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Buzzing. The most annoying buzz on God’s green earth.

I try to open my eyes, but it ain’t happenin’.

Buzzzzz
.

Somehow, I force my eyes open. My room is dark. Why is my phone buzzing when my room is dark? I glance at the clock on my nightstand while grabbing my phone: 1:49 a.m. What. The. Heck. Wincing at the phone’s bright screen, I hit the Messages icon, which has a bright red number one in the corner.

Marisa
:
Just got ur message. Thanks
.

I rub my eyes. Am I dreaming, or did this girl just text me at two in the morning? Still squinting at the screen, I type back,
Welcome. U ok?

A minute passes. Two. Three.

That’s it. I’m going back to sleep.

I toss the phone back onto my nightstand and roll over.
Buzzzzz
. Groaning, I grab the stupid phone and collapse back against my headboard.

Marisa
:
U always awake this late?

No. Sleep is magical and should be required for twelve hours a day. You woke me up.
Yeah
, I reply, yawning loudly.
How u feelin?

Another minute passes. She’s either half-asleep or the longest replier in history.

Marisa
:
Not great. Bad night
.

Maybe she wouldn’t feel so bad if she was asleep at two in the morning. But that could be why she’s still awake in the first place.

Me:
Need to talk?

My phone buzzes almost immediately, with her name flashing across its screen. Guess that’s a yes. This probably isn’t the best time to tell her that I’m not really a phone person and my offer was for text-talking. “Hello?” I answer.

She sniffles and croaks out a shaky, “Hi.”

I narrow my eyes, listening intently. She lets out this tiny hiccupy cry, making me jolt up. “What’s going on? What happened?”

She sniffles again. “Nothing. That’s the problem. I’m sorry. I thought—” She pauses. “I didn’t think I could do any more crying tonight.”

Well, now I’m wide awake. I rub my face. I don’t have any idea what to say to her. I’ve got zero experience with girls crying in the middle of the night, but I can’t just ignore her. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, and it’s the truth. “Is it… I mean, is there anything you want to talk about?”

There’s rustling on her side of the line, like wind blowing. “Does your brain ever just hurt?” she asks. “Like too many things are in there, all smushed together?”

I nod along, even though she can’t see me. “And it feels like it’s gonna blow at any minute?”

“Exactly. And there’s nothing you can do but wait, either for something to budge or for your brain to just—” She makes an explosion sound.

There’s more rustling in the background. “Are you outside?”

“Yeah. On the porch, with my blanket. It’s perfect out here.”

That does sound pretty perfect. “That’s the best cure for a loud head, you know. Bein’ outside, alone.”

“It’s one of the things I’m starting to like about this place.”

I can’t resist. She walked right into that one. Yawning, I lie back against my pillow, sinking into the cool cushion. “Just one of the things? What’s some of the other stuff?”

“Shut up,” she says, but I can hear the smile in her voice.

“No, really,” I press through another yawn. “You can’t leave something like that danglin’.”

“I can, and I will. I’m pleading the Fifth.”

I wonder if she realizes that pleading the Fifth is basically an admission of complete and utter guilt.

“Were you really awake?” she asks. “You sound like you’re half-asleep.”

The yawning must have given me away. “You caught me. But I did just go to bed, like, two hours ago.” I glance over at my desk, where my Chemistry book is buried beneath the lab worksheets I brought home to finish. Tryouts lasted until seven, and it took another four hours to do all my homework. I guess I can sleep when I’m dead.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she says.

The tree branches outside my window cast shadows in my room as they sway, in sync with the wind rustling on Marisa’s side of the line. It’s almost like we’re right beside each other. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just good hearing your voi—” I clear my throat. “It’s good hearing from you.”

She’s silent for a moment before saying, “I should probably go inside now. Get
some
sleep.”

My lips twitch. “You sound better.”

“I feel better,” she says. “Thanks to you.”

My heart skips a beat. “Sometimes we just need someone to talk to, you know?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I do. Goodnight, Austin. And thanks.”

It’s kind of crazy how awesome it feels to hear a soft voice telling me goodnight again, even if it is two in the morning. “G’night, Marisa.”

chapter six

Question: What do three days of baseball tryouts plus three days of nonstop homework equal?

Answer: An exhausted, cranky, zombified Austin. People say sleep is for the weak. If that’s true, I’m waving the white flag. Call me weak. Whatever. Just let me sleep.

It doesn’t help that trying to study while a pretty girl is working right in front of you is nearly impossible. If I do fail Chemistry, I’m blaming my momma for hiring that pretty girl. Marisa kneels to perfect the arrangements in front of the shop’s window. With her hidden behind stacks of Valentine’s bouquets and teddy bears, all I can see is her reflection in the window. And I gotta say, those jeans fit that girl just right.

Dang it. Chemistry. Book. Focus. Shifting on my stool, I look down at my opened book on the counter and scan the page. Wait a second. I flip through the last couple of pages, but it’s useless. I— I don’t remember reading any of this crap.
How
do I not remember what I just read? I bang my head on the counter. And again. And again.

“You’ll knock something loose in there.”

When I look up, Marisa’s leaning on the counter, with her hair spilling across her shoulders. A citrusy smell fills the air (after way too much stalkerish consideration, I
think
it’s her shampoo), and she’s probably saying something about science or whatever, but those lips—

“And I didn’t wake up until the rats started eating my toes.”

I shake my head. “Huh?”

She sighs. “You sure you’re okay?” She walks around the counter to stand beside me. “I don’t think you’re capable of focusing on anything for more than twenty seconds.”

“Um, wrong. Ball games last for two hours, and I can focus on those just fine.”
The problem is that you’re just way too pretty. Sorry
.

Actually no, not sorry.

