by Eli Lang
He sat next to me and kissed my cheek. “What about them?” He pointed at Elliot, who had slathered himself with so much sunscreen I could see the white streaks across his shoulders and his cheeks. Then Nick flicked his fingers at Micah and Bellamy. They were standing right where the waves reached, dancing back every time the water got close, kicking up sparkling droplets, clinging to each other. They looked ridiculous. Ridiculous and happy. Not like rock stars. Simply . . . like people enjoying each other. Bellamy tipped his head back and laughed, long and loud, as if he had no control over the sound. Micah grinned, and when Bellamy stopped laughing, Micah leaned forward and kissed him. They stayed still then, letting the waves wash around their ankles as if they didn’t notice at all. They were too lost in each other.
I glanced over at Ava and Cara. They were standing by the cooler, sorting through, searching for a drink. Cara had her hand in Ava’s, and she kept lifting it and kissing her palm. At first, it seemed like Ava was ignoring it, like it was so commonplace she could forget it was happening. But then she found the soda she wanted and shut the cooler, setting the drink on the closed lid. She straightened, turned to Cara, and took both of Cara’s hands in hers. She brought them up and kissed each palm, lingering, letting her lips stay against the skin for a handful of seconds. Cara flushed bright red and laughed. Then she leaned her forehead against Ava’s and said something too softly for me to hear. Whatever it was had Ava blushing back at her and grinning.
Lissa had gone down and joined Danni and Tuck, and Elliot was making his way over too, despite his paranoia about the sun. Lissa had a Frisbee, and she held it up as a question. Tuck bounced over and kissed her cheek, then stole the Frisbee from her and ran off down the beach, laughing like mad. Lissa raced after him, until he turned and hurled the Frisbee backward. Lissa caught it and tossed it to Danni, who sent it sailing toward Elliot.
Not too far from them, Ty and Ben were walking slowly, their eyes trained on the ground, looking for seashells. Every now and then, one of them would find one, and hold it up for the other’s inspection. They stayed close together, their hands occasionally bumping. I might be imagining it, but I thought Ben was making it happen more often than proximity could quite account for.
“You’re right.” I turned back to Nicky. He was grinning at me, and I figured he’d probably been following my eyes around the beach. “I’m good here. With all of you.”
“Damn straight.” Then he leaned over and kissed me, and any worries I’d had disappeared.
We got up and drifted from group to group for a while, looking for shells, playing Frisbee, chasing each other around the beach without caring what anyone thought, until the sun started to set. Ben had a permit to make a campfire, and he and Micah got it going.
Nick and I sat around it with everyone for a while. Tuck, Bellamy, and Ty had brought guitars, and they played, and almost everyone took a turn singing. Ava got excited and made everyone wait while she found sticks for her and Micah to bang against the lid of the cooler in time to the songs. She offered Nicky a pair, but he declined. He was lying back against me, his head on my shoulder, his eyes drifting closed while the music rose up around us.
I half thought he might fall asleep there, and I’d have to wake him up when it was time for us to go home. But after a few more songs, he sat up and turned to me, and held out his hand.
“Come with me?” he asked, soft enough that he wasn’t interrupting the music.
I nodded and let him tug me up. We stepped away from the group. Micah smiled at me as we went, but no one commented or asked where we were headed.
It was dark away from the fire. I could see a couple of other flames, a ways down the beach, but in front of us, there was only a long strip of sand silvered by the moon, and the blackness of the waves.
Nick held my hand and pulled me until we were knee-deep in the water. We’d gone in earlier, jumping through the waves, splashing each other. It was different now, though. The water was cool, pushing around our legs, and I imagined there were all kinds of things swimming in it, right under the surface. Nick stood close, his toes touching mine, chest to chest with me.
I wrapped my arms around his waist. “What are we doing out here?”
He squashed himself against me, and gestured out at the water. His hand was a flicker of shadow against the ocean. “I wanted to see the moon on the water. It’s pretty, right?” He took a deep breath. His back rose and fell under my palms. “We used to party on this beach when I was in high school. It was fun.” He laughed quietly. “Lot of good times. But I used to . . . Sometimes I snuck away, in the middle of it all. I liked to see the water in the dark. It’s not the same, right? It’s like . . .” He sighed. “It’s like all the mystery of it comes to the shore. And the moon on it . . . it looks like you could fall into it forever.”
