Fairest Read Online Free

cartons and the two-liter. “No tea, yet.”
    â€œTea?”
    â€œSweet tea. Just, ah, help yourself. Glasses are here.” I pointed to the cabinet to the left of the freezer side of the fridge.
    While Whit prepared his drink, I took down the kettle, filled it, and put it on the stove. As the water heated, I raided the pantry for tea bags and dropped them into the plastic gallon pitcher. Whit took his drink into the living room.
    Once the water boiled, I poured it onto the tea bags. I fixed myself a Coke and went to join Whit. He was nowhere in sight.
    â€œWhere did you go?” I asked.
    â€œI’m in your room.”
    â€œWhy?” I walked down the hallway to my room. When I entered, I found him sitting on my bed and looking through one of my photo albums. He looked so out of place, sitting on the old girls-with-bonnets quilt I had for a comforter and surrounded by my lavender walls. “What are you doing?”
    â€œLook what a cute little girl you were.” He gestured to a picture of me. In it, I sat cross-legged on an old, falling apart wooden dock. With a fishing pole in my hands, I stared over the water of a pond. “Cut-offs and a tank top.”
    â€œIt gets hot in Savannah in the summer,” I explained. I set my Coke down on a coaster on my nightstand and heaved one of my suitcases onto the bed. “You’re gonna hang out?”
    Without looking up at me, he said, “Yeah.” He flipped through more pages and read the little captions I wrote listing the date, place, people, and events of the photos.
    â€œOkay. I’m unpacking, then.”
    I unzipped the suitcase and took out a stack of shirts. After hanging all of them, I moved on to hiding my underwear between my pairs of jeans and quickly stuffing it all in my dresser drawers. I left most of my formal school clothes at Irstwitch, but I brought a few dresses with me.
    As I hung the last one in the closet, Whit said, “What is this necklace you wear all the time?”
    â€œOh, it’s something my daddy got me after my momma died.”
    I took a seat beside him and looked at the picture. Crouched on the front porch of our old house, I scratched the belly of my orange cat. The pendant on my necklace hung in the air.
    â€œI’ve never seen you wear it at school.”
    â€œI keep it under my shirt.” I pulled it out to show him.
    Whit held it against his palm. “It’s a solid gold heart.”
    â€œYeah, my daddy got it for me back before Cluck Moo, when he was a shrimper and really couldn’t afford to buy such things. My momma used to call me her heart.” Whit looked at me. “Before you ask, it was pancreatic cancer, I was five, and I’m fine.”
    I started to get up to unpack my second suitcase, but Whit put his hand on top of mine. With the photo album still sitting on his lap, he reached over and slipped his hand into my hair, tucking it behind my ear—the one hit by the hacky sack. He cupped my jaw with his hand and rubbed my cheek with his thumb. It was rough and calloused from rowing.
    â€œI thought your skin would be soft,” he said, looking into my eyes as he moved closer and pressed his soft, warm lips to mine.
    It was the first time I kissed anyone, in a romantic way, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Whit’s lips parted slightly and then closed around my lower lip, so I did the same thing to his upper lip. With his hand, he angled my chin up and opened his mouth so that his tongue just traced my lip. When I started to do the same thing, he slipped his tongue into my mouth.
    My heart pounded, and my face heated. Whit was frenching me, and he would barely even look at me when we weren’t alone. I liked him, somewhat, and he could be very nice, in private, but I wasn’t going to keep kissing him when he clearly felt ashamed of being my friend. I pulled away and stood.
    â€œNo,” I said firmly and crossed my arms over my