What kind of punk did that?
Evie looked like an imp, hugging her knees to herself now. “Let’s pretend for a second that Micah isn’t the one who’s betting on nailing you. I think the whole idea itself is super hot, Shel. You—the object of pursuit for a guy who wants you real bad.”
“This, coming from an asexual.”
“Hey, I can appreciate the aesthetic value of a man or woman or the games they play. That’s what artists do. And I can have emotionally fulfilling relationships if I ever get around to it. My psych class said that I just don’t crave sex like all the other horny dogs out there.” She shifted in her chair, loving all this action. “Anyway, you can’t tell me you’re not a teensy bit flattered.”
Maybe I was, but admitting it was sheer hell. So I didn’t. I only sat back down on the bed, my heart going a mile a minute. “Even if I was interested in Micah Wyatt, I wouldn’t go there. Who wants to be a number in a whole galaxy of numbers?”
“True.”
“And even if I were interested—which I’m not—I’ve already gone through the whole having-sex-before-I-was-ready drill.” I shook my head. “I promised myself after Rex that I’d think things through the next time. I need to really examine all the emotions that attack you when you’re into someone—you know, the emotions that made me believe I was ready to handle being with a guy.”
“Screwing’s a big decision.”
Screwing. It sounded so mechanical, which was pretty much the case when it’d come to Rex. We’d dated a little less than six months, but sex had happened long before then. Rex had a way of talking me into things, like going out with him in the first place, then meeting his parents during winter break, only a couple months after we’d said our first real hello. With Rex, life had occurred in triple time, and it was only after we’d broken up that I’d realized why that was: he was always afraid of losing something, whether it was a football game or a person. With me, he’d tried to speed up our play clock, getting to his goal before I could realize I didn’t actually love him.
I had loved him, though, at least in an immature, desperate, first-real-boyfriend way. Then everything had imploded.
Evie rested her chin on her knees, still wrapping her arms around her legs. “It sucks that you slept with Rex before you were ready and that it’s going to affect how you respond to other guys.”
“There’re a lot of reasons not to sleep with this Micah guy besides that.” I shrugged, closing out the discussion. “I just thought Rex was going to lose interest in me if I didn’t give him what he wanted.”
What I didn’t add was that the entire experience had been painful, uncomfortable. Let’s just say there was a lot to Rex, and I hadn’t exactly been begging for more after that first time. Or the second . . . and so on. Some friends back at school had told me that sex wouldn’t always be like that with other people, and I wanted to believe them. But I wasn’t all that enthused about test-driving more guys.
So why was my belly pulling with strange need after this bet revelation? Why did it feel like something had been tied into a knot that throbbed and wouldn’t let up?
Evie smiled. “I’m simpatico, Shel. The last thing you want is to be a boy-pleaser. And you want to keep a low profile away from the cheerdevils and Rex’s friends, but Micah’s putting you in high-profile territory. But does that necessarily mean you’re going to be a massive blob in every other way this summer?”
She made me sound like no fun at all. Blobs sat on palettes like the ones Evie used for her paints. Blobs quivered and bled color and had no lives.
And even a few days into the summer, I was headed in such a blobby direction.
Evie spun around in the desk chair, then eased to her feet. “We’re on vacation, here, my friend. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. So even if you want to avoid the Rexes and Micahs of the world, you can’t hole up in this room or the café for the next couple of months. Am I right?”
God, I’d missed her. And she was right—I shouldn’t care about the bummers of the world. So I smiled, nodding.
“Yes!” She clapped her hands together. “Then, listen—there’s this party out at Jimmy Holland’s ranch. His dad is at some agricultural business conference and his mom went to visit a sick aunt, so they left him alone. He’s got a keg, and things should be in full swing right now . . .” She looked at my sudden frown. “What? Too soon?”
“Won’t the others be there?”
“No. Lindsey Windsor is having a birthday pool party tonight, and all the cheerdevils and Rex and his boys will be over there. Jimmy’s will be a devil-free zone.”