I nodded. It did. It scared me, in some ways. It seemed so vast like this. In the daylight, the rational part of my mind knew it ended, but in the dark, it was as if anything could be possible. As if worlds were colliding, as if this were a different space completely, as if anything could come up from the depths, because this wasn’t quite the same ocean as before.
“And,” Nicky said, pulling me back from my thoughts. “I always used to like to look back at the party. See it all small and contained, in a single glimpse.” He turned us, gently, our feet shifting in the sand. Behind us, the campfire glowed. I could make out Bellamy’s and Ava’s faces, could see the firelight catching on Tuck’s guitar, turning it burnished bronze. A thin thread of music floated to us on the breeze. I couldn’t quite tell what it was.
We turned back to the ocean. We stood like that for a long time—pressed together, the waves lapping at our knees.
“We should bring Josh to the beach. Would he like it?” I asked.
Nick rested his face against my shoulder. “He loves it. He would love that. He’d have a blast.”
I’d like it too, I was pretty sure. I could already picture them, Nicky and Josh together, gathering up shells or dashing through the surf. I could picture myself with them too. It was startlingly crystal clear. Josh handing me seashells, the two of us carefully deciding where to place them on a sandcastle. Nick laughing as he ran down to the surf, to get water so the sand would be the exact right consistency for shaping. It would be perfect, all of it.
“I really want to do that.” I kissed the top of Nicky’s head.
“Me too.” He took a deep breath. He was quiet for a minute, but it seemed as if he was making up his mind to say something.
“I’m sorry about your brother, Quinn,” he whispered, finally. “I wish I’d been able to meet him.”
I nodded. It didn’t sting as much, standing here with Nicky. Not as much as I’d have expected. It ached, like he’d touched a deep bruise. A tender spot that would never go away. And that was okay. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted it to be tender. But I wanted to be able to talk about Eric too.
“I do too.”
“Would we have gotten along, you think?”
I laughed, trying to picture quiet, introverted Eric with boisterous, energetic Nicky. “He would have been completely bowled over by you. He wouldn’t have known what to make of you.” I hugged him tighter, kissed his hair, then the side of his face, his jaw. “He’d have liked you. He’d have liked who I am when I’m with you.”
Nicky leaned back enough that he could stare at me, cup his hands around my face. He stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “And who are you when you’re with me?”
I sighed, like I was letting go of everything. “Somebody good. Somebody . . . somebody who knows who he is.”
He smiled at me. His face was in shadow, his expression cast in darkness, but I could see the happiness on him. “That’s good, then.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. It is. It’s very good.”
I don’t know which one of us leaned forward first, or if we both had the same idea at the same time. His lips were warm on mine, slightly chapped from the sun. I sh
ivered from the sensation of it, our bodies hot against each other, warm skin on warm skin, except where the water was cool around our legs. I slid my hand up his neck, into his hair, held him to me, and he pressed against me. Twisted his arms around me. Opened his mouth to mine, skimmed his tongue over my lips, velvet soft. Kissed me deeply, as if there wasn’t anyone on the beach but him and me. I held him even closer, impossibly close, wanting to lose all my senses in him. Kissed him harder. He tasted like sugar and seaweed and himself. Like sunlight and salt, and the smoke from the campfire.
He tasted like home.
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Lots of thanks as always to my parents. Many, many thanks to Rain Merton, for writing side by side with me, being an incredible beta reader, talking me through revisions, and holding my hand while I panicked. You are amazing. Many thanks also to my editor, May Peterson, for such wonderful insights, being so patient with me, and helping me polish this into something way better than I had. And thanks to everyone else at Riptide for being so great. Lots of thanks to Ryan for all the studio and drumming knowledge (anything that’s wrong is totally all me), and for being an awesome friend. And many thanks to all the Blanketeers for being the best and always coming to the rescue when I need you. You are the most wonderful people.
Escaping Indigo series
Escaping Indigo
Skin Hunger
Half
Eli Lang is a writer and drummer. She’s played in rock bands, worked on horse farms, and had jobs in libraries, where she spent most of her time reading every book she could get her hands on. She can fold a nearly perfect paper crane and knows how to tune a snare drum. She still buys stuffed animals because she feels bad if they’re left alone in the store, believes cinnamon buns should always be eaten warm, can tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the tardigrade, and has a book collection that’s reaching frightening proportions. She lives in Arizona with far too many pets.
Website: leftoversushi.com
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