He’s right. I pluck a nickel out of my pocket.
Aiden takes the coin out of my hand, running his fingertips along mine again. He’s trying to hide a smile, but he can’t. What if this doesn’t go my way? Will I walk out of these woods and never kiss Aiden Emerson again? Fate, please don’t let me down.
“Heads, we…” I can’t say the word. It hangs in the charged air between us, but I can’t say it while standing this close to him. Aiden raises his eyebrows at me and tries to hide another smile. “Tails, we don’t.”
The coin flips in the air and as it’s about to land in Aiden’s hand, he steps forward. The coin falls onto the forest floor and my eyes follow it to the dark ground, and then to Aiden. He shrugs, with a pout that doesn’t look at all apologetic. And then his lips are on mine. They’re warm and full and soft. His hands settle on my waist, his fingers moving slowly as he pulls me closer, wrapping his hands around toward my back. My head feels foggy, like every thought I’ve ever had is suddenly spinning in circles there, kicking up dust like tiny tornadoes, spinning and whirring around. What are we doing?
I can hear the crackling of the fire in the distance, and footsteps as everyone shuffles around. I shiver and Aiden pulls his mouth from mine. His eyes look clearer now, more like himself and less like the guy who pulled me into the woods.
“We should go back to the fire.” He sounds concerned. Probably that this is another pivotal outdoor experience I’m missing.
“It’s not my first campfire.”
Aiden smiles and my lips are twitchy thinking about more time with him.
“No, but we should still get back. If we’re gone too long Ellis will insist we file some sort of paperwork.” He rubs his hands down my arms. “And you’re cold.”
I laugh, but I don’t totally agree. I am cold, but if it were up to me, we’d stay right here all night, locked together. A little paperwork to feed Ellis’s ego seems like a fair trade-off. Wondering if maybe he doesn’t feel the same rubs a raw little part of my heart. Don’t get attached, Olivia. Don’t chase him. This is just fun.
Aiden takes my hand in his as we walk toward the fire. There are sticks and rough ground and hanging limbs to traverse. I feel like I’m supporting Aiden as much as he’s helping me, as we stumble our way along until the glow of the fire penetrates the trees and helps to guide us. Around the fire, everyone has quieted down. Is it just me, or is everyone staring? Aiden’s hand feels hot around mine. Ellis is sitting on my canoe, and gets up. “Here, you guys take it.” He winks when he passes me, and I make a mental note to just volunteer to fill something out for him, so he shuts up about it.
“We were getting sticks for the fire.” I don’t know why I say it, why I’m so panicked about everyone looking at me, like they know what I just did. That my shirt smells like boy, and my skin is all tingly and hot. Kissing Aiden isn’t a crime, but after only kissing Zander, it feels weird. I wonder if it’s something you get used to, kissing new people. If someday I’ll have kissed too many guys to even remember. The thought is weird and foreign, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.
“Where are they?” Jaz asks.
I’m not sure what she means. “What?”
“The sticks.”
I look down at my hands, like I was ever holding any sticks. Everyone laughs, including Aiden next to me, and the sense of dread lifts. We sit on the canoe, and after a few minutes I’ve even convinced myself that no one is looking at us anymore.
AIDEN
“There’s this project I have to do—” Even as I say the words, I’m not sure if I should be. If I should be letting her in like this, laying out the work-in-progress that is my current life. It feels weird wanting to include someone in that. “I might be a little MIA for a while.”
Her face drops—but just for a second, like she refuses to let herself be disappointed.
“I was thinking if you wanted to help me…”
“What are you doing, exactly?” She sounds nervous, like I’m about to suggest she help me with a bank heist. I know rumors have been flying around about me—our old neighbor stopped me at the grocery store last week and told me all about her son’s struggles with alcoholism, and suggested that my (supposed) DUI was a stepping-stone toward worse things to come. I just nodded, because Mrs. Graham is ancient, and it wasn’t worth explaining anything to her. I don’t really care if people talk about me. But I do care if Olivia thinks I’m some sort of delinquent.
