by Emma Kress
“Eeek!” Cristina squeals and claps her hands, and Bella’s tight smile relaxes.
“Chloe would be an idiot not to—”
“You’d be—”
“—the most adorable couple ever—”
“Okay, okay.” Bella puts up her hands, smiling. “I’ll ask her after the rally.”
“I’ve never been to one of Dave Reilly’s bonfires.” Michaela smooths out her skirt.
“Well, he’s pretty much an asshole,” Ava says. “But the beach in back of his house is amazing. We should go as a team.”
“Absofockinglutely.” I nod.
After 2,700 kids squeeze into the gym, Coach Jeffers, loud and big, steps to the court’s center, onto the painted snarl of Northridge’s mascot, the Rhodesian Ridgeback.
“Are you rrrrrrrready?!” His deep voice thunders off the gym’s walls.
We holler back. He’s reciting straight from the How to Run a Pep Rally Handbook, but I don’t care because I’m with my friends, laughing and screaming, and not in class.
“Okay,” Liv says right in my ear. “I can’t wait anymore.”
I turn and raise my eyebrows.
“Grove asked Jake about you.” Despite the swirling noise and pounding feet, I hear her.
There’s less air. All 2,700 kids just inhaled, and there’s not enough for me.
“Grove Williams asked Jake about you,” she repeats. “And he wants to meet you at the bonfire tonight after the game.”
ELEVEN
THE BONFIRE IS IN DAVE Reilly’s backyard. He’s on the football team and an ass, so it’s a sure bet that Kups and other fridge-size assholes will be there. But it’s been over two weeks since Dylan’s run-in with Kups. Besides, there’s a beach and a bonfire. And Grove.
At the bonfire, huge logs tilt toward one another in a flaming pyramid. The flames chase the breeze, while stray sparks dance like fireflies against the blackened sky.
Liv made me borrow an outfit and did my makeup, but what felt like a kind of armor in her room now makes me feel exposed. I tug at the skimpy shirt, but Liv swats my hand away. Someone taps me on the shoulder.
Grove.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” I turn to include Liv, but she’s already disappeared.
He holds out a cup. “I got you this. I hope it’s okay.”
“That’s really nice of you.” I take a small sip. Truth is, I don’t like beer, but carrying one around is better than people bugging you to drink.
His eyes go back to the fire, and I let mine follow. I spot Liv, Ava, and Quinn on the other side smiling. Quinn starts humping the air.
I quickly turn to Grove. “So you guys are doing really well this season,” I say over the peals of laughter across the flames. Anything to distract him from the mime-porn.
He turns back to me. Our faces are closer than they’ve ever been, and my breath feels tight. His eyes are a warm kind of dark in the firelight. Oh fock, he’s saying something. “What?” I manage.
He smiles. I try not to fall in.
“I liked seeing you guys play.” He takes a sip. “You’re pretty amazing.” He pauses. “At field hockey, I mean.” His cheeks redden. “Not that you’re not amazing at other things.”
I laugh and put my hand on his arm, and he looks down. I yank it back fast. Shit. My hand went rogue. I look at the fire. “You’re really good at soccer.”
“I’m glad you came.” The raspiness in his voice makes me feel as though I’m hearing something deep.
A group of guys bump into us, screaming something about keg stands.
“You wanna walk down to the dock? With me? Where it’s quiet?”
I like the way everything’s a question. Like maybe I’ll say no. Like I’m not a guarantee.
The shouts and laughs subside as we walk to the far side of the sand. A tall boathouse stands guard over a long dock stretching into the dark lake.
The metal dock sways a bit as I step on, and his hand closes around my wrist for a breath before he lets go. The breeze off the lake circles the space where his fingers were, and I shiver.
“Cold?” He pulls my arm. “Come on.” We open the door to the boathouse. Different boats lap against the sides of the walls, while others hang from above. Along the walls are oars, rope, tools, and—sure enough—blankets. We steal two and walk to the end of the long dock. He throws his blanket down across the metal slats.
