Echoes by Marissa Lete (best books for students to read txt) 📕

His hands reach for my neck, curve just under my ears. Ever so slightly, he uses his thumbs to tilt my chin up until my face is aligned with his. His amber eyes flick back and forth between mine, seeming to ask a question: is this okay?

In answer, my eyes flutter closed. My heart races in anticipation.

A second later, his lips touch mine, and my stomach responds as if I’ve just taken a dip on a rollercoaster or jumped out of an airplane. Too soon, they’re gone, but he stays close and puts his forehead against mine, his breath mingling with mine. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be,” I reply breathlessly.

And he must not be, because a moment later he kisses me again, this time harder, more insistent. Like he’s kissed me a thousand times before. And perhaps he has.

Just as quickly as he had moved to me, he moves away, leaving all of the places he’d touched me feeling cold and empty. All that’s left is a tingling feeling that spreads across my skin. Across my lips. The echoes of his kiss.

I try to steady my breathing as he stands a foot away from me, looking at me with those golden eyes. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed that. Missed you,” he tells me.

I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there, watching him stare at me. He’d kissed me. I’d let him kiss me. I’d wanted him to kiss me. What were the implications of this? I’d just barely started feeling comfortable enough to think of him as a friend. To trust him. And now there’s this burning in my heart, in my cheeks that I can’t control. I know what we must have been to each other before, but were we on our way to becoming that again? Will it ever be the same, now that I can’t remember anything that happened before?

“Come with me,” Maverick says before I can come up with something to say. He offers his hand. I take it, and he intertwines our fingers. “There’s something I want to show you.”

He leads me through the house and up to a pair of wooden double doors. The room contains a large screen and several rows of chairs. A home theater.

“This house never ceases to amaze me,” I say.

“I’ve lived here for months and I’m still not sure I’ve seen the whole thing,” Maverick laughs. He leads me to the front of the room, then lets go of my hand. “Choose a seat.”

“This is going to be tough, it’s pretty crowded in here,” I reply, and he chuckles, nudging me forward. I sit down in the third row and watch as he goes to the back of the room.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, then goes through a side door. A minute later the screen comes on, displaying a photograph of me standing in front of a chalk sign holding an ice cream cone, smiling at the camera.

Maverick comes back into the room and sits down in the seat next to me. He holds out a small remote and I grab it, examining it in my fingers.

“I can’t give you back your memories,” Maverick starts, and I meet his eyes, trying to see what’s inside them, “but I can give you this.”

“What is it?”

“That remote,” he points at the screen, “controls that, which has a slideshow of all the photos I have of us.”

I gasp. “Are you serious?”

He nods. “This is the first photo I ever took of you. On our first date.”

I look at the picture of myself again, realization hitting me. “Oh my gosh,” I say. Hastily, I hit the forward button on the remote, and the photo changes to a selfie of us standing in front of an ice cream store. It looks vaguely familiar, like I might have driven past it before. My hair is shorter in this photo—I’d grown it out a little in the past year.

After studying it for a long time, I change the photo again. This one’s a candid shot of me sitting at a table in a restaurant, digging my fork into what looks like some kind of pasta dish. I’m smiling, my mouth wide open like I’m laughing at something.

“Second date,” Maverick tells me, “Lorenzo’s Italian restaurant, downtown. I basically had to beg you to go out with me again.”

I shoot him a look. “Seriously?” Then I remember hearing the echo of Maverick cornering me in front of my house before school to question why I was avoiding him. The conversation that ultimately ended with me telling him I liked him.

“You were a tough catch, I’d say,” he chuckles. “It took like two months for you to start referring to me as your boyfriend.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “I’ve never dated anyone before. I was probably terrified of you.”

He shrugs, “I’ve never thought of myself as intimidating, but maybe I was a little forward about my feelings.”

“Maybe,” I reply. Another thought pops into my head, and I start to ignore it before I realize that with Maverick, I don’t have to hide certain parts of my life. So I open my mouth instead. “Hearing the echoes always scared me away from relationships. It’s kind of hard to juggle all the noise of the past and keep up healthy friendships and relationships without being able to explain why I zone out or don’t want to go certain places. I never really thought about dating anyone. I guess until you, that is.”

Maverick nods in understanding. “In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense.”

I start to flip through the photos again, pausing on a few that stand out to me so that Maverick can explain them. Half of them are candid shots, little moments that Maverick