“What the hell are you talking about?” I burst out laughing. I can’t help it.

Then he smiles and I curse the damn butterflies for defying me.

I grasp his shirt and pull him inside, taking the bags from him at the same time. His smile remains as he walks backward down the hallway toward my room, watching me pull out the block of chocolate from the bag. “Riley?”

“Yeah?”

He stops in my doorway, blocking me from going in. “Are we going to ignore what happened the other day?”

I stop in front of him. “I don’t think I’m ready to deal with it yet. Can we just…” I motion to my room. “…be?”

His smile reaches his eyes. “We can be whatever you want, Hudson. As long as I’m with you.”

I switch on the TV and tell him to pick one of the DVDs he bought while I jump in the shower. When I return, he’s sitting on the edge of my bed, facing the TV. He smiles when he looks over at me.

“I was thinking…” I tell him, unwrapping the towel from my head. I sit down next to him and start drying my hair.

“You were thinking what?” he asks, turning to me with his leg up, knee bent, on the bed.

His knee brushes against mine and I pull away. Having him here is one thing, having him touch me is another. “How long were you in the navy for?”

“Riley,” he deadpans.

“What?” I ask, flipping my hair back and facing him.

“That’s not hot at all,” he mumbles. Then stands up and moves to the corner of the room. Not my corner, but the one where my bookshelf is. He picks up the books he’d bought and places them next to my other ones. “And you smell.”

“I smell?” I drop the towel and sniff my armpits. “I just showered.”

“Not in a bad way.” He shakes his head and turns back to me, but doesn’t close the gap between us. “And Marines, by the way. Not Navy.”

“Oh. Sorry. So how long?”

“Just over two years including basic. Why?”

“Why’d you enlist?”

He stares at me a moment, as if trying to decide what version of a lie he wants to tell me.

I know that look.

I live that look.

He doesn’t respond, just turns back to the shelf and runs his finger across the spines of the books. He stops at a set of blue books. My yearbooks. Then he pulls out the one from my freshman year. When he turns around, he holds it up as if asking for permission. He waits a few seconds for me to answer and when I don’t, he grabs the other three off the shelf and brings them with him back to the bed. He sits down next to me, further than he was before but still close enough that I can feel his warmth against my skin. He starts to flip the pages of my freshman year yearbook, starting at the back. “So when you were a freshman, I was—”

“Junior,” I cut him off. The response is quick. Too quick. Clearly, it’s not the first time I’ve thought about it. I drop my chin to my chest and hope he can’t see my blush. Or worse, call me out on it.

He points to my picture in the book.

“Oh God,” I cover my face to hide my embarrassment.

“You’re prettier now than you were then.”

I scoff and smack his leg. “Thanks, jerk!”

He bursts out laughing. “I didn’t mean it like that. Swear it.”

I take the book from him and flip to the junior pictures. “Let’s see you back in high school.”

He groans and fakes a shiver. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

I find his profile picture and spend a few seconds taking him in. He hasn’t changed much. His hair’s shorter and his face is a little more masculine now but besides that, he’s still the same Dylan in the picture. We go through the next book, me as a sophomore and him as a senior. I flip to his picture and read his caption out loud. “A man of many words.”

“What?” He leans over me and looks to where I’m pointing on the page. “I didn’t tell them to write that.”

“What did you tell them to write?”

“I don’t recall telling them anything.”

“Maybe they just improvised?”

“I guess.”

“What does it even mean?”

He shrugs. “No idea,” he says, then quickly looks away.

I don’t press on. I just flip the pages, ignoring the turning of my stomach when he moves closer again, his arm touching my back as he leans into me. I stop at the pictures of his senior prom and search the pages for any sign of him. There’s none of him. But there’s one of Heidi—his ex—with a crown on her head next to a guy who isn’t Dylan. “You didn’t win prom king?” I ask, eyeing him sideways.

“Nah.” He shakes his head slowly. “I think that was the year I put my foot down and told Heidi I didn’t care much for any of that shit.”

“That shit?”

“Yeah. You know… the whole arm candy thing and trying to get votes and making posters and pins and whatever.”

“So you just let another guy stand next to her, get these pictures, wear matching crowns and hold the title of king and queen on a night that was probably important to her?”

He leans back a little. “You make me sound like an asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I guess I just see it differently.”

“How do you see it?”

“It’s just a night of memories, you know? High school isn’t forever.” I pause a moment and swallow the lump in my throat, the memories I speak of flooding my mind. My voice drops to a whisper. “Sometimes high school is as good as it gets.”

He takes the book from me and throws it behind us, then grabs the one from junior year. “I don’t know,” he says, flipping through the pages, most likely looking for me again. “I guess we had different experiences.”

“Oh, I’m sure we did,” I tell him, moving his hand away so I can flip to the page I know is mine. I point to my picture and add, “You and your circle of friends owned the school.”

“We did?” he asks, clearly surprised.

“Don’t act like you didn’t know that.”

“I mean, I guess. It was more my friends and Heidi, though. It wasn’t really me.”

I shrug. “Then you were popular by association. Still valid.”

“Maybe,” he mumbles, his mind elsewhere. “How do you even remember this?”

I roll my eyes. “Please. You and those guys you hung out with. All the girls knew you.”

He tears his gaze away from my picture and slowly looks up at me. “What?” he says, a half smirk pulling his lips. “Did you crush on Jake or something?”

“No. Not Jake. Logan though….”

He pushes on my arm until I fall to my side, losing it in a fit of laughter. “What? Are you offended?” I joke.

“Offended? No.” He drops his gaze back to my picture. “Jealous? Maybe.”

Butterflies are stupid.

He taps on the book. “You were on the swim team?”

“Yeah. All four years.”

He starts flipping the pages again. “Is there a picture of you in your swim gear?” His hand stops mid-movement as he looks from the book and straight ahead. “Wait. This is a little skeezy.” He throws the book over his shoulder and picks up the one from senior year. “You were eighteen at some point in this one, right?”