baby food is vile.”
I watched as he dropped into a squat, so that he was eye level with my glass. “So you really did grow up on cookies and cake. I knew it.”
“That’s why I’m so sweet now. I have no idea what went wrong with Nash.” He carefully squeezed the bulb at the top of the dropper, and a single drop of concentrated liquid envy plopped into my glass. For a second, it hung suspended in the water. Then tiny threadlike feelers of dark, dark green stretched out from the drop in all directions, bleeding slowly into the rest of the glass while Tod squirted the rest of what he’d sucked up back into the vial.
In seconds, the drop was gone and my water was an uneven green, paler than the concentrated color. Like an old bruise.
“Yuck.” I held the glass up to the light, and the green grew paler. “Maybe we should have mixed it with soda.”
Tod opened his mouth, and I took the first sip before he could offer to drink it for me. To test it on himself. The last thing I needed was for him to develop an irrational envy. The only person he could possibly be jealous of was Nash, and it had taken me forever to get the two of them back on speaking terms. Backward momentum was not okay.
“Yuck!” I made a face and wished for a cookie to rid my mouth of the foul film. “Envy tastes bitter.”
Tod laughed. “I could have told you that without even trying it. You gulp that, and I’ll get you something sweet to chase it with.”
“Thanks.”
I made myself drink the whole glass while he was gone, then made a mental note to warn Sabine to put it in something dark and sweet. Definitely coffee or soda. Or artificially sweetened diet protein shakes.
As I was swallowing the last mouthful, Tod reappeared in my room with a clear plastic cup of pink lemonade from my favorite burger place, a block from school. “Thanks.” I set the empty glass down and gulped a quarter of the lemonade through the straw without even taking the cup from him. “Much better.”
He set the drink on my nightstand, then sank onto my bed and scooted back until he could lean against the wall. I sat in front of him, my back pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me. “Feel anything yet?”
“Just this.” I threaded my fingers between his in my lap. But I was already starting to regret volunteering for our little experiment. The more I thought about it, the easier it was to remember how I’d felt with Invidia spewing envy into the air at my school, poisoning us, amplifying whatever benign envy we felt on a daily basis until it poured from us in bitter, violent waves.
If she hadn’t been there—if we hadn’t been under the influence of more jealousy than any normal sixteen-year-old could handle—would Sabine and I have fought over Nash? Or would I have seen what was right in front of me sooner?
I didn’t have the answer, and thinking about it—about being out of control of my own emotions—made me angry. So I snuggled closer to Tod, determined to distract myself from my fears. “Have you ever been jealous of anyone? Like, really jealous?”
“Is that a serious question?”
Something in his tone made me pull away just enough that I could turn and see his face.
“Nash?”
The blues in his irises twisted for a second before he got his emotions under control.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Let me see. Please.”
Tod frowned. Then he closed his eyes, and when they opened, the shades of blue they held were churning like a storm at sea, cobalt twisting through thin, fragile shades of glacial ice, then rolling over bold streaks of cerulean.
“That bad, huh?” I couldn’t completely hide the satisfaction in my voice. It was nice to be wanted. It was even better to be needed, and I could feel how much Tod needed me every day. He needed me almost as much as I needed him.
“It wasn’t just jealousy, Kaylee. I coveted you. It was all biblical and forbidden.”
“Tell me.”
He hesitated just for a second. “I hated seeing you with him, but I couldn’t stay away because I knew that if I wasn’t there, you two would do things you’d never do with me in the room, and then I’d be all alone imagining that—imagining my brother touching the girl I was meant to be with for the rest of my afterlife—and then…Well, then things would get worse. But it’s not like I could say anything. Not as long as you wanted to be with him.”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
“It’s not funny.” He frowned, and even his frown was beautiful. “It was torture.”
“I’m not laughing. I’m just feeling very, very lucky.”
“Is it possible that this liquid envy has some kind of osmosis effect? Like maybe it’s leaking out through your pores, and I’m breathing most of it in? Because I’m reliving the worst envy of my entire existence, and you seem just fine.”
I shrugged. “I have nothing to be jealous of.”
His pale brow rose again, and I realized I’d accidentally laid down a challenge. “I’m perfectly covetable, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I’m grateful every single day for the fact that you’re invisible to everyone else most of the time, so I’m the only one looking at you.” And I looked at him a lot. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “So I don’t have to beat girls off of you.”
“Would you?” He looked intrigued. “Would you fight for me?”
“Would you make me?”
“No. There will never be anyone else for me, Kay.” He grinned that evil reaper grin, and I knew what was coming before the words even left his tongue. “But there were a few before you.…”
“La la la!” I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, pretending I couldn’t hear him. But the seed had already taken root in my brain.
He pulled one hand away from my ear. “How are we supposed to evaluate the strength of this essence of envy if you refuse to explore your own jealousy?”
I opened my eyes and dropped my other hand. “Fine. Point taken.” But I didn’t have to like it. “How many?”
He frowned again. “How many what?”
“How many girls? Before me?”
His frown deepened. “That’s not what I was getting at. It’s not a competition.…”
“I know. It can’t be a competition, because I can’t compete. Because I’ve never been with anyone but you. But you can’t say that, can you?” He flinched and I felt sorry for him for a second. Just one second. “How many, Tod?”
“I think we’re losing track of the point, here.”
“Addison? Were you with her? Like, with her?”
I
