“Still a no. But I will be your ultimate mentor and guide in beer pong.”
“Deal.”
The room hosting the tournament—there’s a white board, they’re keeping score,there are rounds—is hazy, and I wonder if anyone’s considered how much better they would play if there weren’t three hookahs burning.
“Fuuuuuuuck you, mother fucker,” Andy bellows at the his opponent, landing the shot and winning his game, jumping up to clap me on the back. He takes a swig of his beer, clearly disinterested in the actual rules of the game.
“And with that,” I shake my head at him, my laughter causing an ache in my core, “I’m gonna head out.”
“Nooooo,” he groans, just as the blue haired chess player he’s been flirting with all night, the strands falling around her in waves, loops her arms around his midsection.
“Yeah. I’m gonna go,” I smirk, my gaze flicking to hers before rounding the corner back to the main room.
I hear my sister before I see her.
“If you save yourself for marriage you’re a bore!”
Sloane’s in the center of the makeshift dance area, arms thrown in the air as she passionately shouts the lyrics to the country song coming from the sound bar. She kind of flings herself around with her eyes closed, the motion no different than the way she’d bounce around when we were kids, and somehow manages to keep dragging her onlookers into the chaos with her.
And then there’s only her, standing off to the side, the small crowd of people clasping plastic cups around her falling away. Rich, dark waves spill over her bare shoulders, bounce as she shifts her weight and laughs a deep bellylaugh, the kind I didn’t hear until we really started spending time together. She’s usually so tightly wound, but even from where I stand, still a good distance from her, I can see that right now, she’s not. There’s something different about her tonight.
Lavender fabric clings to her body, highlights every dip and curve I yearn to trace with my fingers, taste with my tongue. The dress ends just beneath the swell of her ass and combined with her heels, her legs look a mile long. When I follow them down and up again, my fingers itch with the need to run just under the hem, touch the soft skin barely hiding beneath it. I follow the curve of her waist, my gaze snagging on the way her chest shimmers with sweat or glitter—I’m not close enough to know. She turns just enough that her face is obscured as she speaks to someone, and I have a perfect view of her graceful neck, my lips tingling to feel her pulse there. My desire for her thrums through me, pulling me through the crowd and toward her, naively believing the things she told me last night. I haven’t been brave enough to admit she might not mean them today—might not remember any of it.
The closer I get, my jaw tenses, spotting Riley McMahon, his broad shoulders and frame almost outlining Gen as she stands in front of him, laughing. Again. Disappointment ebbs across my skin as I try to shake off the jealousy, and I turn to leave like I originally intended.
The brisk night air is like a clean break, or so I tell myself, the sound of the leaves crunching beneath my feet now louder than the house music coming from the party.
“You’re here,” I hear her say, a little breathless, and when I turn around I find her standing there in next to nothing, shivering in the cold. I shrug my jacket off withouta second thought and drape it around her shoulder, pleased when she pulls it tight across her.
“You’re here,” I counter, shoving my hands in my pockets. She’s blinking at me through the cold, the tip of her nose rosy as she takes me in with an amused smirk, and I swear it feels like last night. Feels like she remembers.
“Sorry I didn’t text you back. Jean and Sloane gave me amakeover.”
“The artists,” I say, fighting the grin pulling at the corners of my mouth.
“How’d they do?” She holds up her hands, does a brief little twirl that I resist asking her to do again.
“Hard to know. Their subject was already perfect.” I step toward her just as she moves toward me, and it’s a surge of anticipation that washes over me as I get close enough, vanilla and the sweet edge of strawberries that I breathe in.
“Walk with me?”
“You’ll freeze,” I tell her, my gaze sliding up the length of her legs.
“You always been this careful, Fielder?” she says, kicking the leaves with the toe of her heel as she loops an arm through mine, pulling me toward the woods.
Just with you, I want to say. Instead I shake my head, laughing at her carelessness and my continual inability to say no to her. I pull her into my side, unsure if my jacket is enough to warm as we wade into the forest.
“You ever do the whole hiking thing?” she asks me as a grown over trail comes into sight.
I track the tree line with my eyes, trying to make out the way ahead. “Like, did I have a secret extreme survival hiking hobby or do I enjoy walks on man-made trails where I can appreciate nature without risk to life and limb?”
Her laugh is infectious and I laugh at my own joke, too. “Either.”
“We do some of the trails in north Georgia when it’s cool enough, but a day or so. Not anything crazy. You?”
“No,” she says with a whimsical edge. “Always seemed exciting though. Pushing yourself to the limit.” She takes a sudden left, veering through the maze of red maple trees whose foliage only allows slivers of the night sky to peek through, and I follow her lead. “But it’s not like my mom would ever take me, and then I’m always just busy with ballet, so.”
“We could do it,” I tell her, and she peeks up at me with childlike excitement. “After the Nutcracker. If you have time,” I add, looking back out into the dark wilderness as she hums—an acknowledgement but not a commitment. “Did you ever try anything else?”
