GROW UP GINGER

A story about leaving and being followed.

Written by Juliana Resende

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No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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CHAPTER TWELVE — Morning

I woke up at my aunt's house in my own bed.

For a moment I didn't know what time it was, or what day. Then I remembered the night before — the club, the dance, the apartment — and a hot, complicated feeling moved through my chest. Not regret, exactly. Not pride. Something I didn't have a word for.

I went down to the kitchen. My aunt was there, making coffee, humming.

"Good morning, Anna! Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, I did. Thanks for letting me stay here, Auntie."

"It's no problem at all, dear. Come anytime."

I sat at the counter. She slid a cup of coffee toward me. I waited for her to say something about how late I'd come in, but she didn't.

Megan appeared in the doorway in pyjamas, hair a disaster, and whispered as she walked past me to the fridge:

"I told her Mario wanted to pick you up."

"Oh. How did you convince him?"

She winked.

Mario walked in two seconds later.

Mario is Megan's older brother. He's twenty. We had grown up together in the kind of complicated, low-grade crush a lot of girls develop on a slightly older boy who exists in their orbit without ever quite being available. I had liked him for years. Quietly. Without ever doing anything about it.

He looked at me as he walked into the kitchen. Just for a second longer than necessary. Just enough.

"Morning, Anna."

"Morning."

It was a perfectly normal exchange. It contained, somewhere inside it, the entire history of my crush on him, and also the moment that crush quietly ended. I had spent the night with someone else. The Mario-shaped corner of my chest had been redecorated overnight, and I hadn't even noticed.

My phone buzzed.

Hey gorgeous? How are you doing?

Unknown number. I knew who it was.

I'm doing good, and you?

Mario was watching my face. I tried to make my face do nothing.

"So, Anna," my aunt said, "when do your classes start at UniBrown?"

"After Carnaval, on Monday."

"Oh right! You only have today and Sunday off."

"Yeah."

Mario's eyes flickered. UniBrown. He went there too. I watched him register this — the we're going to be in the same place of it — and for a moment something almost passed between us that could have been the start of a different version of the summer.

But my phone buzzed again, and I looked down, and the moment closed.

A car pulled up outside.

I went to the window.

Ethan was on the porch.

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