“Good call,” I say as I crouch, glad the dock’s metallic cold won’t seep through my jeans.
He unfolds our other blanket and wraps it around my shoulders before sitting next to me. The warmth is immediate. He leans back on his hands, his strong legs stretched out.
“I like the lake best at night.”
“Me too,” I say. “When I was little, my dad and I used to go sunset kayaking.”
“Sunset kayaking?” I hear his smile. I turn to him, but his face is in shadow, the bonfire blazing behind him.
“My mom’s a nurse, so we’d explore when she worked nights. Honestly, he was probably just petrified of being trapped indoors. He’s never been—well, he never was an indoors guy.” I hug my knees. It feels forever ago.
“So it was an act of self-preservation. Kind of like this moment.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I hate parties. So I ingeniously escaped with you.”
“I’m not a fan either.” I lift my beer. “To self-preservation.”
We clink cups and take small sips.
“You know what else I hate?” he asks.
“Dogs with sweaters? Children with leashes? Parrots?” For a minute it feels as easy as talking to Liv, and then I remember it’s Grove. I flush.
He laughs. “All of the above. And—small talk.”
“It’s unseasonably warm for this time of year.’’
“Can you believe that rain we got last week?”
“We’ll have to cover the azaleas before the frost comes.”
“We have azaleas?” he asks. “What are azaleas?”
“Flowers.” I imagine the two of us tending a garden. I send a thank-you to the darkness for masking my blush. “I hate small talk too.” I wrap the blanket around me more tightly. “I wish everyone came with a fast-forward button. Like let’s just fast-forward till we can talk about real—” And I remember how much I’m talking. And to whom.
“Me too.” His voice is so soft and rumbly, it’s like sliding into the black water. “Wanna go star kayaking?”
I smile. “What?”
“Well, it might not be as nice as sunset kayaking.” He shrugs. “But when we went into the boathouse, there were, well, boats.”
“Imagine that.”
“Shocking.”
“Let’s grab one.” I’m standing before I finish my sentence. We abandon our beers on the dock, grab the blankets, and walk toward the boathouse. On the way, we find a canoe tucked under the metal slats and pull it out. I climb in first. When he climbs in, the whole boat rocks wildly, and we clutch each other until it steadies.
“Big boater, eh?” I laugh.
“Great,” he says. “You’ve already saved my life, and we haven’t even left the dock.”
We settle ourselves—he’s in front and I’m steering in back—and slip our paddles into the calm lake. Each stroke carves the water and we move away from the dock, from the party. I’m relieved that, for the moment, I don’t have to arrange my face or my stomach or my words.
Before we reach the buoy, I pull my paddle from the water. I wish our canoe had lights so we could go farther. He slowly turns around to face me. And I’m struck by the weirdness of it all. I’m sitting in a canoe. In the middle of the lake. With Grove Williams. I shake my head.
“What?” he asks.
I shake my head again. “Nothing.” I crane my neck and look at the sky. Way out here where the rich kids live, there are so many more stars. Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t have lights after all.
He pats the bottom of the boat. “It’s
dry,” he says. “Want to lie down so we can see the stars better?”
I nod. We lay the blankets on the bottom of the canoe and edge down. We put our arms under our heads and knock elbows. “Sorry,” we say at once, and drop our arms down by our sides. Thanks to the rounded sides, our hands touch again, but this time, neither one of us says sorry. Neither of us moves.
“I wish the night sky was always like this.”
“Me too,” he says.
“Isn’t it weird that all these stars are always there, but we can’t see them?” It reminds me of Dylan. Of how it can be hard to see the real her. “It’s like people. Like there’s all this stuff going on, but most people only let you see just a little bit, but every once in a while the sky clears and…” I think of us. I think of crushing on him for a year. Of never getting this close.
