“You want to feel like he does, but there’s just no way you could keep up, because the way he’s feeling changes so quickly. It must be exhausting to be so passionate.” Her body shivered as she found just the right word for him.

Passionate, always.

“So are you two, like, friends now?”

“I don’t know.” The truth was that she knew he wanted her. And that, despite trying not to, she felt much the same way. It seemed disloyal spending the evening with David after her day with Tamani. Or maybe she felt disloyal having spent the day with Tamani. It was hard to tell for sure.

She reached up to touch the ring he’d given her, strung on a thin, silver chain.

She’d done so at least a hundred times already that day. It brought back the feeling of being with him. In their short visit, they had become more than friends—no, not more, beyond friends. The word friend seemed too paltry to describe the connection they shared. It was more like they had a bond. She couldn’t tell David that. It would be hard enough to explain to an unaffected observer—and David was far from unaffected. If he had any idea of the storm of emotions she felt for Tamani, he would be terribly jealous.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t like David. She considered him her best friend and sometimes more. David was everything Tamani wasn’t—calm and centered, logical, soothing. Her feelings for him weren’t a storm of chaos but a calm, strong pull. He was a constant in her life in a way Tamani never could be.

Two halves that could never be a whole.

David finally finished his dinner and Laurel pushed the notebook aside to face him. “Thanks for covering for me, by the way. I never dreamed my mom would actually call you.”

David shrugged. “You’d been gone a long time, and she knows you don’t actually like biology.”

“I did some reading this afternoon,” Laurel said. “You know how plants absorb

carbon dioxide from the air and then release oxygen as a by-product, right?”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re supposed to save the trees and all that stuff.”

“I was thinking it wouldn’t make sense for me to breathe oxygen.”

“So…you think you breathe carbon dioxide?”

“And exhale oxygen, yeah.”

“I guess that would make sense.”

“I was thinking,” Laurel began slowly, “that we could try another experiment.”

David looked at her, puzzled. “Okay. What kind of experiment?”

“Um, well, air’s not something you can look at under a microscope or anything, so the only way to tell if I was exhaling oxygen would be to see if you could inhale it without any problems.”

David began to see where this was headed. “And how do you propose we do that?” he asked, with a tiny smile hovering around the corner of his mouth.

“Well, I was kind of thinking it would be sort of like…mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Except you’d breathe into my mouth first and then, without getting another breath of air, I could breathe into yours.” She looked at him for a second then blurted, “But there’s no reason you have to. It was just an idea I had.”

“I’m impressed,” David said. “You studied bio all by yourself.”

Laurel rolled her eyes but grinned. “Google is my friend.”

David snorted, then tried to cover it with a cough.

Laurel glared at him.

“It makes sense,” David said. “Let’s do it.”

David turned toward her till their knees were touching.

“First you take a breath of air and hold it for about ten seconds so your lungs can convert it to carbon dioxide. Then blow it into my mouth, and I’ll breathe it in. Then I’ll wait about ten seconds and blow it back into your mouth, okay?”

David nodded.

It sounded simple enough. Well, except the mouth-to-mouth part. But she could handle that. Right?

David’s chest expanded as he sucked in a lungful of air, and his face flushed red while he held it.

No backing out now.

After about ten seconds he gestured to her and leaned forward, his eyes trained on her mouth. She forced herself to focus as she leaned forward to meet him.

Their lips touched gently at first and Laurel almost forgot herself and breathed in a nervous gulp of air. Then David pressed more firmly and blew into her mouth.

She let her lungs fill.

He pulled back and Laurel made the mistake of meeting his eyes. She smiled, then had to look away as she counted to ten. Then he was leaning back in, his hand tugging softly on her shoulder.

Laurel met him halfway without any hesitation this time. His mouth pressed to hers and he opened his lips just a little. She blew all the air from her lungs back into his mouth and felt him inhale it. He lingered for just a moment before pulling back and breaking contact.

“Wow.” He exhaled and ran his fingers through his hair. “Wow. That was amazing. My head’s spinning a little. I think you’re exhaling almost pure oxygen, Laurel.”

“You’re not going to fall off your stool, are you?” She placed her hands on his legs.

“I’m all right,” David said, breathing slowly. “Just give me a couple more seconds.” He let his hands slide down to cover hers, where they were still braced on his legs. She looked up as he sucked on his bottom lip, then grinned.

“What’s so funny?”

“Sorry,” David said, reddening again. “You just taste so sweet.”