Valley. Adrenaline rushes through my veins, and I realize she’s just as dangerous as a war zone.
    “This one,” she says to herself. She checks the display, then lowers the camera. “It’s perfect.”
    “What are you doing?” I ask again. When she doesn’t answer, I grab the camera out of her hands and take a picture of the way she’s looking down at me. Then the remaining bruise by her temple, the dark freckle in her left eye. The pieces of Everly I’m not sure I’ll see again. She’s the green flash of a sunset. Real but fleeting. A rare phenomenon. A bright burst of light before dark settles in.
    Her eyes are soft. There’s a gentle curve that hugs around her lips with the promise of a smile. I was wrong about her. She’s not reckless. She’s entirely trusting, and that’s why Everly is such a mess.
    “Everly,” I say again, but it’s barely a breath.
    “Coffee.” She says it as if she’s lost herself, too, and needs to find her place back in reality. She stands and walks over to the record player, staring at the spinning record with her hands on her tiny waist. After a few minutes, she takes the needle off and the room falls into silence.
    She spins around as I stand. “Take me someplace new.”
    “Whatever you want, pet.”

Everly
     
    We perfect the art of the side glance for most of the subway ride. Beckett hasn’t told me where we’re going, but I trust him. I mean, I must trust him if I let him take those pictures. The last time didn’t work out so great for me. I guess it depends who’s behind the camera—maybe more about who to trust, too.
    I settle back against my seat and knock my knee against his, not-so accidently, as the Metro hurtles through the tunnel. Now that I know what it feels like to have his body pressed against mine, I’m not okay with letting that thrill die away because we’re going out for coffee.
    His leg bounces up and down, his hands fidgeting. I wish I didn’t make him so nervous. I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. He tenses up, but I slip my hand around his arm and nestle close. I’m spending the day with him, and I don’t want to let him go. Not yet, anyway.
    I can’t think of another reason why I kept that stupid quilt so long, why I slept with it every night. Or why my chest tightened when I saw him standing at the bottom of the stairs earlier. Seeing him then, after missing him and thinking things were over between us before they’d even begun— it felt like when you aced a paper you thought you failed.
    “I think my favorite word is boulangerie .”
    Shut up and look pretty, Everly.
    He looks down at me, his eyebrows drawn in confusion. He must think I’m crazy. I’ve given him plenty of reason to believe so.
    “Say it,” I urge.
    His lips form the word, and the sounds that follow make me melt against him. I can’t help it. The stale tunnel air from the opened subway car window is as warm as my cheeks feel right now.
    Beckett elbows me when I refuse to look at him again. But his lips. I want to kiss them so badly. They’re sort of perfect. The type of lips that you could kiss once and forget everything else for. Those sort of lips.
    I want them