“You have the most gorgeous smile,” he whispered.
Jane and Stick were still talking up front, but their banter became white noise, and I felt the cocooning power of being alone with Lucas in Stick’s back seat.
“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. I grimaced at my stupidity.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t ever regret telling me the truth.” His voice was serious, the smile faded.
“I won’t,” I said, meaning it. Somehow I knew I could tell Lucas anything and he wouldn’t think I was a clueless freshman.
“How old are you?” I asked. I knew he was older than me, but I didn’t know by how much.
“Twenty-one. You?”
“Eighteen.” He sighed what sounded like relief. “Almost nineteen,” I added. “I was old for my class.” I didn’t add that my father wanted me to be in the same graduating year as Jane, so, even though I technically could have started school a year earlier, he’d waited. Never mind that we weren’t even in the same school district that Jane’s mom lived in.
My father—the puppet master even all those years ago. Did he really see this happening—Jane and I being roommates—so far in advance? My bet was yes.
“So, you can buy for us,” Jane said from the front seat, and I realized that though I had tuned them out, she had not done the same to Lucas and me.
“We can,” Stick said. “You ladies want to get wasted?”
“No,” I said at the same time Jane said, “Yes.”
Seconds later, Stick pulled up in front of a liquor store—a very shady-looking liquor store—and hopped out, leaving the car running.
Jane turned and looked at me, then at Lucas. Really looking him over, but not in a come-on kind of way. Jane and I had our issues, but she had a streak of loyalty in her that ran deep.
We’d only been roommates a week, and Jane had locked horns with Syd almost that entire time, when Jane and I overheard a couple of girls talking trash about Syd behind her back.
Jane called them out, intimidated the crap out of them. When I asked Jane about it later, she just shrugged and said, “Ican tell Syd she dresses like a poser, but those two bitches better steer clear.” I just shook my head at her logic. “Lily,” she said, “she’s ours. Syd, that is. And we take care of our own.” To her, it was as simple as that.
“You’re right,” she said now as she turned from Lucas back to me. “Totally smoking hot.” She turned back in her seat, facing the front, smirking at the position she’d put me in. “Too bad his friend is such a troll.”
Lucas turned to me with a grin, and quirked a brow.
“I didn’t say that,” I said. Jane did a fake choke/cough/“bullshit” from the front. Lucas just smiled wider.
And moved closer to the middle of the seat. He patted the space between us and I moved closer to him. I was so drawn to him, I wanted to crawl right onto his lap, but I stopped myself. But the hungry look in his eye told me he wouldn’t mind if I did.
So caught up in being close to Lucas, I started when Stick opened the car, handed a brown paper bag to Jane, and got in.
He roared off while Jane dug into the bag.
She pulled two beers out and handed them over the seat to us. Lucas took them both, twisted the lids, and handed one to me.
“Rolling Rock?” Jane said. “Seriously? They didn’t have Sam Adams, or an IPA or something?”
“Big beer connoisseur at eighteen, are ya?” Stick said.
“I’ve had a few,” Jane said, using the haughty voice she’d first used with me. For about a day.
“Nothing wrong with good old Rolling Rock,” Stick said, taking the bottle Jane handed him and taking a large gulp. “Besides, it’s about half the price of that fancy piss.”
“I would have paid,” Jane said.
The car slowed at a red light and Stick looked at Jane. “Let’s get this straight right now. I don’t take money from Bribury Basics. Got it?”
I waited for Jane’s come back, but she just stared at Stick for a second. “Whatever,” she finally said, and took a drink from her own beer.
