“You ready to go?”
He looks past me, eyeing the kitchen. “Nope.”
“Come on, I’m over this.”
“So go home.”
“You know I can’t. I’m driving you home.”
He just looks at me blankly, and I can’t tell if he’s about to say something, or if he’s just going to fall asleep.
I spend fifteen minutes trying to coax Asher out to the car. I promise him food when we get home. Threaten to call his parents. Tell him that if we stay for a single minute more, I’m going to pass out from exhaustion. We’ve both been up since 6 a.m. That seems to convince him—maybe he forgot how tired he was. He lowers himself into my passenger seat in a slow crumple, and when we pull into our driveway he bolts from the car before I can even cut the engine. But he doesn’t go to his house, he takes the walkway straight to the lake.
Crap.
I find him sitting on the hill, just on the other side of the row of flowering bushes that divides our yards from the fire pit area on the edge of the downward slope to the lake. I thrust a bottle of water at him, and ask him if he needs something to eat. He tells me to leave, but I won’t.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“Because I don’t think you’re going to remember this in the morning. And I’m not being nice. I’m making sure you don’t die. That’s not being nice, that’s just being a decent human who doesn’t want someone else to die.”
“Right,” he says. “Human.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Your parents will kill me if they find you dead in a puddle of your own vomit tomorrow morning.” I’m trying to be patient with him, but I’m cold and so tired I feel a little drunk myself.
“You’re not, though.”
I shake my head, unsure what he’s talking about. “Not what?”
“Human,” he mumbles.
“Go to bed, Asher.”
“Make me,” he says, smiling.
God, he’s impossible.I think about what could get Asher to leave, and decide talking to him may be my best bet. Maybe I can drive him back to his house with my presence alone. I sit down on the concrete walkway next to him. “You know, you weirded out Caleb tonight. You justhadto mess with me and wear that stupid matching shirt.” I take a swig of my own bottle of water. “At least I get a do-over tomorrow night.”
Asher groans, like he’s heard this a million times.
“You know, if you don’t want to listen to me talk, you could just go to bed.” I give him my bestI can be as obnoxious as you cansmile. “Problem solved.”
“This is the only nice shirt I have with me.” He pinches some fabric at his chest. “I don’t know why you have so many nice clothes with you, but I don’t.” His words are all slurring together. “So I wore the pink shirt, because it was my only nice one. And you looked nice. Too nice.” He grabs at the bottom of his shirt, and gets it halfway up his chest before he thinks better of it. He starts working at a button and he has half his shirt undone when he starts up again. “So then webothlooked too nice. And yeah, we also matched. Sorry.”
He dressed up so I wouldn’t be the only one?My overtired brain can’t even process it. Asher beingnice? But I saw his face, he was thrilled that we matched. I would bet that was the whole appeal. Looking nice and taking the spotlight off of me was just a side effect of torturing me. He’s got all of the buttons undone, and is sliding one arm out of his shirt. “What are youdoing?”
“I’m hot,” he says, tossing his shirt to the side.
I look out at the lake because it’s weird to look at him shirtless, even though that’s how he looks all day. But he was just clothed, andI’mclothed, and that’s different somehow. “Seriously, will you go inside, please?” He doesn’t move and I stand up. “I can go wake up your parents.”
“Fine, fine.” He throws his hands in the air. “I’mgoing.”
But he isn’t. He’s just sitting there, his head turned up to the sky, like he’s investigating something there.
“Do you remember that first summer?” he says.
It’s actually what I was thinking of when I saw him sitting here. The way we used to sit out on this hill for hours past when our parents had given up on the evening. When the night air got colder, and no one wanted to refuel the fire, because firewood is at a premium up here, and Nadine hoards her personal stash—ironically lined up right outside Lake House A—like the greedy little troll she is. That first summer together feels like a lifetime ago.
“Ouch.” I smack at a bug that’s feasting on my thigh. I nudge Asher in the side with my toe and nod toward the houses. “Please?”
