“Friends. Right.” Cort waves her hands in surrender. “I’ll drop it, because I know you’re weird about this stuff. But you’renotjust friends. And yes, he totallyisin love with you. Kind ofandsort of.” She jabs my shoulder with her finger. “I know these things.”
“You know nothing,” I say. She’s known him for exactly two minutes.
“I. Know. Everything.” Her words are slow and dramatic.
“You’re staying at Cam’s with me, right?” Cam’s parents are out of town and he invited the three of us to stay at his apartment, since it’s walking distance from the party. It’s half the reason I agreed to come.
She nods. “And you’re staying atmyhouse, right?” She gives me an exaggerated wink. “Did you catch my blink just then?” She sticks her tongue out and I try to grab it like we did when we were little kids. When Cam comes back into the living room I’m grabbing at Cort’s lip.
Cam wedges himself between the two of us. “You good?”
I eye the three shot glasses in his hand. “Are you? I thought you weren’t drinking.”
“I’m not, but I found this idiot in the kitchen.” He nods behind him at Anders, whose vintage Ramones shirt is soaked in red liquid. I cringe thinking about what—or more likely, who—ruined one of his prized possessions.I have twenty bucks on the crazy-eyed blonde standing across from me.
Cort grabs one of the tiny plastic cups from Cam’s fingers. “I’ll take that,” she says. I do the same, and Cort plucks the last cup from Cam’s hand and dangles it in front of me. “This one, too. You need to catch up.”
I take the second cup, holding one in each hand, looking at them like they’re filled with worms. They smell disgusting.
Cam is behind me, his warm chest against my back. He whispers in my ear. “You good?” I flinch, but fight the urge to pull away.No more hiding.I let myself relax against him. His lips are almost touching my ear when he whispers, “Whatever?”
I nudge my shoulder into his side and my hand rests on his hard stomach. “Whatever.” My plastic glass clinks against Cort’s and the liquid slides down into my already warm, buzzing belly. I’m not sure if the heat is from the alcohol, or Cam’s hands.
CAM
“Truth,” she says.
We’re sitting on an oversized chair in one of the house’s three living rooms, playing a two-person game of Truth or Dare. Vee is draped across my lap with her legs dangling off the side of the oversized chair she calls a Snuggler. “Because you’re forced to sit really, really close to someone,” she says. “Or to sitonthem, in this case.” Her cheeks are red like she’s been standing in the cold, and all of her words are becoming soft, one sliding into the next.
She lays her head against my chest while I think about what to ask her. Despite all of the time we’ve spent together, something about being with her still feels so finite. I want to make the most of every minute, each opportunity to know more.
She drums her fingers on my leg. “Any day now.”
“Tell me something no one else knows.”
“Counter offer.” She thrusts her hand up in front of her, holding up one finger and tapping it in the air. “I’ll show you something no one else hasseen.” She pushes herself up, using my chest to propel her, and holds her hand behind her as she begins to walk away from me without a pause. I grab it quickly, following behind. She doesn’t turn as she talks to me, she just yells loudly over the crowd. “As long as you’re up for a walk!”
***
“When I was really little, like maybe six or seven, my parents would walk me down to the water with one of them holding each of my hands.” Vee’s staring down at her feet as they sink into the silt along the edge of the water. Her toes wiggle under the surface. She looks peaceful.
Definitely a little drunk.
“We’d make footprints in the sand.” Her head turns, just barely, to face me, her eyebrows raised. “You know what they say about footprints in the sand?”
“My gram has an embroidered pillow that says one set of footprints means God was carrying you.”
She smiles, but looks confused. I can’t help but laugh.
“If you let the water wash your footprints away, they’ll be transported to the other side of the lake.” She says this like it’s a fact. “That’s what my mom would always say, at least… It’s not on a pillow, or anything official like that, though.” She bites her lip, trying not to smile.
And now she’s sitting down.
Right in the water, where she stood just seconds ago, Vee is lying back in the surf, letting the water rush up her calves, lapping at her knees and up to her shoulders. With her arms stretched out at her sides, she looks like she’s making a snow angel in the wet sand.
Maybe she’s drunker than I thought.
“Did you eat anything before I picked you up, Vee?”
