Funny Story(55)

The band cranks out country covers of hits through the decades, and we dance until my hair has dried all the way through, then until it’s sweaty again.

At one point, Miles goes to get fresh beers—and a cider for me—and comes back wearing a handful of glow-stick necklaces, a sloppy pink lipstick mark on his cheek.

“Of course,” Julia shouts over the music, not interrupting her dancing whatsoever and not even close to winded.

Oh, to be twenty-three.

She jerks her head toward Miles. “Leaves for a beer, comes back with a hickey!”

I think she must mean figuratively, but that doesn’t stop me from scanning his throat as he’s passing out our drinks. When he’s doled them all out, he drops one of the glow necklaces around Ashleigh’s neck, then gives Julia one, which she adjusts to be smaller so she can wear it like a tiara. Then he puts the last two around my neck.

“Thank you,” I shout. The band’s just started in on a cover of “Crimson and Clover,” and half the audience is drunkenly singing along around us.

“My pleasure,” he says.

“I see that.” I flick his cheek just below the kiss mark. I hope that sounded friendly and jokey like I intended, and not incandescent with jealousy.

“Part of a bachelorette party scavenger hunt or something,” he explains. “Can you get it for me?”

I brush my fingers over the condensation on the outside of his beer bottle, then smudge the mark out of his skin. “Can’t take you anywhere.”

He leans in so I can hear him. “If I had a beard,” he shouts, “this never would’ve happened.”

“You could be in the ghost-face mask from Scream and this would still happen,” I say.

He turns in to me, his mouth nearly touching my ear, the spicy ginger and bready tang of beer hitting the back of my nose. “Are you jealous?” he teases.

I push up onto tiptoes, bracing a hand against his shoulder, tipsy enough to play along but not drunk enough to be honest: “It’d just be nice to earn my own glow sticks once in a while.”

He touches my waist. Heat unfurls over me, skull to toes. Automatically, I lean into the touch, and his fingers curl around my hip as he ducks his head again. “The bachelorette party’s still by the bar. I’m happy to introduce you.”

“And miss this song? Not enough glow sticks in the world.” I turn in to him, and my heart thumps, quick and sharp, at the way his dark eyes dilate, the way the corner of his mouth tips up in a wry smile.

Looking at his mouth, I forget what we were just talking about. I swallow a thorny knot and touch the scratchy corner of his jaw. “Beard’s almost back.”

His hand circles my wrist lightly, an electric frisson leaping from him to me. “Petra hated it too,” he says, his voice a buzz, half heard through the music.

My stomach gives a decisive downward jolt. “I don’t hate it,” I say. “It’s grown on me.”

The corner of his mouth ticks higher and his thumb runs along the side of my wrist. “So I should keep it?”

I clear my throat. “That’s up to you.”

“And I’m asking you,” he parries, his smile slightly mischievous but his gaze dark and heavy enough to pinion me to the spot.

The moment feels like a held breath, or a soap bubble, something that can’t last, that has to break one way or another.

And then it does. The song ends, and Julia barrels back toward us, baby bangs stuck to her forehead and mascara ringed around her eyes. “Who’s up for a shot?” she asks, and Miles steps back from me.

“I’ll get them,” he volunteers, and breaks away through the tightly packed crowd, casting one last glance over his shoulder, a hazy look that makes me feel like a Christmas present he’s one sleep from unwrapping.



* * *





?“Are you and Miles sleeping together?” Ashleigh asks at the bao bun food truck on our lunch break on Monday.

I’d just taken a sip of lemonade and reached out to accept my receipt from the cashier, and I barely manage to avert my face before spit-taking.

“Ashleigh!” I chide, pulling her away from the counter.

“What?” she says. “That guy’s, like, sixty. I don’t think we’re going to surprise him.” She adds thoughtfully, “Unless of course he’s also sleeping with Miles.”

“I’m not sleeping with Miles,” I tell her.

“Okay, fine. I must’ve misread the signals.” Her tone makes it clear she doesn’t believe it.

The cashier calls our respective receipt numbers, and we grab our food from the counter, then walk toward the picnic tables on the grassy knoll overlooking the public beach.

“One time,” I admit. “Something happened, once.”

A smile spreads across Ashleigh’s pink-painted lips. “I knew it. Tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I say.

“That bad?”

“No,” I say a little too emphatically. At her smug grin, I add, “I just mean, I’m not even sure how it happened.”

“Well, you’re still ahead of me, because I don’t even know what happened.”

“We just made out a little bit,” I say.