Free How We Fall by Kate Brauning Page A

make it any less true.”
    No. Saying things brought them out into the open and made them something to act on. The breeze toyed with my hair and 61
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    blew some of my longer bangs into my eyes. But if I moved, it would break the spell of me watching Marcus, and him watching me, and me knowing it wouldn’t matter if he never touched me again as long as when he looked at me, it was like this; like he knew me and he understood and it was okay anyway.
    For once, I said what I was really thinking. “Do you ever feel like we must be really screwed up or that we’re messing up our lives or something?”
    “What? Shit, no.” His eyebrows drew together and he moved closer to me. “Why would you think that?”
    “You know. It’s not normal. People think this kind of thing is gross.” I scraped the last bit of ice cream onto my spoon but didn’t feel like eating it.
    “Maybe some people would, but that’s their problem.
    There’s nothing wrong with you. Don’t even think that.”
    I watched his eyes. “What do you think your parents would do if they found out?” Aunt Shelly, with all her micromanag-ing, would freak out. Healthy, well-adjusted teenagers did not hook up with their cousins.
    He looked down. “I know. It would be bad. They’d probably ask your family to move out and they’d put me in therapy or something.” He shifted. “But look. No one knows. Maybe we should be more careful, but it’s worked so far. And maybe we can’t do anything long-term. But I don’t want to go back to being just cousins. As long as it works, there’s nothing to stop us, right?”
    But he’d be branded a pervert. And since he was the guy, I’d look like a victim when I was the one who’d started it. “Do you ever wonder how this happened? Why us?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t care. Lots of people crush on a cousin. And a lot of cousins have a relationship and even get married. People just don’t talk about it. Come here?” He held out an arm and I moved over.
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    He played with the end of my ponytail. “Don’t worry about it. Right now, there’s no problem and we don’t need to worry about it until there is one. Did you bring a book?”
    I nodded. I wanted to finish Pygmalion . The film My Fair Lady was an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play, but with an important difference in the ending. In one, Eliza Dolittle and Henry Higgins stayed together, and in the other, she left him and married someone else. I couldn’t yet tell if the difference in the ending was due to one of the Elizas or one of the Henrys.
    Marcus lay down on the blanket. I dug the book out of my bag and lay back on his chest. He held still for a minute, then exhaled and played with my hair again.
    He liked it when I did things like that without asking.
    While I read, he messed around on his phone, texting. The shade shifted and before long we were in patchy sun. “Did you bring any water?” I asked.
    Marcus reached over his head and fumbled around in the cooler before handing me a bottle of ice water. The condensa-tion dripped on my shirt. “Wow. You planned everything.”
    He didn’t reply, just sent a text and gently tugged out my ponytail holder. “I love your hair.”
    Definitely not a conversation I should keep going, but I didn’t move. His chest was warm and solid, and his hands kept moving through my hair, running down the lengths. Falling asleep was tempting, but I kept reading because I was nearly done.
    When I closed the book twenty minutes later, I rolled on my shoulder toward him. He was still messing with his phone.
    “Who are you texting?”
    He glanced at me. “Hey. How was the book?”
    “Good. Not as happily-ever-after as the movie.” I poked his side. “Are you texting someone secret?”
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    He gave me a look. “It’s just Sylvia.”
    Just Sylvia. “This whole time?” He could text her. It wasn’t like there was a reason he shouldn’t be texting her, because this