His eyes suddenly fixated on my hands. “Oh. So no one . . .”

“Touched me?” I lifted my chin, struggling to not look away. “No.”

“Oh.” He swallowed audibly. All around us, the blue walls seemed to close in.

“Is that a weird update?” I asked.

He shifted where he sat. “Sort of.”

I felt mortified. The blush I’d been fighting seemed to explode beneath my skin, and I wanted to roll over, press my face back into my pillow. I’d been jealous, trying to get a rise out of him, and had basically just thrown his own honesty back in his face. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s . . .” Elliot scratched his eyebrow, pushed his glasses up his nose, rallying. “It’s good you told me.”

“You said you did it, too.”

He cleared his throat, nodded sternly. “It’s normal for guys my age.”

“So it’s not normal for girls?”

With a cough, he managed, “Of course it is. I just meant—”

“I’m joking.” I closed my eyes for a breath, working to get my own craziness back under control. What was with me?

“What did you think about?” The last word of his came out sticky, caught in a slightly strangled voice.

I stared at him. “I thought, ‘Holy hell, this is amazing.’ ”

He laughed, but it was awkward and high-pitched. “No. Before. During.”

I shrugged. “Being touched by someone else like that. Do you still think about dragons?”

His eyes flickered over every part of me all at once. “No,” he said, not laughing at my joke even a little. “I think about . . . wrists and ears, and skin and legs. Girl parts. Girls.” His words all ran together and it took me a beat to separate them.

Girls? My blood heated with jealousy.

“Any girls in particular?”

He opened a book, thumbed a page. He held still like he did when he omitted information. “Sometimes.”

That was the end of the conversation. He didn’t ask me anything else and didn’t offer more.

now

saturday, october 14

I’m conscious that Elliot and I are in a bit of a social fishbowl, with Sabrina and Nikki clearly tracking how much time we spend orbiting each other. So, despite feeling constantly aware of him, I don’t really speak to Elliot much at the picnic and it makes me crazy, wondering what he’s thinking about all of this. He spends most of his time talking to Danny, while Nikki, Sabrina, Dave, and I catch up. I get the distinct impression that once Sabrina and Dave get time alone in the car on the way back they’re going to explode in exasperated agreement that Sean is Really The Most Boring.

Based on my own observations, though, I can’t really blame them. Sean is tuned in to Phoebe, but is otherwise fucking around on his phone, or jumping into conversations only to add his thoughts before ducking back out again. I have this weird, bubbling awareness that I’ve never been in this situation with him before—sitting with a group of my friends, rather than a group of art enthusiasts or benefactors dying to get Sean Chen’s attention. And apparently, unless he’s being courted, he retreats, socially. I have a niggling fear that he’s always been this way, it’s just never come up, because we’ve never hung out with friends.