Lexi got into the passenger seat while Zach started the engine. He backed up slowly and drove out to the main road.
As they sped down the highway toward the bridge, his fingers tapped out a rhythm on the leather-covered steering wheel. The music coming through the stereo was unfamiliar to Lexi, but its beat was strangely addictive. Mia was humming in the backseat, out of tune, as usual.
At the trailer, Lexi got out of the car, and Mia was right behind her, stumbling out, laughing as she fell to her knees in the damp grass. “Less go to our hill,” she said, staggering back to her feet.
Zach rushed to his sister’s side, held her up. “Hey, Mia,” he said gently, “maybe you should go to bed.”
Mia smiled drunkenly. “Yeah. Tha would be good.”
Zach looked at Lexi. “I’ll wait until she’s in bed to leave, okay?”
“You don’t have to do that. I know you want to get back to Amanda.”
“You have no idea what I want.”
Stung, Lexi went to Mia, took her from Zach. “Let’s go, Mia.” She guided her best friend across the damp grass and up into the mobile home. In the living room, Mia collapsed to the floor, giggling and moaning. “Sshh,” Lexi said.
“I’ll jus sleep for a sec…”
Lexi left Mia on the carpeted floor for a minute and went back outside. From the porch, she stared at Zach. Slowly, she moved toward him. He was looking at her now, watching her even, and his attention made something in the pit of her stomach flutter. “S-she’s fine,” she said.
“What’s your hill?” he said.
“Mia and I hang out there. It’s nothing.”
“Can I see it?”
“I guess.”
Lexi was aware of his footsteps cracking on twigs and branches as they pushed their way through the heavy salal and brush. The path was so thin you could only find it if you knew where it was. When she emerged into the open again, it was onto a high bluff of untended land that overlooked a busy strip of the highway, the glittering casino, and the black Sound beyond. “I come out here all the time,” she said.
“It’s cool.” Zach sat down on the soft ground.
Lexi reluctantly sat beside him. They were so close she could feel his leg against hers.
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.
Silence stretched out, turned uncomfortable. “So you guys are checking out colleges next weekend. That’s cool,” Lexi finally said. It was all she could think of.
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“You don’t sound very excited about it.”
“Mia says she’ll die if we don’t go to USC together. Don’t get me wrong, I want to go to school with her, too, and I want to be a doctor like the old man, but…” He looked out over the casino and sighed.
“But what?”
He turned to her, caught her looking at him. “What if I can’t cut it?” he said so quietly she barely heard his voice above the distant drone of highway noise.
She had known Zach for more than three years now, adoring him from a distance; she’d studied him like an archaeologist, culling through his words for hidden meaning. And never had he said anything like this to her. He sounded vulnerable and confused.
The night seemed to fall quiet; the buzz of the cars faded. All Lexi could hear was the beating of her heart and the even strains of their breathing. She was reminded of all the times she’d waited for her mother’s return, only to be disappointed, discarded. If there was one emotion she understood profoundly, it was uncertainty. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that Zach could feel the same way. It made her feel connected to him, in tune. For one split second, he wasn’t Mia’s brother; he was the boy she’d seen on that first day of school, the one who’d made her heart speed up. “I didn’t think you were ever afraid.”
“Oh, I’m afraid of something.” He leaned the slightest bit toward her. Maybe he was just shifting his seat on the hard dirt; she didn’t know—she just knew how it felt to be afraid, and the way he was looking at her made it hard to breathe. Without really thinking, just feeling, she leaned toward him for a kiss.
She was just about to close her eyes when he jerked back. “What are you doing?”
The magnitude of what she’d almost done knocked the breath from her. He didn’t even like her, and, worse than that, he wasn’t available for her. Jude had made that clear; so had Mia. And Mia was what mattered, not some useless, baseless crush on a boy who fell in love with a different girl every week.