“Or you have issues actually listening to a girl, rather than staring at her. Maybe we should just talk on the phone more often. You did great on Monday night.” She gives me a half-smile. “Thanks again for that, by the way.”

I shrug. “Don’t mention it.”

She tugs on the ends of her sleeves, pulling them over her hands. “Speaking of ball games,” she says, “since tryouts are over, will you guys start playing soon? Assuming you make the team and all.”

And she called
me
the smartass. I jerk my thumb to the wallpaper of newspaper clippings. “If there’s one guarantee in this town, it’s that I’m on the team.”

“Wow,” she drawls. “You aren’t cocky at
all
.”

Some things are worth being cocky about. Chemistry, no. Baseball, definitely. “Practice starts Monday,” I tell her. “Then it’s practice, practice, and more practice until our first game March 4th.”

“So I’m basically never going to see you again,” she says.

She’s smiling, but judging from the tone of her voice, that thought’s just as awful for her as it is for me. I glare at my book. “You’re more than welcome to eat dinner with us any night of the week. But I won’t have to do much practicing if I don’t get this crap straight. I need to pull a miracle out of my ass.”

She not-so-subtly clears her throat.

I look over at her. Even with me sitting on the stool, she’s eye level with me. Her gaze darts from me to my book, and back to me. “You know, it’s okay to let people help you,” she says. “There’s a future Chemistry major standing right in front of you, offering free tutoring for the second time. And you’ve had my number for how long?”

“I know, I know. You’re the genius offspring of a genius doctor, and I’m sure you come from a long line of genius geniuses.”

My eyes widen right along with hers. And the award for shittiest timing in history goes to Austin Braxton, King of the Douches.

“Okay,” she says. “You’re feeling down, so I’ll let that slide. Don’t push it.” She kicks off the counter and walks into the back room.

Dang it. I jump up and follow her, finding her at the arrangement table with roses spread out in front of her. She doesn’t even bother looking up at me.

“I can’t ask you to tutor me,” I tell her, leaning against the doorframe. “It’d be weird, wouldn’t it? We work together, for one thing, and—” My shoulders slump as she looks up at me, waiting for me to continue.
I’m an idiot, and don’t want you to see that
. My mouth closes.

Her face falls, almost like she heard me tack on that last line. “I don’t think you have much of a choice anymore,” she says carefully. “You shouldn’t be worried about weird when you’re close to failing. I thought baseball was everything to you. Why do you care what
I think of you when you have a chance of not making it to the field?”

She’s got a point. What she thinks of me should be at the bottom of my list—the key word here being “should.” But I do care. A lot. What guy wants someone to see, firsthand, that he can’t even read a page without its words going over his head?

I blow out a breath and walk over to the table so I can help her. “Are you going to be my miracle?” I ask, picking up the scissors.

She eyes the scissors, her forehead creasing a little. “Sure.” She hands me a rose. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be identifying chemical structures in your sleep.”

I snort. This girl has no clue what she’s getting into. “Then you’ve got one hell of a job to do. I’m not even sure where to start.”

“Start by coming to my house this weekend?” she asks. “After you get off work tomorrow night?”

I glance up and catch her staring. She blushes. Waits. And I think my knees just turned to jelly.

“Sounds good,” I manage to say. Clearing my throat, I start snipping thorns off my rose. “Why aren’t you working tomorrow?”

Her smile falters as she hands me another flower. “Doctor’s appointment. I bet you won’t even notice I’m gone.”

That’s where she’s completely, totally, out-of-the-park wrong. “Well, if you find some way to push that stuff through my head, I’ll make sure you have a front-row seat to every game of the season.”

“Won’t I be working during your games?”

“We close up early on game days, along with half the other places in town.”

She hands me the last rose, her hand brushing against mine when I take it. Her cheeks flush again.
There’s no way I can hold back my grin. That seems to happen every time I’m around this girl.

“For the record,” I say, “it’s going to be awful lonely without you here tomorrow.” And I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious.

Marisa and her parents live way out on the other side of the county, close to the line between Lewis Creek and Summerville. Once I leave the shop on Friday night, a twenty-mile drive brings me to the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere. As I pull into the Marlowes’ driveway, my jaw drops. I’m sure Marisa’s dad makes plenty of money, but good Lord. Their place is bigger than any farmhouse around.

After parking behind Marisa’s car, I grab my book and notebook and hop out onto the cobblestone driveway. On their wide front porch, the rocking chairs sway in the breeze. Marisa said that it was perfect out here, and now I definitely believe it. My house isn’t some run-down shack, but we go against every Southern rule by not having a huge porch.

I press the doorbell and wait. And wait. And wait some more. The wind chimes jingle behind me, echoing in the night. Right as I hit the bell again, the door finally swings open, and I’m looking up at a dad who’s got to be nearly a foot taller than me.

Well, hell.

“Evenin’, Dr. Marlowe,” I say, making sure my voice doesn’t squeak like a field mouse. I hold up my book. “I’m here to, uh, study. With Marisa.”

He stares me down until I
feel
about as small as a field mouse. Finally, he nods once and steps to the side, allowing me in. The smell of tomato sauce and fresh bread hits me full-force, and my stomach growls, reminding me I never ate dinner tonight. I came
straight here after closing up the shop. A staircase a mile high stretches before me, and sounds from a TV drift from the living room on the left. The best part, though, is the dozens of pictures that line the wall next to the stairs. Most of them are of Marisa, from baby pictures all the way up to this past Christmas, when they moved here.

Her dad clears his throat, and I spin on my heel, facing him. The dude had to have been a basketball player at some point, or the scariest tight end in history. I thought doctors were supposed to be, like, friendly or something. But he’s also a dad to a hot eighteen-year-old girl, so there’s that.