Jerimiah goes back to painting and I stoop down, snatching up the closest brush. “You’re doing it again. Trying to get acceptance from your friends by doing their dirty work.” I jab the brush into a can full of sky-blue paint. “I’m not letting you.”
“I’m not budging.”
“Me either.” My chin goes up. “You don’t even know what the mural is supposed to look like. You only saw it in the dark last night and you didn’t show up yesterday—”
“I did show up. Late.” He catches my gaze and holds it. “I was in the dean’s office, but I came. You were gone. I remember everything about it, though. Mostly your section.”
It takes gallons of willpower not to drop the brush and climb into his arms. Jerimiah came. He didn’t blow me off or regard me as an insignificant kegger hookup. With him standing in front of me, looking so sturdy and intense and honest, I wonder where I got the nerve to doubt him. “Why were you in the dean’s office?”
He stares off over my shoulder. “You look very pretty in that dress, Birdie.”
“A-are you stalling?” I say, totally breathless over his gruff compliment.
“Yes. You’re not going to like why I was with the dean.” He sighs and continues painting. “I took the blame for having beer at the party. I wish I hadn’t done it. I’d already decided to stop covering for everyone before they ruined your mural. And now I just want to kill them with my bare hands.”
A corner of my mouth ticks up. “So now they do have a reason to think you’re scary?”
“Yeah.” A muscle rises and falls in his throat. “You were crying.”
“I’ll deny it in court. No jury will believe you.” He grunts—and oh my God, the deep, resonant sound makes my vagina clench. Who knew? “If you’re dead set on re-painting this mural, I have a picture on my phone.” I fish it out of my dress pocket with my free hand and pull up the most recent picture. As he looks it over, I take the opportunity to study him. “What made you decide to stop letting your friends take advantage?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I met someone who thought I deserved better. Made it easier for me to believe that could be true.”
“Oh.” I bite my lips to hide my smile. “That’s cool.”
For the next hour, we paint in companionable silence. And I mean companionable. Most of the time, I hate extended silences and rush to fill them with nonsense or random observations, but I don’t feel the need to do that around Jerimiah. Silence is his natural state and it gives me the freedom to live in my own thoughts. Which are almost entirely about him. How he’s a terrible artist but doesn’t hesitate to attempt pink roses and the cerulean pond. His birds actually look like road kill. I notice the fit of his jeans, too. The tree trunk thickness of his thighs, the muscular cords that aren’t hidden whatsoever by the denim. He catches me staring at them and tilts his head as if surprised someone finds inhuman strength attractive.
Apparently this girl does.
I wish I’d worn leggings or something. This dress makes me feel sexually vulnerable and I’m too emotionally vulnerable for that. As we paint, I intentionally avoid my section of the mural that once depicted two branches growing from the same trunk, representing me and Natalie. It was hard enough painting it the first time, but doing it twice?
With a deep breath, I turn around to find the crowd has dispersed, except for a few lingering lookie-loos. It’s early afternoon and the sky has turned to charcoal, some ominous clouds beginning to move in overhead.
“Looks like rain,” Jerimiah says without taking his attention off the horrible lily pad he’s painting. “I wonder if my game tonight will be canceled.”
“The dean didn’t sideline you?”
Jerimiah shakes his head, brow furrowing.
“You wish he’d made you sit out, don’t you?” I scrutinize his profile. “Even if you didn’t do the crime, you want to serve the time.”
“I just think someone should. No one is paying for this crime, either.”
“You are, Jerimiah.”
His laughs under his breath. “You think spending time with you is a punishment, Birdie?” A beat passes. “I spent yesterday worried I might never find you. Then last night…you were crying. Thinking the worst of me. I wouldn’t move from this spot for anything. Not with you smiling and talking to me. This is the furthest thing from a punishment I could get.”
“Jerimiah.” I have to swallow several times. “I don’t know what this is, but…”
He turns to me and waits.
“Let’s be friends, okay?” Unerringly, my eyes stray to the branches of the mural that are mostly covered in white paint, and Jerimiah follows my line of vision, frowning. “Can you just be my friend for now?”