American Girl On Saturn (13 page)

He stops, right in the middle of whatever he’s trying to say. I swear, in this silence, he probably hears my heart shattering like a broken water globe hitting the wooden floor below us. So this is how to he lets me down…in a dark closet…in a room with great acoustics…while Emery is searching the house for us.

“Chloe,” he whispers. “I was wrong.”

He lifts my chin up toward him, cups my cheek with his hand, and kisses me without hesitation. His lips are soft and warm and every ounce of perfect I always knew they’d be. Any Saturnite who has ever daydreamed about kissing Milo Grayson probably dreamed it’d be this way, minus the dark closet, and I’m the lucky girl who actually got to
live
that daydream.

I cave in to all things Saturn and let my hands move to his chest and abs, finally exploring places only my eyes had dared to venture. That dark gray T-shirt clings to him like a thin layer, separating our skin. But the fabric smells like laundry and Milo, so I can’t even hate it for standing in between us. Instead, I grasp the shirt, squeezing and maybe even tugging on it.

He pulls his mouth away and laughs.

“If you want this shirt t
hat badly, I’ll give it to you,” he says.

I sink into his chest with my hands still intertwined with dark gray fabric. Footsteps sound in the hallway, and Milo tightens his arms around me.

Emery’s voice rings out from a distance. “Don’t! It’s scary in there!”

The footsteps from a moment ago belong to Benji. The door to Mom’s old crafting room creaks open. I hold my breath as I wait for Benji to cross the room and discover us, but the door shuts as quickly as it opened, and they’re gone. I guess Benji decided it wasn’t worth it or maybe we wouldn’t bother to come up here.

“I think we’re clear,” Milo says.

He runs his fingers through my hair and pushes the closet door open. The light hits the side of his face, just like the moonlight did when we were catching fireflies, and I swear
, they can see the glow all the way on Saturn. This boy is beautiful.

“So, you think we can pick back up tonight?” he asks. “Outside, midnight? Guitar and Sharpies?”

I nod. “It’s a date.”

Milo waits on the back patio for me. He’s punctual – right at midnight. I’m always a minute or two later, which is ironic because I watch the clock for an hour waiting for 12:00 A.M. I just believe that a guy should wait for a girl, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

The note cards on the fridge stop me from immediately going outside, though. I walk over to see what Benji’s “Twitter feed” has to say. His tweets are handwritten on lime green note cards. There’s a stack of multi-colored cards on the counter for us to use to reply. I guess Benji claimed the green ones for himself.

The first one reads
:
I wish Aralie wouldn’t hate on Jules. I love that guy. #Bromance

The next one
:
But she gave me note cards, so it’s cool. #FakeTwitter #ThanksAralie

I put my bag of Sharpies on the counter, fish for the black Sharpie, grab a pink note card, and write
:
@Benji_Baccarini Maybe YOU should do his laundry for him then. #JenjiForever –Chloe

After retrieving my makeup bag full of Sharpies, I venture outside. Milo is stretched out on a lounge chair with his guitar resting on him.

“You’re late, Ms. Branson,” he says.

“Benji’s Twitter feed was calling out to me,” I say.

“I guess I’ll let it slide this time,” he says. He stands and holds his guitar up proudly. “Anywhere we can go so no one will hear us?”

“The treehouse is a pretty good spot,” I suggest.

He reaches for my hand. “Lead the way.”

For the most part, we walk in silence, and for once, it’s really awkward because all I can think about is that dark gray T-shirt and his mouth against mine and how he’s been very casual and calm all afternoon as if the kiss in the dark never happened. He even sat through the second and third Toy Story movies with Noah, Emery, and Jules afterward. Did I seriously daydream the whole thing?

The treehouse feels farther from the house than usual, but I blame it on my own frantic state of mind. Emery’s the only one who has even bothered to come out here this summer, which means the inside is most likely decorated in pinks and purples and possibly with posters of Spaceships Around Saturn.

Milo lets me climb up first while he holds my Sharpies. Then he
hands them up to me, and I reach down to carefully take his guitar. I wonder how many girls have had the opportunity to take Milo’s guitar from him. Something tells me that I’m the first.

I use my cell phone as a source of light until I find the black strand
on the floor. I plug in the clear Christmas lights, and everything glows when Milo reaches the floor. Mom thought Dad was crazy for having the treehouse wired for electricity all those years ago. I wonder if this was what Dad had in mind at the time – that his someday-teenaged-daughter would be sneaking out after midnight with a gorgeous boy who plays guitar. Probably not or else Dad wouldn’t have built the treehouse to begin with.