I feel his eyes on me. “That’s a cool way to see it,” he says. The water laps around the sides of the boat, and the small space between our fingers contains unseen fireflies, flapping their wings, sharing their heat.
I look down at the way his right knee angles ever so slightly toward my left.
Here beneath the lip of the canoe, the air is still, and yet I can tell we’re moving by the shifting stars. I, who always know where I’m headed, have no idea which direction we face. It’s a heady kind of freedom.
“I love that I don’t know where we are.”
“You’re in a canoe.” His fingers move, grazing mine. “With me.”
I smile. “I mean, I like that we’re down here.” I wave my hand into the air. “We have no idea what’s going on up there. Whether we’re pointing away from shore—”
“—whether another boat’s coming our way.”
I sit up quickly, the boat rocking to his laughter.
“All clear?” he asks. I nod, and he pats my leg. “Then come back down.”
I look at him and lie back, and even though I know we’re too close to shore for another boat, I’m alert to every sound of the water. And to the space on my thigh where his hand was.
“I have no desire to get split in two by a Jet Ski,” I say. I feel him smile, and I relax a little. “So how about this weather we’re having? Quite a miracle, eh? Summer in September?”
He laughs. “You joke, but the Weather Channel is background music at my house.”
“Easy listening not educational enough?”
“My mom is weirdly paranoid about the weather. She always needs to know what it is, hour by hour and for the next ten days. She says it helps her feel prepared.”
“Yeah, except they’re always wrong.”
“I know!” He gestures broadly, and the boat rocks. “That’s what I always say. It’s pointless to make the weather your security blanket.”
I laugh. “Security blankets should be more reliable … like seesaws—”
“—the stock market—”
“—cafeteria food—” We make gagging noises and laugh.
He turns his head to me. “What’s a real security blanket for you?”
I turn. His face is right there. Right. There. His dark eyes under his thick eyebrows. His gray hoodie bunched around his shoulders and pulled tight across his chest. Wow. And now I have to come up with an answer.
“Field hockey. The team.” I take a breath. “My dad.”
“Do you live with both your parents?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You?”
He shakes his head and looks back up at the stars. “My dad took off when I was two.”
“That must be hard,” I say.
He shrugs. “It’s just the way it is. I know it sounds harsh, but I’m glad. You miss something more when you know what it’s like to have it. I’m glad I don’t know what it’s like to have him around.”
I think of all the missing I have with my dad. I wonder what things would be like if I never knew anything different. “You have a sister too, right?”
He turns and gives me a slight smile. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
I blush and hope the night hides it. “I think I’ve seen her at your soccer games.”
“That’s my younger sister. I have an older one too. She just left for college.”
“Do you miss her?”
He nods. “Yeah I do. We’re really close. She even named me.”
“Named you? Like as in she … named you?”
“She’s only two years older than me and was a big fan of Sesame Street.”
“You’re named after Grover? On Sesame Street?” I turn on my side to see him better. “I guess I always thought it was like a family name or something.”
“Always?” He nudges me. “You’ve always thought?” My cheeks flame, but he continues. “Actually, I kind of think my name is the family curse.”
“Why?”
He shrugs and looks up at the stars. “My mom wanted my sister to be all involved, but my dad thought it was stupid. My mom was too much of a free spirit for him or something.”
“And yet he’s the one who took off, and she’s the one watching the Weather Channel?”
He turns to me, and his face is so open I think of the cloudless night sky. Vulnerable, visible. He smiles, and I bite my lip.
“You said you noticed my sister.”
“What?”
“At games. Plural. As in you not only went to one game but many. And you noticed my family.” He grins.
My skin prickles. I can feel every breeze off the water. “Yes, well, our whole team has been going to a lot of games this year.”
He pushes against my arm. “And you noticed my sister.”
“Shut up. I—”
He takes my hand, and I feel like I’m in the middle of a game, except there are no sticks, no refs, no team—and I’m right where I want to be.