“It’s an art project,” I tell her.
“An art project?” She doesn’t sound interested, she sounds disturbed. Like maybe she’d prefer illegal activity.
“It’s not a project, not really. It’s a three-day epic art … adventure.”
“Three days of … art.”
I laugh at her reaction to that one word—like it’s some kind of torture—and it sounds so loud cutting through the quiet night air around us. “Days, maybe nights. Three days, maybe more. Don’t sound so excited. This probably isn’t the kind of art you’re thinking of. We’re not going to sit at my house and do oil paintings.” I bump my shoulder into hers, and then I stay there, pressed up against her.
“So what are we doing?” She says it in almost a whisper, maybe because it is, or maybe because we’re so close now, we don’t need more than a whisper.
“I can’t tell you until I know you’re in.” I turn toward her, my face a forced mask of composure as I look her right in the eyes. “Are you in, Olivia?”
OLIVIA
Aiden’s eyes have drifted past me now. To the sky, probably—it’s an amazingly clear night and out here away from everything the sky is lit up. I take a moment to look him over—the broad shoulders, the smooth planes of his chest under his t-shirt, the strong, perfect jaw. Three nights with Aiden Emerson. The words sitting on my lips, threatening to plunge off, are “hell yes.” I don’t say them, because he’s still Aiden Emerson, and I’m still me. This all feels a little like the plot of some nineties teen movie. At the end of night three, I end up a victim of the world’s most epic makeover, or deserted on someone’s front lawn as I throw paint-filled water balloons at the house of some carefully chosen victim. Probably the principal. I’m taken to jail, and Aiden is never seen again. Not with me, at least.
Maybe he has a superhot popular girlfriend I don’t know about? I can see it in my mind—the squishy balloon in my hand, the acrylic paint smearing my arms. I can see the look on my face when my mother—my legal guardian—has to pick me up. “I’ll think about it,” I tell him.
He nods and turns back toward the fire. Jaz is in the middle of a story about an old guy who rented a kayak and stranded himself in the middle of Loon Lake when he lost his paddle. Another renter called in for him and by the time staff showed up in the motor boat, he was hanging off of the back of his kayak, trying to kick his way to shore.
She’s gasping through laughter as she recounts the rescue. So there he was, in his old man button-down shirt, his fishing hat … just dangling in the water, clothes and all. He couldn’t get into the boat either, we had to sort of slow-drag him to shore with a tow rope. Never stopped smiling. Tipped me five bucks when we got back to the lot. I swear that guy had the time of his life. Jaz is a theater major and it shows—she tells a story with her entire body.
In one graceful movement, Aiden turns my way and throws his leg over the canoe so that he’s facing me, straddling it. He puts his fist in the air in front of me, but he isn’t saying anything, he’s just looking at me expectantly, like he’s waiting for something.
“What’s up?”
“Rock-paper-scissors me.”
“For what?”
“For my epic art adventure.” He raises his brows at me, and there’s a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “This is our thing now, right? Letting chance decide?”
Our thing? My stomach flutters at the thought that we’re already sharing some sort of secret.
“Fate.” I can’t help but laugh at him throwing th
is back at me.
“Is it the same thing?”
I feel like it is. Like whatever fate is, it’s decided by chance. Or that chance follows along with fate’s plans. Something like that. “I don’t know.” I shift nervously on the canoe. “I thought you preferred coin tosses though,” I tease.
He pats his pockets. “I’m all out. You?”
“Ditto.”
“Rock, paper, scissors it is.” He shakes his fist in front of me. “I’m willing to take the chance if you are.”
“You seem awfully confident. It might not go your way.”
“Lady luck owes me,” he says.
“Me too.”
My eyes meet Aiden’s and we pump our fists in the air three times, and let luck and chance and fate decide.
* * *
In the light of day, kissing Aiden and agreeing to go on his “epic art adventure” feels less like fate, and more like setting myself up for failure. He still hasn’t told me what this epic art adventure actually entails, and I’m not entirely convinced it’s a real thing.
