He flopped beside me and exhaled, arms behind his head. “You thinkwe’ll ever look back on this and think, ‘Damn, we peaked in high school’?”
I arched an eyebrow. “You think this is peaking?”
He smirked. “Nah. I think this is surviving.”
He said it like a joke, but it landed too true. I glanced at him sideways. The soft light from the lampposts caught his cheekbone, his throat. I wanted to sketch him just like that, wild and loose and a little uncertain.
“I talked to Coach today,” he said after a beat.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Told him I was thinking about maybe… doing something more with the whole nonprofit thing.”
My chest swelled. “That’s amazing.”
Dare snorted. “It’s the kind of career that doesn’t actually need a college degree, even though it requires one.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but it’s also the kind that makes you feel good at the end of the day.”
He rolled over on me, grinning, and tickled my ribs. My lips parted on a laugh, and he stole the opportunity to slip his tongue into my mouth.
He pulled back, still grinning. “It’s the kind that leaves you balls-deep in student loans ten years later because it pays crap.”
He looked at me then—reallylooked—trying to see the future in my eyes.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Who knows? Maybe comics. Maybe design. Maybe… something else I haven’t found yet.”
“You will.”
“I think for me, it’ll come down to luck. Landing a sweet internship or a chance introduction to the right person.”
We were quiet for a while, lying on our backs, staring up at the sky. The crickets filled the silence like a soundtrack.
“I’d follow you,” Dare said suddenly.
I turned my head. “What?”
“If you went somewhere. For college, work, for whatever. I’d go.”
The words made the slushie in my stomach churn. “That’s not how it works.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re supposed to do what’s right for you, Dare. Not chase me around like some sad golden retriever.”
He laughed. “I’m way too pretty to be a retriever.”
I bit back a smile. “Border collie, maybe.”
He tackled me before I finished the insult, and I ended up beneath him again, laughing as he tried to bite my nose. His hand found mine on the grass, fingers threading through. When our laughter died down, he rested his forehead against mine.
“I’d still follow you, though,” he murmured. “Even if it was just to see where you end up.”
My tongue slid along his lips, teasing and wet, until he let me in. Dare kissed me back, dragging out the moment with a slow, drugging sweep of his mouth.
The stars spun above us, and for a little while, everything felt possible.
