by Amy Sparling
“How’d you manage being partners with Cece?” Ezra says. “They were making us pair off in boy-girl order.”
I shrug, glancing over at where she’s dancing with the old man. She’s smiling wide and talking about something that makes him laugh. “Cece and I just did what we wanted,” I say, looking back at Ezra. “We chose to be partners because all the boys in our P.E. class were icky.”
“Hey, I was in that class,” Ezra says, frowning in mock offense.
I lift my eyebrows. “Precisely. All the boys were icky.”
He grins down at me, his bottom lip sliding under his teeth. The music plays on, only interrupted by the loud growl of a Harley as it peels out of the parking lot. “What is it?” I ask him, because he’s obviously thinking something.
“I hope this trip has been good for you and her.” We shuffle too close to another couple, so he slides over to the side and repositions us. Now we’re nearly in the middle of the dance floor and I don’t even remember that happening. “I can’t describe how much it hurt to realize you and Cece weren’t best friends anymore.” His eyes darken. “Thomas wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“It’s not because of Thomas.” Even as I say the words, I’m not sure how true they are. Thomas’s death ruined everyone’s lives—there’s no doubt about that. It threw our family solar system all out of orbit, made us question every single thing we held dear. But Cece and I were together on that. His death didn’t push us apart. It was her drastic changes that severed our lifelong bond.
As if sensing my thoughts, Ezra pulls a little closer to me, his hands warm on my sides. “You can’t let Cece being bipolar keep you apart.”
“I’m not trying to,” I say quietly. “It just does.”
He reaches up, tucking stray hairs behind my ear. “She really needs you, but I think you need her, too.”
I nod, my throat hurting. “I didn’t realize how much I missed her until this stupid road trip. For the last several years she was just this annoying pain in my side, this girl I tried avoiding at all costs.”
“She told me,” he says. The pained look in his eyes tells me that I’d rather not know all the details she told him. I feel bad enough as it is.
I look down at our feet, two pairs of Converse on a dancefloor of cowboy boots. “I’m a terrible person.”
“You’re not,” he says softly. “You’re making up for it now. Maybe this road trip is what everyone needed.”
“What do you mean?”
Ezra’s hands tighten around my waist as we shuffle away from a couple getting a little too close to us in their drunken swaying. His lips press together. “I was so lost for so many years before Cece found me at work.” He exhales. “You don’t know how many times I thought about seeking y’all out and seeing if we could hang out sometime. After Thomas—and then my Mom—I had no one. And you two were hella annoying girls when we were kids—” He grins and I roll my eyes. “But if anyone knew how to help me move on with my life, I figured it would be you and Cece.”
When the song ends, another slow one begins. I’m too caught up in this conversation to even consider getting off the dance floor right now.
“Why didn’t you come visit us?” I ask, my voice dry. “Before you graduated, I saw you in the hallways sometimes.”
“Yeah, I purposely avoided you,” he says, glancing away. “Cece and I talked a little in high school, but not much.”
“Wait.” I put my hand on his chest. “You avoided me? Why?”
He gnaws on his bottom lip, avoiding my gaze. I stop dancing and drop my hands, staring at him as seriously as I can, hoping it’ll make him spill. “Why would you talk to Cece instead of me?”
He sighs, grabbing the back of his neck. Again, he looks out at the water, perhaps wanting to run away.
“Ezra?” I say. Fear of his answer has my veins pumping cold. Why would he avoid me so much after we’d been through such a great loss together?
He sighs through his nose. “It’s stupid,” he says, gazing at the patio below us. “My junior year, when you were a freshman—I saw you walk into the cafeteria on the first day of school. Actually, I saw Cece first and was going to go say hi, but then I stopped when I saw you.”
“Am I really that horrible?” I say, frustration building. I can’t believe I was just dancing with this guy.
