Chapter 10: The Cold Steps

Eliot's POV

I sat in the car with the engine running and watched her walk away in the rain.

She didn't have a coat on over her hoodie, and she didn't turn around.

I had counted every time Delaney Frost dropped her pen in AP Lit.

This year it was three, and I had kept the count anyway.

I had been counting things about her for three years, and I had never once told her any of them.

Tonight I had told her the worst one.

I gave her to the end of the street, and then I turned off the engine and got out.

Across from my house, on the Larkins' front steps, someone was sitting in the dark.

It was Tate.

He wore his lacrosse jacket with the hood down and no coat, and rain had soaked the shoulders black.

He was holding his phone, face down, on his knee.

I crossed the street and stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"Come to gloat?" he said.

"No."

"Then you're lost."

"I live here."

"Not on my steps."

I stayed where I was.

He didn't tell me to leave again.

"You printed that paper," he said, after a while. "My dad about lost it."

"I know."

"Everybody's calling me a liar."

"I know that too."

"Did you come to tell me I'm a liar?"

"I came to ask if you're cold," I said.

He looked up.

For a moment he seemed to think I was joking.

Then his shoulders dropped, and he said, quietly, "Yeah. I'm cold."

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