His eyes widen and the blue of his irises darkens. “What do I want? I thought I made that clear.” His voice is low and intimate with a note that makes me feel like he’s running his fingers over me. I flush and his lids lower over his eyes until he has the look that I associate with my forbidden fantasies. I have the overwhelming urge to tell him yes, I agree to everything he wants. Everything. Anything. His dark eyelashes flutter and I think I see equal longing in his eyes.

I take a shallow breath and try to regain my equilibrium. Then, I realize that Will and I have been holding our gaze for easily more than a minute. And what he made clear, what he wants, is for me to let go of my soul mate.

The warm, deliciously wicked feeling breaks.

“Ack. No.” I break eye contact, shake my head and look away, out over the lawn and the dancing couples.

“That bad?” asks Will sardonically. He puts his hands in his pockets and looks at a group of kids running in circles around their dancing parents.

“You ruined my long stare.” I’m feeling put out and off-guard.

“Is that what that was?”

“Of course. The long stare is like the clumsy girl meet-cute, or walking down the stairs in a flowy dress, or a first kiss in the rain. It’s—”

“A bad cliché?” He gives me a boyish half-grin, like we’re sharing a joke.

I sigh. It’s funny, even though Will has been my nemesis for twenty years, it’s times like this that make it hard to hate him.

“Why weren’t we ever friends?” I ask without thinking.

Will’s relaxed boyish demeanor vanishes and is replaced by the cold, stiff façade that I’m used to. Here’s the Will that’s capable of shutting down any attempt at friendship.

When we were fifteen years old, Will found me in the branches of the oak tree. It was dark, eleven o’clock at night, and I thought he was Gavin. I sink into the memory.

It’s a moonless night and the sky is like a dark blanket with a hundred stars poking through the blackness. The crickets are singing and I’m reading by flashlight when he climbs up. I’m not scared. I’d heard him coming from the big house from across the field. When he climbs up I scoot over and give him room on the wide limb. My heart beats erratically. Gavin is here—he’s finally come back to our tree. He turns his face down towards my book, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” I hold up my book. I’ve read it so many times that I can recite entire paragraphs from memory.