He chews on his thumbnail, his lips twisting into a grin. “No,” he says. “You were so beautiful. I—I was so embarrassed that I’d spent my childhood giving this girl a hard time, and now she was here, all grown up and so pretty every guy in the area was staring at her—” When his eyes finally meet mine, goosebumps prickle down my arms. “I don’t know, Lilah. When I finally saw you after so long, I was too embarrassed to talk to you. Felt like I had no place being your friend when you’d grown into who you were going to be.”
I’m trying so hard not to grin like an idiot. “You’re dumb,” I say, poking him in the chest. “No one thought that about me, I promise.”
He pulls me back in front of him and resumes slow dancing. “Trust me. Everyone thought that.”
Cheeks burning, I rest my face against his chest, my arms around his back as we sway to the music. His heart beats a steady rhythm, though his muscles tighten as I lean against him. Somewhere back in Telico, there’s a girl who would be pissed that I’m dancing with her boyfriend. Guilt pours over me. Yet, I stay right here, feet shuffling in synch with Ezra.
Overhead, the strands of clear lights sparkle against a backdrop of a dark sky and towering pine trees. On the bayou, a few boats have anchored off the shore to watch the band play. All around us couples are dancing, smiling, drinking. This is a fun place to be on a Wednesday night. So much better than being stuck at home in my bedroom.
The song ends and fast-paced song from the eighties takes over the speakers while the band is still on break. I’m still pressed against Ezra as if our shirts were magnets instead of cotton. Focusing on the guilt I feel, I force myself to pull back and look up at him so I can say something like we should go home now, or let’s sit this song out. Only Ezra is peering down at me so all coherent thoughts melt into mind slush. Our lips are so close I can feel his breath on mine.
He’s going to kiss me.
“Cece,” I blurt out, stepping back and dropping my hands from his shoulders. “We should find Cece.”
“Yeah.” He exhales and looks down, shaking his head a little. I know he felt it, too. He’s probably feeling worse than I am right now. My heart pounds as I glance around, wondering if Cece saw what just happened. I almost kissed a guy with a girlfriend. What kind of girl does that make me? What kind of guy does it make Ezra?
My thoughts are a jumbled mess of desire and shame. I can’t focus on the faces in the crowd as I pace around the edge of the dancefloor, looking for my cousin. Finally, a beer gut and suspenders catch my attention, and I see the old man still on the dancefloor, shaking what his mama gave him with another woman who is closer to his age. Cece’s not there.
“Where is she?” I whisper. Most of the crowd has cleared out and headed back to their tables, leaving only a dozen people on the patio. None of them are Cece. I turn back and Ezra is there, his lips pressed together.
“She’s not at our table,” he says, leaning up on his toes to see over the people.
Cursing, I rush from one end of the patio to the other. Then I go inside and search every table and stick my head in the bathrooms. Back on the patio, I look for her red hair, her rosy cheeks. Her white shirt. But none of these people are my cousin.
Ezra jogs up to me. “She’s not at the RV. Not in the parking lot either.”
With a ragged breath, I say the words that have been haunting me since we left the dance floor. “She’s gone.”
“She can’t be far,” Ezra says.
“There are a million people here with cars!” I flail my arms around, suddenly very angry at every single patron of the Pine Tree Lodge. They’re all suspects now. “She could have hitched a ride wi
th anyone!”
“But why would she leave?” Ezra’s voice is a thousand times calmer than mine. “She’s having a fun night. There’s no reason for her to bail on us. She’s around here, we just have to find her.”
“What if she saw us almost—” I can’t bring myself to say the word kiss. That would be admitting out loud what almost happened back there. I almost became the other girl. Ezra almost became a cheater. I’m maybe not the most moral person ever, but I am definitely not the other girl.
Ezra shakes his head. “So? She wants us to like each other, Lilah. That wouldn’t make her storm off.”
“I don’t care what she wants,” I snap. I throw my hands in the air. “We don’t get to like each other, okay?”
He is much too laid back for the situation right now. “Why not? I thought we were kind of…hitting it off.”
