“Got a light?” she asks, quiet excitement creasing at the corners of her eyes as she lifts it to her lips. My eyes are on the spliff as I focus on catching the flame, but her eyes are on me, searing into me with single minded determination. When it’s done I back away, watching as her eyes flutter shut and take a hit, holding it for a long moment before blowing it over her shoulder. She passes it to me and I take a long drag, feeling the laces of my guilt loosen.
Sloane subtly grins, watching. “For the life of me, I can’t get a read on you. Thought you were gonna try to convince us to get off this thing. ”
“No way,” I huff out, coughing. “Would you even have listened?” I ask, watching in awe as she bursts out in laughter.
“Of course not.” She lolls her head away from me so she’s staring back at the sky, the stars beginning to shine as the clouds drift away. “Maybe out of pity. Seems Carmen gives youa hard time,” she adds, but I know there’s a question hidden there.
I help myself to another hit before passing the joint back.
“She does. But she’s also having a hard time,” I admit, losing a breath.
“She appreciates you. That’s why she does it,” she says to the stars instead of me. “I gave my family a hard time.”
“Yeah?” I trace the outline of her against the roof, barely lit by the moon.
“I was adopted,” she says, like it’s as much a revelation to her as it is to me. “Grant doesn’t really tell people. The Fielder’s adopted us when we were barely teenagers.”
“Shit. How was that?” I’d be lying if I didn’t worry about Carmen, about what would happen to her if something happened to Mom. It’s unlikely, but so was Luis dying after that fire.
“Crazy,” she laughs, but it’s sad, a tragic weight to her usually feather light voice. “I was horrible. Probably still am, dependin’ on who you ask,” she says, the subtle lilt of her voice skating across me like the breeze.
“I find that hard to believe.” That telltale weightlessness comes over me, and I let the roof hold me as any tension finally melts away. I only really smoke with Will, and even then it’s when he thinks he can keep it from Liv.
Sloane hums, and it buzzes just beneath my skin, warms me despite the chill in the air.
“You don’t really know me,” she muses, her soft giggles vibrating into the roof tiles, and I know she feels it, too.
“And you don’t know me. But I have a feeling,” I say to the sky, and I hear her roll over until she’s on her stomach, head propped in her hands.
It’s gone in this moment—the perimeters that dictate my life. I try to grab for the thread that binds this all together, thatcasts me as a villain in disguise, but it’s been blown away. Right now, I’m just a guy looking at a girl, wanting to kiss her, and anything else that I could be feels like pure fiction. The task echoes in the back of my mind and, were it not for the pot, it’d probably be crisper, but it isn’t. It’s as hazy as the smoke we’re blowing between us.
“What does thisfeelingtell you?” she asks, peering at me through her lashes. Her deep sea eyes almost glitter.
“That it’s all a front.” She reels back just slightly, like I just peeled a layer she wasn’t ready to shed.
“You’re a front, too,” she challenges, her tone dipping into defensiveness, and I still, my skin buzzing at her perception.
“And what is it? My front?” I counter, knowing I should leave it alone, but I’m mesmerized by the way she talks. By the way her lips move when she’s talking about me.
“Carelessness. The whole douchey shtick you do when everyone’s watching. The…playin’ dumb. Kind of an asshole.” She rolls those lips of hers, narrowing her eyes at me. “You weren’t like that in the prop closet. You’re not like that when it’s just me.”
It’s too raw, that perception, and I bristle.
“I say thank you for watching my sister and, all of a sudden, I have a sensitive side I don’t show?” I try to joke in an attempt to reel this conversation back into safe territory, but she doesn’t budge.
“You’re doin’ it again.”
Head tilted to the side and framed by the golden spillage of her hair, she looks like an angel, and I wonder: what does that make me?
“I’m not pretending, Sloane. Sometimes I just am an asshole.” I work my jaw as I trace the almost black outline at the edges of indigo in her eyes.
“Bullshit,” she says, sitting up so that we’re face to face.We’retooclose, but I can’t seem to make myself move. “I saw you with Carmen. You care about things.”
“Why do you care so much?” I ask, irritation attempting to claw its way through the hazy cloud we’re slowly falling from. “I don’t know if you remember, but all those nights ago, you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Her scoff is hard, grates across my skin like a rug burn. “Because I was tryingnotto do somethin’ stupid with my brother’s teammate.” Her scoff is bitter, laced with hurt pride and tired amusement as she shakes her head at me.
“So you admit it. You did want me.” I let my gaze play across her lean lines and she smacks my arm, biting back a smirk as she scowls at me.
