I turned, astonished. His hair and T-shirt were already drying in the heat. My fingers itched to fix his unruly curls. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have an hour left?”
“I traded for later. Why’d you run off?”
I’d gotten so used to having Ethan to myself. To knocking on his door early in the morning and heading down to the beach. To hanging out in the cousins’ room late at night, chatting with Shira and Miriam while he played video games. Last night we’d grilled tomatoes together for dinner and my fingers still smelled like garlic from chopping so many cloves. I’d become used to his attention thoroughly focused on me.
But I had absolutely no claim on him. It’d been eight days since we’d hooked up, and I’d told him it’d been because I was itchy and he was there, nothing more. “I wanted food.”
“Then let’s eat.”
Strange, how the simple suggestion unknotted the tension inside me, how though I hadn’t been hungry, now a bite sounded nice. Except—“If you eat now, your appetite will be spoiled for ice cream,” I said, more snippily than I’d intended.
Ethan grinned and wrapped me in an unexpected bear hug, lifting me off my feet. I squealed in surprise. “What are youdoing?!”
He put me down. “I like when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“That’s cute.” He tweaked my nose, which I would have burned anyone else alive for doing. “Let’s get lunch.”
We got lunch.
We watched the fireworks from a beach, giant bursts of color splashing against the night. Afterward, I followed the Barbanel cousins to a party, squeezing into a Jeep in a pile of sticky limbs and driving to a sprawling house mid-island.
Ethan and I collapsed on a love seat while around us, people laughed and danced. “Yo, Ethan!” a guy shouted. “Come play beer pong!”
“I’m busy!” Ethan called back.
“I’m serious!” his friend said. “Stop flirting and help me out! These two are undefeated!”
“Go on,” I said, amused. “You can’t let them continue undefeated.”
“I suck at beer pong. He’d be better off with someone else.”
“Really?” I grinned. “I’m great at it.”
“Of course you are.” Ethan seemed flatteringly content to ignore his friends’ calls and stay on the love seat with me. “So what’s the plan for your dad and Cora? If you’re going to play matchmaker, you need a plan, right? You can’t be all willy-nilly about it.”
“Willy-nilly?”
“Yeah. It’s a real, important, serious phrase conveying the lack of your seriousness.”
“Okay, Willy.” I rolled my eyes, then stopped, realizingwillywas slang I hadn’t intended. “Uh…”
Ethan’s brows shot up. “Excuse me, what are you calling me?”
“Nothing.” I started to shake with laughter. “Nothing. Where do you think the termwilly-nillycame from?”
“You’re much cruder than I gave you credit for.” Ethan shook his head solemnly. “Shoutingwillyeverywhere.”
“Stop it,” I said, unable to contain my laughter. “You’re like a twelve-year-old boy. That’s not what I meant.”
He gave a mock-reluctant sigh. “If you say so.”
“I reallyhope willy-nillydoesn’t refer to…I’m googling it.” I pulled up Merriam-Webster on my phone. “Oh.Will I, nill I.That makes more sense.”
“Does it? Nill I?”
“Seems—Old Englishy?”
