Don't Fall (11 page)

I still couldn’t quite believe it. I had a boyfriend. He was cute and sweet and planning something special for my birthday. I squealed in my head and probably would have stood up and done another spin, but Zander strode in and sat down next to me.

“So, any hints?” I asked.

He leaned close to me, his lips almost touching my ear, his warm breath making my insides turn to goo. “No.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before sitting up and laughing. I grinned, my mouth spreading so far across my face it almost hurt. I was so wildly happy.

Chapter Seventeen

Zander

I wanted to celebrate Anya’s birthday in style. I wanted it to be something awesome and memorable, so she’d never forget. When she thought about her eighteenth birthday, I wanted her to smile and think about me.

But considering she wasn’t even allowed to see me, it was going to be difficult to pull off. Thankfully, I was able to enlist Shannon’s help. For the next week and a half, we talked and texted back and forth, planning everything down to the minute.

“That’s going to be perfect, Zander. She’ll love it.”

I hoped she was right. “All right, I’ll talk to you later. Thanks so much for your help.” I was about to hang up when Shannon said my name.

“Zander,” she said again, then paused. I tapped my thumb against the back of my phone, waiting. “Can I ask you something?”

“Um, okay.”

“What have you told other people about you and Anya?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you call her your girlfriend?”

“Of course.” I was taken aback by the question. Nerves twisted in my stomach. “Doesn’t she call me her boyfriend?” Was that something she hid from Shannon even?

“Yes. Yeah, it’s not that,” she said in a rush. “Has anyone met her?”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t really talk about her to many people. I had told Blake about her, but when I couldn’t get the two of them together to meet, I got nothing but crap about it. Whenever her name came up, Blake laughed and called her my imaginary girlfriend. After that, I kind of just kept it to myself.

“Well, um. No.” Was I keeping her a secret, too? It wasn’t like I’d never told anyone about her. But I hadn’t tried very hard to get Anya to meet anyone. The truth was, I kind of liked keeping her to myself.

“And people don’t find that odd?”

“Yeah,” I finally said. Silence stretched between us. “Why?”

“I’m a little concerned, I guess. I mean, is it really a real relationship if you have to keep it hidden?”

I tried to tell myself there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It wasn’t up to me.

She sighed on the other end of the line. “I just don’t want to see her get hurt.”

“She won’t,” I said immediately. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Good. Good.” Again she was silent.

“Is that it?”

“For now. I’ll talk to you later, Zander.” The line went dead.

Mine and Anya’s relationship had been sort of our own little secret. This wonderful thing to escape to. Was there something wrong with that? Did keeping it to ourselves make it less real? It was certainly real to me.

Maybe we did need to get out of our own little world, but until Anya was willing to tell her mom about us, I had to settle for what we had. I knew she was scared, but was it of her mother, or of testing our relationship?

I shook my head, trying to shake out all negative thoughts. It was two nights until Anya’s birthday. I could worry about all those other things after it was over. She’d be eighteen then, and I figured her mom would have to yield some on the boyfriend front.

I got up and grabbed Anya’s birthday present out of my closet, wrapping the small green box in pale yellow paper and sticking a white bow on the top. It was kind of crooked, and the paper didn’t exactly lie flat, but it was as good as it was going to get. I tucked it safely back into my closet and climbed into bed. I still had a few more details I needed to finalize the next day; then I had to wait and hope I could pull it all off.

Anya

Dinner was delicious. My mom took us to my favorite Italian restaurant where the maître d’ sang Happy Birthday in Italian in his beautiful baritone. We had tiramisu for dessert, and when I took the first bite, Zander’s face, his eyes wide and mouth clamped shut around his tiramisu cupcake, flew into my head. I had to put my hand over my mouth to hold in the chuckle behind my lips.

My mom gave me an odd look, but I swallowed, smiled, and made a comment about how good the tiramisu was. She didn’t seem to think anything of it.

