"Oh you're bold," Nikki said coyly as I finished up recounting the saga on the Ferris wheel. A snide smirk danced across her face as she picked at her chipped pink nail polish. "So when's the wedding?"

I wasn't sure what unspoken thing had transpired between Brooklyn and I since our kiss at the carnival, but even thinking back to it gave me goosebumps.

"Don't be ridiculous," I groaned and rubbed my temples. I flopped back on Nikki's bed and clutched one of her fuzzy purple pillows. "It's really nothing. People kiss all the time and nothing comes of it so...stop getting your hopes up."

I wasn't sure who needed to hear that more - me, or Nikki.

"Ugh you're so boring." Nikki whined. "I'm trying to live vicariously through you. Which I can't even believe I'm saying. But you've gotten more action than me recently."

"Oh please, I hardly call one kiss action." I hit her with the pillow. My phone pinged in the pocket of my sweatshirt, and my heart sped up when I opened the text message.

BROOKLYN: Chinese food and a movie tonight?

BROOKLYN: I rented Evil Dead on DVD. Can't watch it by myself though...might need someone to hold my hand.

Then again, Brooklyn continued to surprise me. I jumped out of Nikki's bed and made my way to my room in an attempt to not look like a garbage rat.

"Wait, where are you going?" she called after me.

"To Brooklyn's house." I replied quickly after throwing a semi-clean sweater on over my leggings. I dashed past her room and down the stairs before she could throw a snide comment my way.

"Of course you are. Use protection!" Her voice followed me out the door.

What's the right move when you greet someone whose tongue has been down your throat, but you aren't dating or in any way, shape, or form romantically involved with. Do you hug them? Do you kiss them on the cheek? Or do you do nothing, for fear of touching them would cause some type of nuclear meltdown.

"Hey," Brooklyn said in a husky voice when he answered the front door for me. He had on a black collared short sleeve shirt and beige chino pants that were rolled at the ankles. It was a far cry from his usual Nike shorts, t-shirt and baseball cap combo, and I suddenly felt very underdressed in my black leggings and a white oversized sweater.

We attempted the awkward hug, and I caught a whiff of his warm cologne.

"You got pretty dressed up for Chinese food," I jabbed with a grin as Brooklyn led me through the house towards the stairs.

Brooklyn chuckled and gave me a casual shrug. "My mom just threatened to starve me if I still had on the same sweatpants I've been wearing for the past three days, and this was all I had that was clean."

"Well, you look nice," I offered.

"Thank you," he said in a low voice. He looked down at me with a smirk. "You always look nice."

I gave him a gentle nudge in the arm. "Why do you always have to one-up me like that?"

"It's just in my nature to be overly competitive about...literally everything." He nudged me back with a grin. "Speaking of, I have something I want to show you."

I followed him up the stairs, past his bedroom to another room at the end of the hallway, with the door cracked open just the slightest. The room seemed small compared to the rest of the rooms in the house, almost like an oversized linen closet, and I could make out cardboard boxes stacked against the far wall. What really caught my attention were the various frames hanging on the walls. There were dozens of them.

"What's in here?" I asked.

"You'll see," Brooklyn said as he took my hand, giving it a squeeze before pushing the door open.

A dozen frames might have been an understatement, and various shapes and sizes took up almost all free wall space. There were newspaper articles, several jerseys in black and white and silver and blue, and high resolution, magazine quality portraits of 17 year old Brooklyn, freckled face, messy hair and all. The entire left side wall was shelves of trophies, proudly displaying titles like "Lowcountry Conference Player of the Year" and "SC Group 4 State Championship MVP."

But the table in the corner was where the real gems were. A black and silver helmet adorned with a wolf's head sat in a clear case, and three enormous gleaming rings were perched on plastic stands in front of it. They shined so intensely, I wondered for a moment if they were fitted with real diamonds.

"All of your football stuff." I couldn't even hide the awe in my voice. I was transfixed on the framed article in front of me, donning a bold headline that read Nationally Ranked Tight End Phenom Brooklyn Keller Helps Take Montgomery Prep to Third Straight State Title.

"I wanted you to see all of it," he said. "As much as I'm ashamed of all the shit that went down, and as much as I try to hide it all, it's still part of me. And I guess in another life I was pretty fucking cool."

I chuckled, but I couldn't ignore the way he said ashamed, and it stung. As in, ashamed enough to shove it all in a tiny room, doomed to never see the light of day. Never in my life did I have the desire to fix anyone the way I wanted to fix Brooklyn. Almost as if stitching up all his open wounds would somehow make my own seem smaller and hurt less.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled with my back still to him.

"Sorry?" he scoffed. "For what?"

I finally turned to face him. A faint smile tugged at his lips, but his blue eyes were dark and glassy. "Just...for you."

"Don't be," he said softly. "It's all self-inflicted. I deserve every ugly scar I've got."

Pain punctuated his words. I reached up and slowly ran my finger over the scar on his chin, and I wondered how something so soft could have hurt so much.

Brooklyn took my hand and pressed it against his cheek. He leaned down slowly, and I could feel his heartbeat frantic against my own.

"I...I really like you, Nat." When he spoke his lips brushed faintly against mine. "And I didn't show you any of this so you'd feel bad for me. I showed you because I don't want to keep anything from you."

I leaned forward on my toes and gently pressed my lips to his. He gave my hips a delicate squeeze, pulling my body closer to his until there was no space between us, only sparks - the kind that started the wildest of fires. A soft sigh escaped my lips as he traced lines on the small of my back with his fingers.

The shrill ring of the doorbell reverberated through the house, causing us to repel suddenly like two negative ends of a magnet.

Brooklyn exhaled heavily. "I guess we should get the food."

"Well, I can't say no to that spicy broccoli chicken," I mumbled with a slight grin. Brooklyn smiled and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, leading us out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

We brought the food back upstairs and sat on his wrinkled sheets in his empty room, joking around and eating as some cheap 80s horror movie chirped on the television in the background. It all seemed so normal, so ordinary, but all I wanted to do was hit pause and stay in that moment for as long as I could. Ordinary with Brooklyn was better than extraordinary with anyone else.

✗✗✗