Emma is sitting on the floor next to me, leaning against my bed. She’s still dressed in her Cherry Pit uniform—the ridiculous, ruffly red dress and white apron with a giant red cherry emblazoned on it—and her long legs are crossed at the ankles. Her ruffled white socks peek out from her white patent shoes. They look like an adult version of what I wore when I was five. Working at The Pit has done wonders for Emma’s personal style.
I knock her foot with mine. “Did you have to buy these?”
Emma lets out a little snort. “I doubt you can buy these, they’re circa my great-grandma. They’re part of the uniform they give you.”
“They’re used?” I shudder thinking about summer after summer of teenage feet shoved into the same pair of shoes.
Emma twists the cap off of one of the cherry sodas she brought from work and hands it to me. “It’s like bowling shoes … they sprayed them down before I got them. I’m not eating lunch out of them.”
“I guess.” We both sit in silence, sipping our cherry sodas, leg-to-leg like conjoined twins. If I had to pick someone to be literally connected at the hip with, it would be Emma. I rest my head on her shoulder. I’m just using her shoes as a distraction from what we’re actually talking about—the prospect of my epic art adventure with Aiden.
“This isn’t that big of a deal. I promise you’re overthinking this,” she says.
I don’t know how to explain to her what it feels like to be left your whole life. Over and over. And just when you think you’ve found your person—boom. They leave you too.
“This is Aiden Emerson, Liv.”
“So?”
“So, this is what I was talking about. This is how you’re supposed to spend your summer.” She pats my knee. “Making out with hot guys in stairwells, and going off on epic art adventures, and falling in love.” She takes a swig of her soda. “And knowing it’s going to end, but not giving a shit, because it’s so good while it lasts.”
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk?”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t sound confident. “Yeah, just give me a second to get my thoughts together.” She tips the mouth of the pink bottle at me. “You’re leaving in a few months.”
I reach for the bottle and she passes it to me. The tart cherry soda bubbles in my throat on the way down. “Am I?” I’ve been holding out hope that Emma could convince her parents that letting me get shipped off for senior year is inhumane. To both of us.
“Ross and Teresa are being completely unreasonable.” Her eyes squint in anger. She always calls her parents by their first names when she’s mad at them. “They don’t want responsibility for another teenager. They still have three left after me, and apparently they’re not sure they’re going to pull through.” Emma rolls her eyes. “What a burden my B+ average must be.”
I let out a long sigh, and angrily flick away a chunk of lint from my carpet to distract myself from what Emma is telling me. Dammit. “You’ll keep trying though?”
“Relentlessly,” she says. There’s a long stretch of silence before she speaks again. “I hate that you’re leaving, but you’re probably leaving.”
I nod. I can’t say the words out loud. Moving my senior year.
“I still don’t see what this has to do with Aiden.”
“My point—” She burps, a loud rumbling noise followed by a dainty laugh. “Is that this is your chance, Liv. A no-strings-attached, just-for-the-summer fling.”
Fling. The bottle is cool as I press it against my lips again. No-strings is so not my style. It’s my antithesis. I am basically one giant ball of strings and exposed nerves.
“You’re living summer by chance, right?” She points to the Magic 8-Ball, resting where I last left it on my desk. “Stop stressing. Let fate decide, and then roll with it.” She shakes and throws a pretend set of dice onto the carpet, and laughs. “It’s just for the summer, then you’ll be out of here. So if it turns out he’s a total douche-canoe … no big loss. You don’t even have to see him in a few months.”
“That’s true,” I say.
“Plus, I’ve never heard of Aiden having a girlfriend—I bet he’s down for a fling. Especially this summer.”
“Hm.”
“And how much more fun will your epic summer essay be, if it includes an epic summer love story?”
I shake my head like my cherry soda has gone bad. “No love.”
“Right, no love.” Her voice turns from serious to overly sultry. “Just kisses in stairwells and hot sex in … canoes.”
I almost spit my soda out. “Oh my god, stop. Canoe-sex is not on the table.” We both laugh, so hard we can barely breathe.
