There was a boy in Katelyn’s bed. Technically, there had been a boy, that same boy, in her bed that morning, and the night before, but she then had been too tired to really process that fact. At this particular moment, though, she was nowhere near tired enough to be anything other than very aware that there was a boy in her bed. There was a boy in her childhood bedroom beneath the star-dusted comforter, beneath quilt made out of her old t-shirts, hugging one of her gray pillows to his chest. There was a pile of stuffed animals in the corner of the room, a slew of Fall Out Boy posters tacked up to the wall, pink curtains hanging over the windows, a whale shaped night light on the floor, and a boy in her bed. She was standing in the doorway, just back from the bathroom, when she realized all of this. She felt her cheeks warm. She felt a bit like a deviant.

“I’m not tired,” he whispered as she crawled into the bed next to him. He shifted to look at her. His t-shirt was thinning and she could see the clean cut of his chest beneath it. He was holding a pillow in the space between them.

“Me neither,” Katelyn shrugged. “But we’ll have to get up early to pick up Connor from the airport, so…”

In the recesses of her mind, she saw Dylan laugh and say, “I guess we’ll have to tire ourselves out,” before rolling on top of her. As soon as she thought it, Katelyn blushed and looked away from him.

“So, what happened earlier?” Dylan asked.

“Hm?” She asked, blushing harder, worried he was asking because of the blush in the first place.

“I mean, with Jason? What did he want?” Dylan asked. Katelyn looked at him and, almost immediately, he looked away.

“Oh,” Katelyn frowned. She had kind of forgotten that Jason had called at all. She had listened to the message in the midst of Elizabeth and Malik getting into an argument and she’d had to watch her niece as they had some discussion. When they’d come back downstairs, they were both smiling and laughing and kissing each other’s foreheads, but Elizabeth’s eyes were red and puffy. So, anyway, she had been significantly more concerned with her sister than her ex-boyfriend, even though Elizabeth said everything was fine.

“You said it wasn’t important,” Dylan said. “So what was it?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. All he said in the message was that he wanted to talk because he’d been thinking about us.”

Dylan scoffed and said, “Well, that sounds like he wants to get back together with you.”

“I doubt that,” Katelyn laughed.

In reply, Dylan just raised his eyebrows at her. “Holy heck,” she thought, “Dylan is handsome.” He was, too. He had warm, tan skin and fine cheekbones. His hair was stark black and his eyebrows were strong, dark lines that, right then, were arched into his bangs. His eyelashes were long and dark; they were so long, in fact, that their tips touched skin. He blinked. She melted.

He shifted onto his back, leaving the pillow between them, propped against his hip. It was reasonable that he wanted a barrier between them, she had entirely invaded his space the night before. It was embarrassing. When she woke up, the first time, she had been holding onto him like he was a teddy bear.

“Come on, Katelyn,” he laughed. “I’ve been thinking about us is code for I think we should get back together. It’s basically a given. If you look up I’ve been thinking about us in the dictionary, it will list I think we should get back together as a synonym.”

Katelyn laughed. Her laugh, she thought, was a little bit more sincere than his. “Look, there is no way that he wants to get back together with me. I was always too fat and too poor and too artsy for him.”

Dylan gapes and guffaws, “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true,” Katelyn shrugged. “He would take me to Italian restaurants and then be like, ‘Are you sure you want to get pasta? You already had garlic bread.’”

Dylan laughed again. He didn’t laugh at her, though. He laughed like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. He twisted back to his side to face her, brought his hand up to her face, and brushed a thumb over her cheek. It didn’t even seem like he’d meant to, or like he’d thought about it. It seemed like a thing that just sort of happened. He didn’t pull away, though, or even avert his eyes.

“You’re lovely,” he told her. He was such a problem: handsome and funny and kind. Her whole face burned bright red and, pillow barrier be damned, when she wanted to hide her face, she just buried it in his chest.