Reese sticks his hand out to Sid. “Trust me.” Sid nods and clasps his outstretched hand. “I’m going to go get your dare,” Reese says as he walks away.
“You have to play the rest of the game with her here,” Sid says. I have no idea what he means. Everything looks fuzzy around the edges and I wonder if Reese is bringing Jenn over here.
“With who?” I’m confused, until I see Reese wandering back, one arm slung over Vee’s shoulders. She usually makes her way back onto the bus after we perform. I hadn’t even realized she had stuck around.
Reese pulls his chair back and waves Vee to it. “Take my chair.” Like he’s being a gentleman and not the world’s biggest jerk right now.
Vee leans forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees. “Reese said you needed one more person.” She’s looking at Sid, who is shuffling the cards together again. “What’s the game?”
“We’ll walk you through it as we go,” Sid says. “You need a pick to throw in.” Sid fishes in his pocket but comes up empty, and I grab one of my spare black picks and hand it to her. With her eyes fixed on the pile of picks, she gives me a mumbled “thanks.”Is this ever going to get less awkward?
The answer is yes. Two rounds later, Vee is talking to me in full sentences. An hour later, I’m starting to forget she might hate me.
“Go over there. Right now.” She’s practically yelling, as she points a finger at Sid, who has a row of empty glasses in front of him. “Tell them”—she laughs before she can finish—“tell them they remind you of your mom.” She giggles, and I can’t help but laugh at how amused she is with herself. “And invite them back to the bus!” She says it in a dramatically sexy voice, then her face gets serious. She points a finger at Sid. “But don’t youdarebring them on that bus. I mean, how deranged is someone who actually wants to hook up with a guy who compares them to his mother.” Vee’s nose is scrunched up and she shakes her head. “Gross.” She bounces in her chair. “Go! Go!”
Sid pops out of his seat like he’s actually excited about his task. “On it,” he shouts as he walks away, red cup still in hand.
I laugh, and Vee meets my eye, clearly amused that I’m amused by her challenge. We’re sharing a smile when Tad wanders into the room, his camera hanging at his side for once.
“Time to go.” Tad waves his hands toward the exit. “And neither of your bands were eliminated, if you care.”
Vee gasps, and her face is serious. She looks from me to Reese with a guilty look on her face, then bursts into laughter. We all join her, way past caring about anything Tad is saying.
By the time I make it to my bunk, everything is spinning.
A string of whiny, mumbled curses drifts out from behind Vee’s curtain. She’s got to be in bad shape.
“Stick one leg over the edge of the bed. The room will stop spinning,” I say, looking over at her bunk as she pulls the curtain open.
One leg slides over the edge and she turns to look at me. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“I still hate you,” she says.
“I know. Don’t worry, tomorrow you probably won’t even remember being nice to me tonight.”
She doesn’t say anything, but there’s the faintest hint of a smile on her lips as we silently race toward unconsciousness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEN
CAM
At school, there’s an unspoken rule: No touching. Friends only. I don’t know when it started, sort of like I don’t know when I started thinking of me and Vee as “more than friends,” or when seeing her became as necessary as my 7A.M. coffee. For weeks, I’ve been barely surviving on four hours of sleep, after leaving the beach.I don’t know how Vee does it.She’s actually cheery in the morning.I’veresorted to drinking caffeinated mud, just to get through the day. That alone should be proof that I have a serious problem when it comes to Vee. I love my sleep like I love my food: in large quantities, whenever I can get it.
Learning that Vee had subconscious lines that weren’t meant to be crossed only required a few shoulder smacks. Figuring out the actuallocationof that line was a lot harder. The same way she never came right out and asked questions, she also didn’t come right out and tell me when I was crossing the line. But she always let me know. It took a handful of tumultuous days, a shitload of trial-and-error, and a few elbow-bruised ribs, but I finally figured out what was, and was not, acceptable at school. Orat band practices. Basically anywhere we were in public together, where it wasn’t covered in sand and drenched in darkness.
But like any good rule, I’ve found loopholes. Standing behind her, chest to back, hasn’t earned me a slap or an elbow to the ribs. Any time I feel the urge to touch her—which is becoming more and more often—I find myself sliding in behind her and resting my hands on her shoulders. I do it while I talk to her, or while she talks to someone else. While I wait for her at her locker. Once in a while, if I catch her with her guard down, I can drop my hands to her waist. I usually have two minutes max before she coyly wiggles out of my grasp.
I want to ask her what the problem is, but I think I already know. Because when Vee told me about the drama with her parents, it felt a lot like an explanation. I could practically hear the unspoken words: “I’m not looking for a boyfriend.” Sometimes I don’t even know if that’s what I want. It’s not what I deserve. Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you just do. It hits you like a wave, knocks you underwater, and when you surface, all you want is this one thing. It’s like gasping for air. All I can think about right now is how much I want Vee.
It’s ten o’clock on a Friday, pitch dark, and she’s slipping on the leaves that are caked onto the sidewalk. She’s almost fallen three times and still, she’s stayed six feet ahead of me the entire three-block walk from my apartment to Todd Winter’s house. Todd is a senior jock and a huge Melon Ballers fan. He invited all of us to his party, and even Vee—respecting Nonni’s wishes—said yes. She had sounded like she was chewing on rusty nails while doing it, but she said yes. And she didn’t put up a fight when I said we were going together. At least not until we left my apartment and she decided to leave a five-foot gap between us the entire walk. The same walk we make almost every night at two in the morning—hand in hand in the dark—whenwe walk from the beach back to my car.After hours of practically spooning on the beach.“This is dumb, Vee.”
“What?” She sounds annoyed.
“You know what,” I say, jogging to catch up to her, and grabbing her hand in mine.