“Come on Liv, it’s like all of the fun, with none of the risk. Two months and you’re done.”
I hold my bottle up and she clinks it one more time. Two months and I’m done. With everything, apparently.
AIDEN
I was looking forward to seeing Liv at work, but when I get to the Depot my name isn’t on the assignment board. But I’m on the schedule, so I wander around looking for Ellis until Jaz points me toward the little office tucked away behind the corner of the gift shop that displays all of the t-shirts.
Even though the door is open it feels like I should knock, so I do. Ellis’s head pops forward.
“Hey. Where am I today?” I ask. “With Olivia on the docks?”
Ellis shakes his head. “Sorry, I meant to write it on the board. Your dad requested you today, said he needed some help at the Annex.”
“For how long?”
“All day?” Ellis shrugs. “I don’t know, he just asked me to send you over there.”
By the time I make my way out of the gift shop, retrieve my bike, and start down the little path that leads to the Annex, I’ve created the worst-case scenario of spending the day with my dad. Which is that he talks about baseball all day. My dad is the kind of guy who loves to rehash the best moments of life, treating things that happened last year like they’re long-ago memories. And I’m not ready to talk about what a “great run” I had playing baseball. Because it just reminds me of how much further I could have gone. Of everything I’ve lost. And right now, I’m trying to focus on what I have to look forward to. I like my job at River Depot, and I’m excited about the art projects I’m planning for. When I don’t think about what I don’t have, things feel pretty good.
My dad is on the roof of the building when I get there. I stand at the bottom of the ladder and yell up to him. “I thought you hired someone for this.”
“Grab that hammer and come on up,” Dad says.
I find the hammer lying on the frame of a window, stick it in my pocket, and make my way up the ladder. Dad is perched on a two-by-four, hammering at a row of black shingles in front of him. “What happened to the roofing guys?” I ask, climbing carefully up the long narrow boards and taking my place on the right of my dad.
“Shoddy work,” Dad grumbles. “I’m not paying someo
ne to do a job worse than I can do it myself.” He hammers in another piece. “So I’m doing it myself.”
“In your free time?” I joke, knowing my dad is already spending every minute of daylight here.
Dad grunts. “You remember how to do this?”
I helped Dad roof a small shed two years ago. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make me anything close to an expert—or qualified to do this on a building people will actually see—but I know Dad’s going to give me a step-by-step regardless of what I say, so I tell him yes and climb over the roof so I mirror him on the other side.
I start at the corner, hammering in a row of black shingles, and my dad reminds me how to place them and how many nails to put in and tells me it’s okay to go slow. Meaning don’t screw this up trying to get out of here. By the second row I’m in the groove and feeling pretty confident about what I’m doing. And by the fourth row I’m pretty sure my dad isn’t going to talk to me the rest of the day. I work my way across the roof and it’s slow, hot, and silent. So I didn’t need to worry after all.
Chapter
Twelve
AIDEN
This may be the weirdest date I’ve ever planned.
Actually, it may be the only date I’ve planned. If it’s even a date. In retrospect, maybe I should have been clear about that. Inviting someone to an “epic art adventure” is the definition of vague, but Olivia is obviously committed to this idea of letting chance decide, so I needed to lock down a few days with her. I couldn’t worry that every time I asked her to do something, I’d need to hope that luck was on my side. There’s enough pressure without worrying about that too. And I’ve been thinking about this ever since ArtPrize—I want to try out some ideas I have, to see if I’m even any good at large-scale art. Just because my vision is too shitty to do the small stuff well, it doesn’t mean I’ll be good at this.
I carefully place the jar of gunpowder into the cardboard box, alongside the spray paint, twine, and wood stakes. I’m putting the box and the small piece of plywood into the trunk of my car when Olivia comes up the driveway on her bike. She has a backpack that looks so stuffed it may topple her over. I grab it from her as she pulls her arm out of the strap, and set it on the ground. It’s not heavy but it looks like she probably had to sit on it to zip it.
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