I smile. "I won't break."

Josh returns the smile. "No?"

"No. And neither will you." I take his hand back into mine and ma.s.sage his fingers gently. The tendons are so tight that they feel like cords of rope beneath his skin. He grimaces. I pause, but his expression turns weak. Pleading. I press harder, and he closes his eyes. Harder still. He moans. I rub each finger slowly, up and down, one after the other. The muscles loosen, but they never relax. They're too overworked.

"I should do this more often. Your poor hand needs help."

Josh cracks one eye. "I'm all right."

"Are you kidding? At this rate, you'll be crippled by twenty." I continue ma.s.saging. "Have you been to a doctor?"

He takes his hand back from me. "It feels better now."

"I'm sorry." The rebuke stings.

But Josh gives me a teasing smile. "That's not what I meant." He bends over, reaches into his bag on my floor, and removes...his brush pen.

"Oh." My shoulders sag. "You want to draw."

"Yes. You."

That perks me up. I try to hand him a sketchbook, but he refuses it.

"No," he says. "I want to draw on you."

The air is charged. I swallow. Josh notices the movement and kisses my throat. My eyes close. He trails faint kisses around my neck, over my jawline. Onto my lips. I respond with a deeper kiss, harder, starved for his taste. A hand slides across my bare legs, touching the line where my skirt meets my thighs. The other hand tugs on the bottom of my sweater. A question.

Our eyes open. His pupils are dark and dilated.

I don't drop his gaze as I pull off the sweater. Underneath, I'm wearing a silk camisole. I reach down to take it off, too, but he places a hand on my arm to stop me.

"I want to start here," he says.

Josh pulls me to my feet. His head tilts as he studies his canvas my milky white skin. I don't blush. He moves in. The tip of his brush touches my shoulder first. His strokes are long and careful, delicate and swift. My eyes close. The ink sweeps smoothly across my skin. The brush tickles the top of my chest, my neck, my arms, my hands. My feet, my calves, and the back of my knees. My thighs.

My breath catches.

"There," he whispers.

I open my eyes before a full-length mirror. I'm covered in garden roses, spinning compa.s.ses, falling leaves, desert islands, Joshua trees, and intricate geometric patterns. It's beautiful. I'm beautiful. I turn to him in wonder, and he holds out the pen.

"Your turn," he says.

My stomach clenches. "You know I can't draw."

"That's not true. Everyone can draw."

I shake my head, gesturing down my body. "Not like this."

Josh removes his shirt. Heavenly G.o.ds. He's so gorgeous I could weep.

"I don't know where to begin," I say.

He clasps my hand around his pen, and he kisses one side of my mouth. And then the other. "I'll get you started." Together, we draw a simple heart over his real heart. I laugh, which makes him laugh. "See?" he says. "It's easy."

So...I draw.

My lines are not as confident, and my ill.u.s.trations are not as recognizable. I decide to stick with circles and swirls. Josh watches me work. I cover his chest, his neck, his back, his arms, his fingers. His abdomen.

"There," I say. "I'm out of skin."

He stares into the mirror for a long time. I sit on the edge of the bed. At last, he turns to me. "Thank you."

For some reason, now is the moment I blush. "You like?"

"I love."

His words hang in the air. The atmosphere begins to shake. Does he mean...?

Josh sits beside me. He touches his forehead to mine. He closes his eyes and says, "Isla Martin. I'm in love with you."

My universe explodes.

"I love you, too. Josh. I love you so much."

Our bodies press against each other, and the ink on his chest stamps a reverse image onto my camisole. His heart over mine. I fall backwards and pull him down with me. His hips arch away as he tries to hide what this is doing to him, but that only makes me press against him harder. We kiss with abandon. Together, we remove my camisole. The ink smears. It spreads from his chest onto mine. It spreads across our bodies in handprints, across my blankets in smeared limbs. I undo his belt buckle and unzip his jeans, and we roll into the cake, and there's hazelnut glaze and chocolate mousse and black ink- The fluorescent light is blinding. "You really should fix-"

"Jesus, Kurt!" I say.

Josh blocks my body with his. "Shut the f.u.c.king door!"

But Kurt is frozen.

"Shut the door!" we shout.