I couldn’t imagine that Micah would be present, either. He probably had better things to do than hang with Jimmy Holland, who’d been in my grade. Plus, there were a lot of women in town the player hadn’t oo-lah-lahed yet, and the night was still young.
But since Jimmy’s ranch was on the ’neck side of town, odds were that Lindsey Windsor’s party would be keeping all the upper-class asshats busy, too.
“I’ll even be the DD,” Evie said, sweetening the pot. “Don’t be a blob, Shel.”
Who was a blob?
My body had forgotten it was tired. “I’ll drive. You deserve a drink after putting all that energy into such effective speechifying.”
“Thanks for appreciating my efforts.”
I spruced up, then changed from my Angel’s Seat T-shirt into a red-and-white blouse that tied up high, baring my midriff. Evie waited by the empty pool while I shut the sliding door behind me. I led her through the side yard and was just texting Mom so she wouldn’t freak out about my location change when Evie brought up Micah again.
“You know what the best way ever is to make Rex grind his teeth, though?”
I put away my phone, then opened my pickup’s door. “I’m not having sex with Micah Wyatt.”
“Got it.”
As we climbed in, I was thankful my cab light was broken, because if she saw how much I was flushing now, she’d never let me forget it.
***
Parties definitely didn’t get ’neckier than this.
A full moon washed over a wide field as we pulled off the dirt lane that stretched from the main road to the Hollands’ one-story ranch house. A bonfire burned nearby, and there was a keg in the flatbed of Jimmy’s red GM truck, where a circle of guys gathered.
That’s not where the rest of the crowd was, though.
As Evie and I walked from my parked pickup toward the Blake Shelton music that was coming from Jimmy’s truck, we hesitated at a strange sight across the field: a black Impala that resembled a stock car had some dinglehead sitting on top of the roof, his legs spread and his boots hooked into the opened windows like he was in a saddle.
Everyone was cheering him on right before someone shouted, “Bust that bronc!”
The car revved its engine and . . . holy shit. It took off in a spray of dust while the fool gave a yell.
“That’s Zachary Lowe!” Evie said.
I was trying not to let my jaw hit the ground because, somehow, our valedictorian had ended up doing rodeo tricks on a car. This wasn’t like any party I’d ever been to in town. Not that I’d been a high school party girl, but . . . Wow.
When the Impala slammed on its breaks, Zachary went flying into a bunch of hay that’d been set out, and a collective “Ooo!” drowned out the music. No one moved.
“Shit!” Evie whispered.
Was the smartest guy in our class dead? Paralyzed?
“Zach!” Jimmy Holland, with his ranch-boy shoulders and plaid shirt, dove toward the idiot in the hay.
But when Zachary bounded up like a jack-in-the-box, his hands above his head in a victory cheer, everyone pumped their fists and drank their beer.
Evie pulled me toward the keg. “Good God. I’ve gotta get drunk.”
“
You think beer’s going to top that?”
“It’ll ease the surreal nature of our surroundings, that’s a guarantee.”
As we approached the keg, we were spotted by a bunch of kids I knew but didn’t really know. They’d eaten at the tables on the opposite side of the high school cafeteria. They’d gone to parties after the football games—the ones that standoffish girls like me and Evie never knew about until the next day at school, when gossip made its rounds. They’d worked after school on their family’s ranches or farms while Evie and I had stuck around town, doing chores in our homes or parents’ businesses.
“Look here—the brain squad!” shouted a guy I recognized from the football team who’d graduated a few years ago. He’d been a receiver, one of Rex’s favorite targets when my ex was a boy-wonder freshman who’d made second-string varsity. Jefferson Mayes, with his short, curly black hair covered by a Stetson.
The moonlight danced over his dark skin. “First came Zachary, then you two. Is there a message on some nerd web page about making up for lost party time?”
