Back When You Were Easier to Love by Wing Smith Emily Read Free Book Online

now, rolling my eyes, saying “You’re such a guy —you only want one thing!”
    Except Zan didn’t want one thing. He wanted everything.
    When I finally go inside to brush my teeth, I look through the glazed glass of the bathroom window. I can hear Mattia’s loud, almost-obnoxious laugh, and the chain reaction of Kristine’s giggles. It all feels like another world. I grab my sleeping bag from Charlotte’s bedroom and head outside.
    They have already laid their sleeping bags out like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. I set my bag where the last spoke should be, an empty space next to Mattia. She is talking, her tone wistful, the effect enhanced by the Japanese lantern casting a slanted glow on her face. “It was over by the late eighties, really.”
    “So sad,” Kristine says. “Such a waste. Our generation never had a chance.”
    “What about . . . you know . . . a reemergence?” Charlotte sounds hopeful.
    I snuggle into my sleeping bag. “What’s the topic of discussion?”
    “The gradual demise of Spin the Bottle,” says Mattia.
    The demise of Spin the Bottle? “Even when it was in existence, I don’t think Spin the Bottle was exactly popular with the seventeen-year-old set,” I say.
    Everybody stares at me.
    “I mean, I hate to be the voice of reason here, but . . .” I shrug.
    “I think it had to do with the disappearance of bottles,” says Kristine. “When everybody started drinking soda from a can, that’s when it tapered off.”
    “Non sequitur,” says Mattia. “Which guys got smoking hot over the summer?”
    “Sorry, I don’t know anything, but who was that guy in the blue polo shirt with the matching eyes that spent most of the night on the rope swing?” About two-thirds of Charlotte’s questions start out with apologies.
    “His two eyes matched each other?” I say. “Sounds like a real catch.” I’m half dreading half hoping she’s talking about who I think she’s talking about.
    “Eyes that matched his shirt!” Charlotte throws her teddy bear and it hits me dead-on. It stings more than I expect, due to its beanbaggy backside.
    “Blond hair and a tendency toward whistling?” Kristine can identify anyone in the senior class by mannerisms that the average observer doesn’t even pick up on.
    “Yeah, that’s him. He’s way good looking. We should hang out with him sometime.” Charlotte doesn’t dare meet new people without our permission and promise we will be there, too. Whether she is shy or just unsure of the social strata, Mattia says Charlotte is dependent to an extreme.
    “I don’t know,” says Kristine. “Your whistling fool is Noah Talbot, and he’s not Joy’s bestest bud at the moment.”
    “Actually, he is,” I say, pulling my sleeping bag up to cover my arms. “Or at least he wants to be. He thinks we should be ‘friends.’” I air quote the word like Mattia does to show the impossibility of it.
    “Noah Talbot.” Charlotte pauses. “ He’s the guy who’s stalking Joy?”
    “What, I don’t deserve a good-looking stalker?” I say, joking, and then curse myself for admitting I think he’s good looking.
    Charlotte’s too preoccupied thinking she’s offended me to notice.
    “I’m just kidding, Char. But trust me—you don’t want to hang out with Noah Talbot. Even Zan doesn’t want to hang out with Noah Talbot, and they’re best friends.”
    “ Were best friends,” Mattia corrects. “Now Noah wants to be best friends with you instead.”
    “No, no— he doesn’t want to be friends with me. He thinks Zan wants him to be friends with me. But Zan just wants . . .” What does Zan want? “Zan just wants to be left alone by the Noahs of the world.”

HOW I MET NOAH
    My seventeenth birthday fell six weeks after I moved to Haven.
    Frankly, I hadn’t even planned to have a birthday party. Before the move, I was hoping my parents would fly me back to California. Home to see Gretel, home to see everything I’d left behind.
    Six weeks was