“We don’t get to hit it off!” The couple beside us turns to watch the drama, but I don’t even care. I’m too pissed to continue being a polite member of society right now. I shove Ezra in the chest, pushing him back a few steps. “I thought you were a good guy, Ezra.”
“I…am…” he says shiftily, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “Lilah—”
I shake my head. “You have a girlfriend. Being on a road trip doesn’t suddenly cancel out being in a relationship back home. How can you even do this to her?”
“I do?” He says with a snort. “Where is this girlfriend? Do I get to meet her?”
My head pounds as everything else seems to stop. “Wait. You don’t have a girlfriend?”
He shakes his head. “Haven’t had one for a while.”
“But your Facebook says you do.”
“That’s because I had a girlfriend a year ago who made the page and wanted me to use it, but I never did.”
All of that shame just turned into straight up embarrassment. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he says, stepping toward me, that perfect smirk on his perfect lips. “But we can talk about this later.”
I nod.
“Let’s get Cece, head back to the RV, and then maybe talk about us later.”
“That’ll work.” Luckily, the overwhelming panic of missing Cece keeps me from blushing. Deep down I know I should be excited at what just happened with Ezra, but it’s not the time. “Where the hell is she?”
Ezra squeezes my hand. “We’ll find her.”
His ability to remain calm is really grating on my nerves. It’s taking everything I have not to run around screaming Cece’s name at the top of my lungs.
My phone feels like a weight in my back pocket. Duh. I grab it and call her, watching Ezra while it rings. “Voicemail,” I say after only two rings. “She ignored the call. Dammit.” Gripping my phone, I scan the outdoor area once more. “She’s mad at us. We should never have danced together, Ezra. This is bad.”
Although I’m already panicking, I feel something even worse on the horizon of my addled mind. I’m about to lose it. To really lose it. I need to find Cece now. My fingers shake as I pull up a new text message.
Hey, where are you? You okay?
I’m not expecting an instant reply, and I don’t get one. I can feel a headache coming on, but I push through the pain and make one more loop around the restaurant, nearly knocking over an older woman in the bathroom when I push open the door. I ask our waitress if she’s seen Cece, but she hasn’t. Outside, the Bill Bosom Band is back onstage, and none of their dancing fans are Cece. I push through the patio doors and jog down to the edge of the bayou. Cece’s not in any of the boats. She’s not sitting on the dock like a few other people, and she’s not one of the girls checking out a line of shiny Harley Davidsons parked by the water.
“Lilah,” Ezra says from behind me. I spin around and grab the sides of my head.
“Where is she?” My voice cracks as desperation seeps in.
“I just texted her to meet us at the RV,” he says, reaching for my arm. His fingers slide down to my elbow, a soft gesture before he shoves his hands back in his pockets. “Let’s go wait for her there.”
Reluctantly, I trudge back through the gravel parking lot, keeping my eyes on my shoes in the hopes that when we reach the RV, Cece will be standing there waiting on us.
She’s not.
I lean against the cool metal of the Winnebago and hold my face in my hands. “This freaking sucks.”
“It’ll be fine,” Ezra says. “We’ll find her.”
“And if we don’t?”
He takes my hands. “We will.”
His blind positivity really annoys the hell out of me. I pull away. “You don’t know that,” I say. “You don’t know where she is or who she’s with or if she’s even okay.”
“I know that worrying about it won’t bring her back.”
I grind my teeth and turn away, not wanting to look at him. He’s too handsome and too calm and if I wasn’t swooning on the dance floor I might have seen Cece walk off. What’s worse, is the gnawing feeling in my gut that maybe she left because of that stupid almost-kiss. Maybe she’s mad at me.
Maybe it set her off into another manic mode.
I call her cell again. And again.
Ezra stays outside the Winnebago, arms crossed as he watches me meander throughout the parking lot, looking for my cousin. I send her another text after spending five minutes figuring out the perfect way to word it.
Hey, if you’re mad or something that’s fine. I’m sorry. Just let me know you’re okay?
