He slings an arm around my waist. “I could make a citizen’s arrest, if it will clear your conscience.”

“Do you have the power to arrest me out here? I think we’re in international waters, or something. We could probably gamble and trade arms. Transport bricks of strange drugs. Something about maritime laws …”

“You really don’t pay attention in class, do you?”

“I definitely won’t in the fall, now that I’ve got me a perfect-SAT boyfriend,” I joke.

He lowers his face near mine, eyes glittering. “Am I?”

“Are you … ?”

“Your boyfriend?”

I still, heart racing, as rain pounds on the metal roof above us.

“Don’t do that,” he says in a raspy voice, sliding a hand behind my neck. “Don’t put up the invisible wall. Please, Josie. If you don’t want to answer the question, then I’ll go first.… So here’s the truth. You’re my friend. The only person I can talk to without censoring myself. You laugh at my jokes.”

“That’s because your sense of humor is as bad as mine.”

“Worse,” he confirms, pushing damp hair away from my eyes. “And when I see your face, it makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. Like maybe … like, sure I might be a little bit of a monster—”

“Lucky.”

“—but here’s this beautiful, talented, glowing person who obviously likes me, because she smiles at me and laughs at my jokes, and she’s all I can think about, and sometimes I even dream about her, and I love the way her freckles scrunch together when she gets mad at me, which is sort of sexy, and I love how she blushes when I stare at her a little too long—”

He swipes his thumb over my cheek, and I shiver.

“—but most of all, I think … if this person likes me, this person … then I must not be too much of a monster. I must be okay. So to answer the question, yes. In my mind, you’re absolutely, unquestionably, categorically my girlfriend.”

“Don’t change your answer,” I say, trapping his hand against my cheek with my fingers.

He whispers, “Don’t break my heart. Don’t go to California.”

I close my eyes and inhale sharply. Exhale shakily. Rain hits the roof above us.

I don’t want to hear the time bomb ticking.

But there it is in my head, tick, tick, tick …

Before I open my eyes again, Lucky kisses me softly, until goose bumps spread over my skin, and deeply, until all my bones soften like rubber. Then his mouth is all over my neck, trailing kisses over my skin like tiny blessings, murmuring soft devotions in my ear.

Tick, tick, tick …