I sit down on
a lime green beanbag with his guitar and my bag of markers. Milo walks around, taking in the room. As predicted, there’s a lot of pink in here. Emery’s plastic tea party set is on the table with a bright pink tablecloth beneath. Aralie’s splatter-painted frame and mirror still hang on the wall.

Milo stops in front of the section of
Sharpie’d wall.

“Is it safe to assume this was your contribution to the interior design?” he asks.

My hand sinks into the beanbag when I try to push myself back up. I haven
’t looked at the drawings on the treehouse walls in so long that I’m embarrassed to see what I might have over there. I join Milo in front of my artwork.

“Emery usually tells me what to draw,” I say upon seeing the dragonflies and shooting stars. At least there aren’t kittens drawn on the wall.

“So…” Milo says. “When do I get my piece of artwork?”

“When I do get my song?” I ask.

He smiles. “That is a work-in-progress.”

I squeeze his bicep. “Well, maybe I should draw a work-in-progress right here.”

He turns toward me and wraps his arms around my waist. Then he pulls me close to him in a warm, tight hug. The Christmas lights twinkle in my peripheral vision, in and out of focus like fireflies dancing around us.

“Okay,” he says. “Truth is, I do have a song for you, but it’s not one I wrote. It’s one that I reworked Milo Grayson style.”

He takes my hand and leads me over to the beanbag. I fall back into the lime green one, and he pulls a black beanbag over next to me. He settles in with his guitar, sneaking smiles at me as I wait with anticipation.

He strums a few chords. “You ready for this?”

I’m more ready than a field of dust before a tornado. I’m ready to be swept away beyond my control. The beanbags crin
kle, and I want them to shut up. Tonight should only be filled with the sounds of Milo’s voice and guitar.

Maybe it’s a new song from their next album, a sneak peek at what the world will be blasted with next from the beautiful Canadian boys.

“If I mess this up, don’t get mad,” he warns me. And then he sings the words.

We sit alone in the morning light. You make a wish for blackened midnight skies. I watch the tears fall from your eyes because the world paints itself with bleeding butterflies.

“Oh my God,” I blurt out.

Milo laughs and stops playing.

“You’re not supposed to interrupt a superstar at work, Ms. Branson,” he says.

I zip my lips, just like I did with Emery and her Harry Styles secret, and toss the key. Milo nods in approval then starts over at the beginning of the song.

It takes every ounce of self-restraint not to attack him with the tightest hug in the world. My friends never understood this song. I don’t think Aralie even gets it. When Sebastian’s Shadow sings it, Isaac plays heavy, complicated riffs, and Nolan screams half of the lines.

But here, with Milo, listening to a broken-down, clean acoustic version with his perfect and warm voice, the song feels nostalgic – sad even. It’s like I’m finally awake and hearing this song with brand new ears. Why did it take three years and a lockdown with a boyband to find another soul who understands this song?

Milo exhales a deep breath when he strums the last chord.

“Was it awful?” he asks.

He places his guitar on the floor next to him, and I instantly dive toward that black beanbag and throw my arms around him. He doesn’t audibly laugh, but I feel it in his chest. He leans back and looks me directly in the eyes.

“It was perfect,” I say.

His smile is also perfect, but I don’t tell him that part. The entire universe feels balanced right now. Fireflies light up the dark sky, and morning is forever away. For tonight, I can be the girl in the Sebastian’s Shadow song who cries on the rooftop with a boy who tries to comfort her. I can be that girl who is saddened by the fact that butterflies must bleed to give color to the world. Tonight, I can be her, and Milo can sing, and we can pretend that this lockdown will last forever.

“I’ve been working on it since you told me that it was your favorite song,” he says. “
Your
song is still in progress.”

I can’t fight it anymore. I slide my hand to the back of his neck and pull him toward me so we can pick up where we left off in the closet today. But he stops me.

“Not yet,” he says. “You still owe me some ink.”

After repositioning the beanbags side by side, Milo stretches back and pulls his shirt sleeve over his shoulder so I can have his full arm to draw on. I think he just wants to show off his biceps, though, and I don’t blame him nor would I ever complain. I twist the lid off of my black Sharpie.

His other bicep is already tatted with an image of Saturn and the old English letters of MDG under it.

“Anything in particular you want?” I ask.

He shakes his head, just like Benji and Noah have in the past few days. These guys give me way too much credit. Noah finally managed to get a dolphin out of me, though, and Benji still has faded remnants of a rocket on his forearm.