I make one more lap around the restaurant and the patio, gazing out at the thick woods beyond the bayou. Nothing.
As I’m walking back to the RV, my phone gets a text message. It’s a group text from Cece to Ezra and me. My heart leaps just seeing her name. At this point, I don’t care if she’s pissed. I just need her to be okay.
I’ll meet you guys at the RV soon.
I breathe a sigh of relief and a second text comes in.
I’m not mad at you two dorks.
Ezra gives me the biggest shit eating grin ever when I make it back to the RV. “Told you.”
“Shut up.”
We head into the RV. When Ezra closes the door behind us, I’m aware that we’re alone for the first time since…well, yeah. “She better hurry up,” I say, scratching my elbow. “We might still get home before midnight.”
“We could camp out again,” Ezra says. He must sense that I’m so over that romantic moment we had because he doesn’t try to make a move on me. He just slides into the driver seat. “I don’t mind.”
And it’s not that I’m over the romantic moment. I just can’t focus on two massive things at once.
“I mind,” I say, sitting next to him. In the distance, the band rocks on to a thinning crowd. I wonder how packed this place must get during the weekends. “My parents will be home on Sunday and we have to get back as soon as possible to make it look like we’ve been living there.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I have to heat up and dispose of all the meals we’re missing, then wash the dishes and put them back.”
Ezra quirks an eyebrow. I press that piece of duct tape back over the glove box. “My mom is obsessively organized. She has lunch and dinner planed for us all week while they’ll be gone.”
“Wow,” he says, exhaling. “That’s sweet but a little…”
“Overbearing? Uptight?” I supply for him.
He nods. “I see where you get it.”
“I am not those things.”
“You’re a little uptight.” He taps the top of my shoe with his. “But it’s cute. I know you mean well.”
I look up toward the roof as I slink lower in my seat. “I’m just a product of my mother’s constant therapy sessions and achievement talks. I don’t know how to be some crazy carefree teenager.”
“You were carefree tonight,” he says, gazing at me with that look of his that makes my toes tingle. “It’s a good look on you.”
“And look where it got me.” I toss my head again
st the back of the seat. “I lost my cousin and I’m still three and a half hours away from home.”
“Relax, Lilah. It’ll be okay.”
“And if it’s not okay?”
Ezra stands. “I promise it will be.”
Above the kitchen sink is a built-in radio that Ezra turns on. He twists the knob until he finds a song and he turns up the volume. It’s an old song, Whitney Houston I think. “Come here,” he says, motioning for me to join him.
This whole thing is a little suspicious, but I join him in the kitchen area. He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me up against him, his feet swaying slightly to the music. “What are we doing?” I whisper. Everything feels smaller in the dim light of the RV.
“We’re having a do-over. Pretending we’re back on the dance floor before you shoved me away under the wrong impression that I had a girlfriend.”
“Ah,” I say, as heat fills every inch of my body. “I can do that.”
We dance, keeping close together because there’s not much room in here. Whitney gets all the way to the chorus before Ezra speaks again.
“Do you think Cece was right?” He murmurs against my hair. “About us having a…thing?”
I lift my head, his cheek brushing against my forehead. “I’m not answering that question without your answer first.”
He chuckles. “Why should I go first? I don’t want to be rejected.”
I meet his gaze. “I don’t want to be rejected either.”
Ezra’s hands slide up my waist, his thumbs pressing into my stomach as we sway to the music. “If I kiss you, will that change everything?”
My heart flips upside down. “Yes.”
“Would it be a good thing?” he whispers, his lips so close to mine I can feel a tingle between us.
“Let’s find out.” I lift up until our lips touch. Ezra inhales, his breath cool against mouth. He’s hesitating—oh God, I kissed him and he’s hesitating. I start to pull back, but then he’s cupping my face in his hands, and he’s kissing me. I close my eyes and lean into him, letting my fingers slide up his chest as his lips move over mine. He grabs me tighter, pulls me closer, and we kiss until we both break away for air.