Having Shannon there was perfect. Each year these birthday dinners had gotten quieter. My mom wasn’t exactly the chatty type, and it had become more and more difficult to carry a conversation by myself. At eight I could talk endlessly about everything and nothing while my mom sat and smiled at me, silently chewing her food. But now…

Shannon filled in every could-have-been-awkward silence with questions or comments about everything from my mom’s job to the décor of the restaurant. The evening flew by, and soon I was back upstairs in my room, dressed in the new pajamas my mom had given me. I sat cross-legged on the bed, hugging my pillow. Shannon was in my over-sized chair, her knees tucked to her chest.

“So, how’s it going with you and Zander?” she asked, wagging her eyebrows.

I shushed her, waved my arms, then pointed to the door. “My mom will hear you,” I whispered.

“She doesn’t know?” She scooted the chair closer to me and leaned in.

I dropped my shoulders and cocked my head to one side, giving her an are-you-stupid look. “Of course not. You know how she is.”

“But Anya, you have to tell her eventually.”

“I know, I know,” I said, trying to brush away the conversation.

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Anya, I’m serious. It’s really not fair to Zander.”

My chest tightened. “Did he say something to you?” I could barely get the words out.

“No.” She shook her head and waved her hand in dismissal. “I’m just worried about you. You can’t keep him a secret forever, you know. Not if you want to keep him.”

“I know,” I said, looking down and twirling my braid around my finger. “I will. Soon.”

She raised her eyebrows and gave me a look that said she thought I was completely full of crap.

“I will,” I insisted.

“Good,” she said, nodding once. “Because that one is too good to let get away.”

There was a small knock on the door, and my mom peeked in. “How’s it going, girls?” she asked, smiling at us like we were kindergarteners.

“Fine,” I said, feeling my cheeks warm.

“Okay, I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t stay up too late.” She stepped back into the hall and pulled the door behind her, not quite shutting it. For a second I stared at it, hanging slightly ajar. Then I looked at Shannon, scrunching up my nose and making a face. She laughed, reached into her bag, and held out a rolled up magazine.

“Okay, let’s find out your wardrobe personality,” she said, flipping it open on her lap. “When you think summer do you think A) garden party, B) drinks by the pool, or C) roasting marshmallows around a campfire?”

We spent the next several hours taking stupid magazine quizzes (my wardrobe personality was Classics Darling), laughing, and talking about boys. Apparently Shannon had a couple boys vying for her attention.

“I don’t know. They’re both pretty cute, I guess. But they just seem so dull.” She crinkled up her nose and stuck out her tongue. I laughed, then stopped when I heard something hit the window. My eyes got wide for a second, and I started to smile. We hadn’t scheduled to meet until the next day, but maybe he couldn’t wait.

“Right on time,” Shannon said, getting up and opening the window. Zander came crawling through, and I almost screamed. I ran over to him and hugged him around the neck. Then I stared at them. They were both grinning from ear to ear.

“What are you doing here?” I squealed through barely open lips, praying my mom wouldn’t hear anything.

“I wanted to see you on your birthday.”

How could I resist that smile? I hugged him again and kissed him until Shannon said, “Okay, okay. Enough’s enough.” I reluctantly pulled away.

“Come on,” Zander said, tugging my hand, leading me toward the window.

“What? Are you out of your mind?”

“I have a rope ladder. It’ll be fine.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “How did you—”

“Shannon helped.”

I spun around to look at her. “Earlier, when you were in the bathroom changing. Why did you think I had such a big suitcase for a pair of PJs and a couple magazines?”

“You two are amazing.”

“I know.” Shannon shrugged. “Now go on.”

“I feel bad leaving you here all alone.”

“It’s fine. I’ll steal one of your books and go to bed.” She gestured to the built-in bookshelf that covered one whole wall of my room. “We can talk more in the morning.” She winked at me, and I could feel my cheeks getting hot.

“Come on,” Zander whispered again, one leg already hanging out the window. I waved goodbye to Shannon as I climbed down after him.

