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"Wait." Annie backed up until she was only a half-step in front of him, her eyes scanning over the drinks in the gas station cooler, her face turned away. It was a good chance, and Owen took it. For the length of a slow blink and a deep breath, he leaned until he was close enough to feel the sunshine-warmth of her hair and inhaled. She smelled like sweat, and sunscreen, and the cheap all-in-one soap from the last motel they'd stayed at. There had been a dispenser of it mounted to the bathroom wall.
"Oh my god." Annie shoulder-checked him back to reality.
"I'm sorry," Owen said quickly. He knew it was creepy to sniff people.
But Annie was smiling. Really smiling, it seemed — nothing like the dead-eyed facsimile that passed for a smile in the Milgrim household.
"I can't fart on command," she said, bafflingly, catching Owen off guard for the millionth time. "But one of these times I catch you sniffing me, I'm going to fart on you." She rammed him with her shoulder again, invading his space even as he stared right at her. When his brothers treated him like this, he hated it. His whole life he wanted nothing more than to escape it. But when Annie did it, for some reason, he loved it. If anything he wanted her even closer, even when she was crowding so near that Owen could smell the cinnamon in her chewing gum when she opened her mouth. "And it's going to be hilarious."
He was having trouble following what she was saying. She was still smiling, sort of, but her tone was hot. Owen knew smiling didn't always mean happy. "I won't do it again."
"Why not?" Annie, unmoving, stood chest-to-chest with him. "Is that what I said I wanted?"
Owen had to think about it. "No?"
"Right. 'Cause if you stop sniffing me, it wouldn't be very funny if I farted on you, would it?" She sounded even angrier - but she was still smiling. She stretched both arms over Owen's shoulders, hands clasping each other somewhere behind his head, elbows resting on him in a gesture more casual than a hug. "You wouldn't want to deprive me of that, would you?"
Something inside Owen was short-circuiting. "I guess not," he said.
"How do I smell, anyway?" she asked. Without waiting for him to answer, she sniffed at herself.
"G-good."
Her nose wrinkled. "I smell like Banana Boat and armpit."
"It's good on you," Owen said, delirious from the combination of uncertainty and proximity. The sway of her body demanded his full attention.
"You're the one who smells good," she said. She bent to his collar — so close her flyaway hair tickled his cheek — and took a long, audible sniff. "You've got one of those man deodorants that makes you smell... mmm." She pressed her nose to the crook of his neck for another inhale. "Like musk, or something."
Owen wasn't entirely sure it was meant as a compliment, but he still said, "Thank you." Just in case.
"All I've got is baby powder." Annie sniffed herself again. "I might have to start stealing yours."
He'd give her anything she wanted. "We could share it."
"Ew," Annie laughed. She pushed past Owen. This time he yielded. Before he could try to apologize again, she grabbed his hand and tugged, jogging him into motion behind her. "Let's get out of here."
"Didn't you want a drink?" Owen asked as she pulled him along.
"Nah," she said, grinning over her shoulder. "We're making good time. I don't want to waste it."
Something in the way she said it, maybe something in her smile, gave Owen the impression the words had a second meaning. A secret, special meaning, just for him. "Yeah," he said, as if he knew what it all meant. "Sure. Totally."
Then he was back in the too-hot truck, and Annie shoved a dog into his lap and a map into his hands, and asked, "I know we're supposed to go west, but like, west north, or west south?" to distract them both from the psychological difficulty she had with turning the key—
—and Owen forgot all about it.