“No,” Evie said, accepting a Solo cup from a kid in a Texas Rangers cap who’d been on the baseball team and sat in the back of my English class—Reese Darnell. “We nerds have a hive mind, so we know one another’s thoughts.”
Blank looks from the ’necks.
“No one watches Star Trek?” Evie asked.
Some of them coughed, saying “nerd” at the same time, but they did it teasingly, not cruelly.
Reese Darnell smiled shyly at me, like he kind-of-sort-of recognized me. No surprise, since I was taller, slimmer, and curvier now. My hair was longer and swimming pool–blonder than it’d been senior year, too, since I’d taken a swimming class last semester. He started to fill a cup from the keg, but I asked for water from a nearby container instead. In the background, another rider was all set to go on the Impala, which revved its engine, gearing up for a second drunk to go flying.
Jefferson shook his head and hopped onto the truck’s tailgate. “How long before someone gets himself killed over there?”
“Jimmy’ll stop it from happening,” another farm boy said. I didn’t know who he was but I was pretty sure he was older than we were, based on his scruffy beard and an air of not really belonging. As a matter of fact, the more I looked around, it seemed that this was a more “mature” party that had landed at Jimmy’s house. He always had hung out with an older crowd.
Jefferson tipped back his cowboy hat. “Jimmy’s too drunk to stop this.” He nodded to Reese, and it was like they had some kind of signal, because he left, heading for the Impala and the crowd around it. Then Jefferson focused on me and Evie again.
“What brings you here then?” he asked over the music.
Evie had already downed half her cup, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, avoiding her lip piercing. “We’re in search of pleasant company. But I’m not sure we’ve found it with all that bull riding going on . . .”
“Bronc busting,” Jefferson said. “That’s what they’re calling it. These kids started it up last year after the graduation party. If it wasn’t so dangerous, I’d say you girls should hop on and give it a go. It’d be a turn on.”
Evie and I cracked up. But when I stopped laughing, I still had to wonder how long it’d take for Jefferson to comment about me and Rex. Or for someone else to say something that’d make me want to leave.
Evie was sticking by my side, like she was silently telling me to stand my ground.
Jefferson refilled his cup. “So you’re both in college now?”
He was looking at me, so I answered. “I’m at Texas-U. Evie’s at UCSD on the West Coast. She wants to study marine biology.”
“And art,” Evie added. “Wonderful combo. Maybe I’ll be Wyland someday.”
More blank looks. Okay, they weren’t so much into artists, either.
I nodded at Jefferson. “You went off to be a Longhorn?”
“Yeah. Made the team, too.”
Everyone in Aidan Falls knew that Jefferson rode the bench at the University of Texas. They said he’d been a big shark here, but a small fish outside town limits, which was just the jerk way of saying that they were disappointed in him.
By now, I was really praying he wouldn’t ask about Rex since we were on the subject of football. But just as I thought he was about to say something, there was a roar in the distance, coming from the road.
Everyone near the truck—and near the Impala, which was mercifully sitting still without any riders on the roof—turned to see what was arriving.
It turned out to be a red car with stripes and a jacked-up rear, and Jefferson jumped off the truck to go running toward it. Several other ’necks did, too, except for a crowd that stayed near the Impala.
“Oh my God,” Evie said, grabbing my arm. “Look at that Camaro. My dad would get such a woody if he saw this.”
A laugh sputtered out of me, but it trailed off as I recalled something Micah Wyatt had said earlier in the day.
“I’m more into cars. Racing. All that.”
The Camaro steered off the road, into the grass, and I could see the silhouetted driver’s muscled arm relaxing out the window, his other hand gripping the wheel. As he came to a stop, the passenger door opened, and someone tall and equally built got out. Another person followed, his shape imitating the other man’s.
Deacon and Darwin?
It didn’t take a brain to guess who was driving, and when Micah opened his door and stood tall, the knot that’d been tied between my legs earlier got even tighter. Something in my belly wrapped into itself, too, my skin going prickly and hot.
“Evie,” I said between my teeth.