I examine Milo’s arm and hope I can keep a steady hand. Even now, I feel stomach flutters when I’m this close to him – especially when he looks at me with those caramel eyes.

“So, what’d you tweet back to Benji?” he asks, interrupting the hum of the crickets and toads outside.

“I told him that he should do Jules’s laundry for him,” I answer.

Milo laughs, and his arm pulls away from me. At this rate, I might as well just draw an atlas of the USA on his arm because crooked lines are about all he’s going to get out of me.

“Jules isn’t so bad,” he says. “Really. I know he seems like such an ass, but this lockdown is killing him. He has this irrational fear of failure, and being here – not touring, not working – makes him feel like he’s fizzling out.”

I try to understand as best as I can, but he still had no right to leave a pile of his clothes at the end of Aralie’s bed. He had no right bashing on her favorite band. And he definitely had no right to let Milo and me take the fall for
his
cigarettes.

My blood runs hot as soon as the smell of crushed ladybugs comes back to me.

“Is that why you lied about the cigarettes?” I ask.

I cap the lid back on the black marker and exchange it for the red Sharpie.

Milo shakes his head.

“No, he should’ve manned up,” he says. “That pissed me off. He should’ve never thrown you under the bus like that, so I had to do something.”

“Well,” I say. “It was greatly appreciated.”

He leans over and kisses my cheek. “No problem.”

“So, tell me more about Canada,” I say, hoping he’ll talk while I draw so the butterflies in my stomach won’t wake up again.

Twenty minutes later, I study the final outline of a maple leaf on Milo’s arm. I draw a heart inside of it and fill in the rest of the leaf with the red marker. He’s talked about the Canadian weather and how he hates the stereotype that all guys from Canada like hockey. He prefers basketball. He said that Emery asked if he has ever seen a real moose, and Aralie thinks it’s weird that they don’t have a president. Apparently I didn’t miss much during those two days that he ignored me.

“I also told Emery that Justin Bieber lived next door to me, but she didn’t care. I don’t think she believed me,” he says.

“She’s smarter than I gave her credit for then,” I say, tracing the lines of the maple leaf with a purple marker.

I doubt Milo will think this little piece of Canada is all that awesome, but I think it’s super cute. The fact that I think it’s “super cute” is confirmation enough that Milo will hate it.

“Done,” I say.

Milo twists his arm to look at my attempt at an ink job. He’s not as flexible as he wishes he was. I so would’ve kicked his ass at Twister if he hadn’t cheated. I walk over to the mirror and take it down from the wall. He follows and examines my artwork in his reflection.

A smile appears on his face as he runs his index finger over the flesh-colored heart inside of the leaf.

“So, if the leaf represents my homeland, what’s the heart represent?” he asks.

I hook Aralie’s splatter-painted frame back on the wall.

“You,” I say.

This time, he goes in for the kiss. While my mind says it’d be funny to push him away and throw some witty line at him like he did me, my heart says to absorb every kiss I can while he’s still here.

I let myself collapse into his arms and the scent of his body wash. His lips are soft against mine, like how I imagine a cloud’s kisses would feel. There’s no rough tongue-jabbing or attempts to play tonsil hockey. There’s no uncomfortable groping or inappropriate
contact. I never thought kissing could actually be sweet until now. He’s not like the guys I’ve known. He makes me never want to know another guy again.

“We should get back,” he whispers when he pulls away. “Not that I want to.”

“Me either,” I say. “But you’re right.”

I gather my Sharpies as he gets his guitar. I send him down first with our stuff. Then I fish my cell phone out of my pocket to use as a flashlight once I unplug our fireflies on a string.

“Hey, wait,” he calls up the ladder.

I look around for something he might’ve left behind, but I’m certain he only had his guitar with him. I stand in the middle of the treehouse and wait while he climbs the ladder. He walks over to me once he’s inside the wooden walls.

“Let me see your phone,” he says.

Without hesitation, I hand it to him. He wraps an arm around me, pulls me close to him, and stretches his other arm out to hold my phone in front of us.

“Smile,” he says.

Once he pulls my phone back to us, he shows me our photo. It’s unreal to see me cuddled up next to Milo Grayson while he’s wearing that perfect dark gray T-shirt. The frame of Aralie’s
mirror is behind us, and Christmas lights glow around us. It could almost pass as a perfect summer night with a hot boyfriend if I didn’t know that he was unbelievably famous.