“You must think very highly of yourself.”
He tilted back on his heels. “‘Your eyes look like the stars I couldn’t see out my childhood window’ was quite the ego boost,” Asher said, quoting my lyrics.
“That might be the last nice thing I write about you,” I hissed.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Asher grinned and backed away from me, his eyes still on mine. He took a seat toward the right side of the terraced steps, purposefully next to a lanky kid named Peter, whose fingers were twisted around a worn yo-yo string. My insides softened as I watched Peter smile up at Asher. Asher became a theater god the second he opened his mouth onstage last year. He had that thing you can’t teach—and while theater was competitive, he was so great that everyone wanted to learn from him, rather than wallow in the fact that they couldn’t measure up. Asher first noticed Peter last summer—he was the kind of kid who walked around camp like he had an invisible friend. After Peter bombed an audition for My Fair Lady and cried onstage, Asher ran after him and asked Peter if he wanted to be his understudy. Asher used his quick camp celebrity not to boost his own profile, but to fill in the lonely space of a kid without a friend.
Watching Asher trade smiles with Peter, my angry insides gave way to gratefulness. My eyes locked on the guy I loved—the kind of guy who went to the ends of the earth to make sure others would thrive—the guy who was bringing me out of my comfort zone just so I would succeed. I inhaled deeply from my diaphragm, opened my quivering lips, and let my first love song, “Invisible Skies,” find new sets of ears. It was the song I had started writing the very first night I met Asher. Adrenaline beat through my chest as the folksy, soft love song echoed against the stone wall behind me.
I had never seen Asher smile this wide. I felt the warmth of the sun on my cheekbones as my eyes moved from Asher onto the other faces that were glued to me. I watched as the booming bridge made each jaw in the crowd go slack. The last note left my lips, followed by the longest second of my life: dead silence. All at once, they rose from the stone steps and effusively clapped and whistled. I pursed my lips together, trying to keep from screaming. This adrenaline was new. It was big. It had pulled my spine upright so I could touch the sun. My voice made strangers come alive. I wouldn’t ever let another person convince me that I was meant to do anything else but this. I wouldn’t let another stage intimidate me.
Asher mouthed, “Told you,” in my direction with a proud smile stuck on his face.
The theater crowd jumped off the steps and onto the field quickly, shooting me effusive compliments as they passed. Wide-eyed, I watched them disappear down the grassy hill. My heart was pounding in my eardrums, my entire body shaking as I set my guitar down into its hard case.
Asher walked forward with a big grin.
“So, will I ever be the subject of another Maggie Vine original, or are you done with me?”
I stood in front of him and clasped my hands around his neck, scrunching my nose up to his.
“You get like…all of the songs, forever.”
“Forever, huh?”
I nodded. “Thank you for today,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
I grinned and tugged him onto my mouth. My hand curled around the nape of his neck, his hand went under the back of my T-shirt, and I felt him harden against me, sending a new kind of shiver all over my body. My fingers moved from his neck to his warm torso, slowly inching downward, stopping at the elastic of his mesh athletic shorts—when a loud gong sounded over the speakers.
I slid my hand back up to his hard stomach, raising myself up on my tiptoes. “Dinner,” I whispered, with my forehead pressed against his.
He held me tight against his body. “Let’s skip it and watch the sun set somewhere.”
“Skip dinner?”
“I have the good canteen snacks,” he said, patting the JanSport backpack slung around his shoulder. I let my heels fall flat on the ground and took a step back, grabbing my guitar case.
“I’m pretty sure my counselor will go searching for me when I don’t show up at head count.”
“Okay.” He adjusted his shorts and combed a hand over his tousled hair.
“Shall we?” I asked.
Asher smiled quickly and grabbed my hand as the sun started to dip below the trees.
We walked silently, hand in hand, my body skipping with energy. The crowd poured in from every angle of camp as the dining hall came into view. I noticed that Asher was moving slower, tugging me back toward him as hungry bodies shoved around us to get into the door.
“Um—meet by the lake tonight?” he asked, his tone unusually nervous.
I took in his searching expression, as if my answer could make or break him. We met by either the gazebo or the lake every night after curfew.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Cool,” he said, exhaling as he studied the gravel road below our feet.
I squeezed Asher’s hand in mine and playfully brought it up to my mouth, biting his knuckle. He could barely manage a grin, his expression still fixed on the scuffed rubber of his shoes. An unease settled in my gut. Asher was someone who kept his eyes on you, or who studied the road ahead. He made up stories about the people passing by or the stars in the sky. He rarely looked down.
“Hey,” I said, gently dropping his hand. “Are you okay?”
Asher’s eyes searched mine, and he flashed me a quick smile and pulled his shoulders back.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
It was a good question. One I wanted the answer to.
“I don’t know. You’ve been acting kind of weird all day.”
And he had been. Ever since breakfast, he’d exhibited some sort of puppy dog separation anxiety from me. I assumed it was Asher going the extra mile to make sure I was prepared for Talent Night, but I was now fully prepared, and yet he was still having a hard time letting me do my own thing. I had seen him like this once before. Asher was usually very independent—like me, he relished creative alone time, so when the same thing happened last summer, it shocked me. He barely left my side all day, telling me long-winded stories and insisting we explore every unexplored inch of the campground. When Asher walked me back to my cabin around midnight, he nervously told me he loved me. Clearly, he’d been terrified to say it that day, but he knew that he needed to get it off his chest, so he followed me around until he found the courage to unleash his truth. But standing here a year later, Asher knew I loved him—there was no need to follow me to vocal lessons and guitar practice, there was no need to skip rehearsal and wait for me outside the camp’s recording studio doors while I was inside. It occurred to me that he had abandoned his entire day in favor of mine.
Asher put his hands on either side of my cheeks. “I’m fine,” he said, his amber eyes wide on mine. I knew Asher Reyes well enough to know he was not fine. He unclenched his jaw nervously, and then closed it just as quickly. He wanted to tell me something, but he didn’t know how.
The second gong sounded, and the remaining bodies flew past us into the dining hall. Asher propped open the door with his foot, waiting for me to walk through it. I hesitated, and he nodded, as if to tell me to move. Suddenly, an arm clasped into mine, tugging me inside. I looked up, seeing my bunkmate, Gracie, with a huge smile on her pointed face.