We were the only ones at the keg now since the rest of the guys had gravitated toward Micah, who shook Jefferson’s hand right before the guy started circling the Camaro, scanning it. His friends followed him until they got to the twins, giving them pat-on-the-back guy hugs.
“I swear,” Evie said, crossing her heart, “I had no idea he’d be here.”
I believed her, but that didn’t do me much good now, as Micah locked me into his sights.
He smiled in the moonlight, his gaze burning into me—the girl he’d vowed to nail by the end of summer.
Early March, Two Days After the Last ParlorFly Chat Message, Private Chat
T-Rex Alvarez: U there?
10:43pm
T-Rex Alvarez: . . . ?
10:45pm
Lana Peyton: Hi.
10:46pm
T-Rex Alvarez: Damn. U cold or what?
10:46pm
Lana Peyton: I just thought we agreed to cut this out.
10:47pm
T-Rex Alvarez: U agreed.
10:47pm
Lana Peyton: God. I told you—things went too far. You’ve got a girlfriend, and this isn’t right.
10:48pm
T-Rex Alvarez: That didn’t bug u much the 1st time. And the 2nd. And the 3rd.
10:48pm
Lana Peyton: I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU.
10:49pm
T-Rex Alvarez: Ur not serious. Cum on Lana.
10:49pm
Lana Peyton: I can’t believe you want to keep on with this. I never thought I’d be a cheater, and it’s disgusting. I liked you, Rex, but I have to wonder what kind of person you are now.
10:50pm
T-Rex Alvarez: Same kind of person u r.
10:50pm
Lana Peyton: Fuck you.
10:50pm
T-Rex Alvarez: Invitation? I have a better idea. Cum 2 my room for real.
10:50pm
Lana Peyton: Stop joking around.
10:52pm
T-Rex Alvarez: No joke.
10:52pm
Lana Peyton: I’m not amused.
10:52pm
T-Rex Alvarez: ??? U there?
10:54pm
T-Rex Alvarez: K. Have it ur way. Do u no how many girlz would want to b in ur place?
10:55pm
Lana Peyton: Famous last words, Rex.
10:55pm
T-Rex Alvarez: WTF duz that even mean?
10:56pm
Lana Peyton has blocked T-Rex Alvarez.
10:56pm
5
I was still under the heat of Micah’s gaze as he stood by his car. I was rooted to the ground, my knees too weak for me to run or hide, when another girl went over to him.
She looked like she’d just stepped out of a NASCAR wet dream with short shorts that cupped her butt, cowboy boots, and a red tank top that showed off her ample charms. A bottle blonde with hairsprayed hair and lipsticked lips, holding a green bandana in one hand while she draped her other arm around Micah’s neck.
He smiled at me across the distance—a sideswipe grin that told me he thought it was funny that I couldn’t drag my gaze away from him—and rested a hand on NASCAR’s butt.
As a flush raged over my skin—damn, sometimes it sucked to be a blonde—the crowd hooted, the girl pressing herself up against Micah and pulling him down for a kiss.
He kept watching me, including me in the kiss like this was some kind of threesome, or like he was letting me know that this girl could be me, Shelby Carson, with a little more hairspray, lipstick, and willingness. All it’d take was one word.
Yes. And that’s exactly what I was hearing in the back of my mind: a soft whisper, a sigh of surrender that melted through my bones.
Yes. His lips, hot and urgent, a first, scary kiss from a guy I shouldn’t be anywhere close to. His mouth against mine, slow and insistent, wrong and right . . .
As the girl threw her other arm around his neck, bringing him even closer, I made myself look away, crossing my arms over my chest. Making myself breathe again because, somewhere along the line, I’d stopped, as usual.
Everybody was still cheering him on as I gazed at the small group that lingered by the Impala. The driver leaned against his door, and he was big one. Not Hulk-big, but stocky in a former glory-day wrestler kind of way. It’d been a while since he’d been in high school, too.
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