He does. The stairwell beside my door clangs open, and his feet race upward. My heart slams against my chest. I throw Josh's shirt at him. "Nate will have heard that."

Josh yanks it on. "s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t."

"I'm sorry. He didn't mean it. Kurt."

My boyfriend kisses me, quick as a dart, and he's gone. Another clang and Nate's door fwoomps open as the stairwell door clangs shut again. Maybe Nate didn't see Josh. Maybe he doesn't know the shouting came from my room. Maybe.

There's a sharp rap on my door.

"Hnngh?" I say in my best I-was-asleep voice.

"That was the second time," Nate says from the hall. "If it happens again, I have to report you to the head of school, and she will suspend you both." He waits. "Just say 'okay', Isla."

"Okay." It barely leaves my throat. I'm dying. The junior in the room beside mine shifts around in her bed. I pray that she's still asleep.

"What was that?" Nate calls out.

"OKAY."

"Thank you. Goodnight." Nate pads away, his door fwoomps, and the world is silent. I exhale. I'm shaking. And then I'm crying, but it's not because I'm scared or humiliated. It's because the most amazing moment of my entire life has just happened.

Josh loves me.

I trace the ink on my body. His beautiful ill.u.s.trations are smeared with streaks of gooey chocolate. Reluctantly, I turn on my shower. The steam is already billowing when I climb in. The hot water hits me, and purple-black ink floods down my body.

It touches everything.

He is everywhere.

Chapter fifteen.

Josh appears over my shoulder. "I thought we'd agreed you're going to Dartmouth."

His detention must have just ended. I'm working on an essay for Columbia University, so I finish my sentence, look up at him, and smile from my desk chair. "Remind me again where that's located?"

"Four-point-nine miles from the Center for Cartoon Studies. Maybe. I'm not sure. I'd have to check."

"She's already filled out the application," Kurt says, spoiling my surprise.

Josh freezes. And then he drops to his knees. "Is he serious? Are you serious?"

I slide out the hidden paperwork from Dartmouth. "We're serious."

He rips away the Columbia papers and throws them to my floor. "You don't need those, you really don't need those."

I laugh as I pick them back up. "I do."

"You don't."

"These are tough schools." My smile fades as I gesture to the folders on my desk labelled LA SORBONNE, COLUMBIA, and DARTMOUTH. "You know I have to apply to them all."

"And you'll get into them all. But you'll accept Dartmouth. And we'll get a studio on the river which will still be bigger than this and a cat that looks like Jacque, but we'll call him Jack. And we'll get a c.r.a.ppy car, something that doesn't even have AC, but it'll have a great radio, and we'll drive someplace new every weekend."

"I want that," I say.

"Me too."

Kurt shakes his head in disgust. He's sitting on my bed. "I still don't understand why you'd alter your plans after all these years."

I swivel around in my chair to stare him down. "My plans were never that planned."

But it's too late. Josh's face has already fallen. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'd never ask you to do this if it's not what you wanted."

That makes me laugh again. "Yes, you would."

His frown deepens. "No. I wouldn't."

"I do want it. You know I don't know what I want to do with my life. So I might as well do whatever it is I'm going to do...there."

Kurt groans as if in physical pain. "Your parents will be furious."

"If I get accepted" my gaze is still locked upon Josh "they'll be fine with it."

"No, they won't." Kurt clenches his entire body in frustration. "They'll be worried that you're throwing your life away for some guy."

Now he has my attention. "Hey. Don't say that."

"You've been dating him for less than a month."

"We wouldn't even be attending the same college. And neither of us has gotten in yet, so just stop it, okay?"

Kurt glares at me. "I'm the one trying to finish my homework. You're the one bringing him in here."

"Actually, I brought myself in here. And I'm still here." Josh points at himself. "Hi."

"This is my room," I say to Kurt.

"So I don't have a say in it any more?" he asks.

"No!" I say.

"I'm gonna go," Josh says.

"Don't," I say as Kurt says, "Good."

I get up to follow Josh, but he stops me. "You should stay," he says quietly. I start to protest, and he cuts me off. "I refuse to be the person who messes things up between the two of you. Work it out." He kisses my cheek. And then he's gone.

I scowl at Kurt. "Well? Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" he says testily.

I lower my voice, because my door is still open. "Last night?"

"When you screamed at me?"