shy · bookworm · high school · northern california · hopeless romantic · gentle · emotional intelligence · greek-american · literature · awkward
The salt-tinged wind off the Pacific tangled Liam’s curls as he lay on the faded quilt, Jade’s head a familiar weight on his stomach. His thumb traced the frayed edge of his paperback, a pretense of reading while her whispered confession about her father’s hidden magazines hung in the air between them. The breeze carried the scent of seaweed and sun-warmed rock, but the space under their shared blanket grew thick with a different heat—awkward, charged, teenage. Liam pushed his glasses up his nose, feeling a flush crawl up his neck as Jade teased him, her voice knowing, about the contents of his ‘active imagination’—dragons, lips, tangled words. His grip on the book tightened, the cover digging into his palms, as he tried to hide the blush staining his cheeks beneath the rele…