Half of My Heart ✔️

12 | say my name

just enjoy the ride, y'all :) I promise that none of you, no matter what team, can guess where this book is going. so sit back and relax

that doesn't mean she chooses someone else entirely or doesn't end up with either of them. it just means that the journey getting to whoever she ends up with will be unexpected. trust.

♔

I scan the parking lot of Archer and Jack's dorm, checking for any sign of mine and Archer's car. Logically, I know Archer's at class, so he's not here. But I'm paranoid and afraid that my brother will see me sneaking around behind his back to talk to his best friend.

My heart is pounding out of my chest with anticipation as I make my way to their dorm, bursting with the excitement of seeing Jack for the first time in almost two weeks since the party. I knock on the door hard, wanting to both jump into his arms and run away in avoidance of the conversation that needs to be had.

The door swings open before I can get the fourth knock out. My heart slows down the tiniest bit when I see him braced against the doorway, the way his face lights up when he realizes it's me. Without giving myself time to second-guess this decision, I reach up, placing my hand on his shoulder to kiss him. He leans down to meet my lips gently, and everything feels a bit less scary.

"I missed you," he says against my lips. I smile and kiss him again, as if to say me too.

"It's only been two weeks," I remind him.

"Two weeks too long."

His hand takes mine and brings me inside. He leans out into the hallway, making sure no one saw, and closes the door behind us. I walk in, feeling somewhat weird being in their dorm without Archer, and sit down on Archer's bed. Jack hovers between the beds for a second before sitting down on his own.

Looking around, I pick up a book sitting on the nightstand between the two beds. "Atonement," I read off the cover. "I didn't know you were a contemporary classics man."

"I didn't know I was either. I'm just getting into them," he says as I flip through the book absentmindedly. "I had to read it for a class. Just finished my essay on it, actually."

I smile to myself. Not many people know that Jack is a pretty big reader. I'm not sure why he doesn't tell more people. Maybe it just doesn't go with the dumb jock image people like to associate with him.

At the same time, I melt at the thought of being one of the few people to see this side of him. "I remember the three of us reading The Magic Treehouse in elementary school," I say, thinking back fondly to the memories of me, Archer, and Jack reading the whole series together in the treehouse my dad built for us. "How does this compare?"

He rolls his neck, leaning back on his hands. "Oh, The Magic Treehouse books are better than anything I've read thus far, hands down."

"Of course they are. That's top-tier literature," I scoff. I look up at him over the book. "So tell me, Mr. Literature Expert, what's this book about?"

I feel the bed dip as Jack sits beside me, leaning in to look over the book with me. I watch his face as he thinks for a second. "It's about a lot of things. Growing up. Guilt. Selflessness and narcissism. Facing the consequences of your mistakes and sometimes suffering because of things that are out of your control."

There are tiny Post-Its throughout the book of all different colors: blue, yellow, green, purple. "What do the bookmarks mean?" I ask. Then I notice the red Post-Its; there are significantly fewer of them than the other colors. I flip to one of the red-marked pages, wondering what it could represent. "Actually, what do the red bookmarks mean?"