“I didn’t go to your games just to be a good sport.” His thumb rubs a circle on the top of my hand. Every part of me stills.
“No?” My voice feels hoarse.
He shakes his head slightly. “I went to see you.”
“Really?” I swear my voice is traveling from the bottom of the lake it’s so far away and tangled in pondweed.
“Well, I had to check out the competition.” He smiles wide. “Coach Mac said that we’ve got to beat your wins, you know—”
I hit his chest with my free hand, but he pulls my arm against him until our bodies are side by side, our faces closer than ever, and everything feels faster and stranger than it ever has on the playing field.
He reaches out and strokes his thumb against my lips and somehow, with that one thumb, he’s touching my whole body—the curve of my neck, the valley between my shoulders, the dip of my back, the hollows behind my knees, the tips of my toes. My whole body rests in my lips under his touch. My lips part, my lower lip wanting to stay with his finger as long as possible.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
We close the space between us and I take his lips in mine for a second or a minute and his lips are so soft and sure and real and then he smiles and I smile and we laugh a breathy kind of laugh and I pull back and beneath his eyes are freckles I never knew were there and I breathe in the smell of him and the cool lake air rushes in but my head and heart and cheeks and stomach feel warm and swirled like hot chocolate with whipped cream.
I’m. Still. Smiling. This whole time. I didn’t know you could kiss and smile.
His hand curls around my jaw and cheek back to my neck and tangles in my hair as he pulls me in, tighter now, lips crushing, and I’m breathing in all his air. My blood feels hot but my skin feels chilled and I push closer and the boat moves with me, the water moves with me, with us, and there we are, nestled in the bottom of a canoe, swaying beneath a ceiling of stars.
Kissing.
TWELVE
BY THE TIME WE PADDLE the canoe back to the dock, the great logs on the fire have collapsed into one another, and my friends are nowhere in sight. Unidentifiable couples kiss in the dark, while a loud group plays soccer on th
e beach. I pull my arms across my chest, missing the blanket and the boat. And Grove. And kissing.
Grove wraps one of the blankets around me and doesn’t let go. “Cold?”
I smile. “Not anymore.” Our faces are so close. Right there are those constellations of freckles, that yummy boy smell. His hands move to my cheeks, his shoulders pulled up as if he’s wrapping himself around me. My lips open and we stay like that for a second, a minute, a year, just hovering in the breath in the anticipation until I can’t take it anymore and my lips kiss his.
He smiles. “I win.”
I laugh that smile-kiss-laugh and kiss him again. “Nope.” I lean against his chest, and he wraps his arm around me, and we watch the soccer players pass the ball down the beach toward the makeshift goal.
He rubs my arm. “Wanna play?”
“Yeah.” I smile. “Definitely. I’m just going to run inside real quick. Want anything?” I pass him the blanket.
He shakes his head, and as I turn away, he takes my hand and pulls me back toward him. His hand slides up my arm and lingers on my bare shoulder and we’re kissing. Again. He pulls back and looks at me before releasing.
I turn and walk up the rocks leading away from the beach to the glass-and-stone house on the hill, where I hope there’s a very empty bathroom so I can hurry back. I look over my shoulder, but he hasn’t moved. He’s still watching me. I smile and bite my lip.
Grove Williams is watching me. Me.
I practically skip up the hill to the house. Skip up the stone steps. Skip across the slate patio. Skip into the empty house, my steps echoing in the arched ceiling of the great room. Skip around the corner. Skip right into Dave Reilly.
“Hey there.” He leers toward me.
I try to swallow my disgust. After all, I’m in his house. But he’s footballer-big and drunk-wheezy, towering over me and breathing all the air. I smell the chips, dip, and beer all muddled together in his heavy breath.
He puts his arm out to steady himself against the wall, but I’m between him and the wall. I scoot down to get out of his way.