Before I reached the ground, he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind and lifted me off the ladder. He swung me in a circle through the air, my back pressed against his chest, then set me on my feet and twirled me around to face him. Cupping my face in his hands, he leaned down and kissed me. “Happy Birthday, Anya,” he said against my lips. He leaned back and took my hand. “Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”

Chapter Eighteen

Zander

I dragged Anya along the trail, probably more excited than she was to reach her birthday surprise. “Come on, come on,” I said, trying to get her to move faster as she carefully stepped over fallen branches and twigs.

She tipped her head back and let a laugh float out of her lips and up into the summer night air. “I’m trying, but you didn’t give me a chance to put on shoes. This is as fast as one can go, running barefoot through the woods.”

I reached for her, and she squealed as I lifted her feet off the ground. “Then hold on.” She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I carried her the rest of the way, stopping right before we reached the clearing. “Close your eyes.”

She pouted out her bottom lip. “Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

She squeezed them shut, and I gently set her down. I took both of her hands, leading her slowly forward until we reached the center of our clearing. “Now open them.”

Her eyes went wide. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she slowly turned around to take it all in. Pale blue mason jars hung from yellow ribbons, each holding a lit tea light that flickered in the dark.

I’d spread out a large red blanket under one of the trees for a midnight meal of grapes, strawberries, cheese, and tiramisu cupcakes from Baby Cakes. In the middle of the blanket sat the birthday gift I’d gotten her alongside a small blue vase holding yellow wildflowers.

Once she’d finished taking it all in, she spun around and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, Zander, it’s beautiful! Thank you so much.” She reached up and kissed me, her tongue teasing my lips. I kissed her back, pulling her closer. I ran my hands up her back, feeling the warmth of her skin through her thin nightshirt until she pushed back and led me to the picnic while I tried to regain my breath.

“Do I get to open this now?” she asked, running a finger over her gift and making me think about how my skin felt when she ran her finger along it like that. I wanted to reach out and grab her again, and I wondered if it was anywhere near as difficult for her to keep her hands off me as it was for me to keep mine off her. I highly doubted it.

“Not yet.” We sat down on the blanket, and I leaned forward and kissed her nose. “But soon.” I lifted a bottle of sparkling lemonade out of a small cooler and poured us each a glass.

“So, how does it feel to be eighteen?”

Her mouth twisted up as she thought about it, tapping the end of her braid against her wrist. “It feels… the same, only better.”

I laughed. “Oh, sure. Of course.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “I feel the same. I don’t feel older than I did yesterday or anything. But things are better. All of this.” She waved her arm around the clearing. “This is amazing. And, it’s hard to explain, I guess. But—” She sighed, struggling to say whatever was on her mind. “This feels real. It doesn’t feel like puppy love or anything. It feels like something that can last.” Her cheeks turned pink, and slowly she looked up at me. Her big blue eyes shone, making me feel like the king of the world. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve her, but I knew I’d do anything to keep her. To keep her with me, keep her happy. This was most definitely real.

“I think so, too.”

Anya

My heart expanded in my chest, growing too big and flowing into our clearing like rain overflowing a creek. I stared at Zander, his dark eyes dancing mischievously in the moonlight. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” He slid closer to me on the blanket and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I leaned my head onto his shoulder and made a decision. I would tell my mom. I would figure it out.

He picked up the gift and handed it to me. “Happy birthday.” It was crookedly wrapped in yellow paper, with a big white bow on top and a little white tag that read,
To Anya with Love
. I slipped my finger under the tape, ripped the paper off, and lifted the lid off a dark green box. Inside was a bracelet. A wide yellow leather cuff. I picked it up and turned it over; a bronze plate had the words to “You Are My Sunshine
”
etched into it.

“Do you like it? When I saw it, I knew I had to get it for you, because you
are
my sunshine. You make everything in my life brighter. I had to special order it to make it yellow, but it had to be yellow. I hope you like it.” Zander rambled into my ear. The words blurred a bit as tears filled my eyes.