“Okay, well, you have fun.” Despite the kindness of the words themselves, his voice is still rough and sounds more like,I hopeyou choke on your popcorn. I’m glad I won’t be there to Heimlich you, even though it’s my lifelong dream.
“So what, you’re mad?” It sounds like a joke when it comes out of my mouth, but I’m not amused. “I mean, are you even available, Asher?” I fidget with the hem of my tank top and suddenly I wish I hadn’t brought it up. I have just as little right to be jealous as he does. “Whatever, I don’t blame you if you’re still hung up on Jordan, or Lindsay, or… whoever… it’s just that maybe you shouldn’t kiss people if—”
“What?” To his credit, he looks surprised when he says it. “Why would you even bring up Lindsay?”
So it’s Jordan, then.I have to decide if I want to admit that I broke the truce and was lurking around in his bedroom. He’s sure to be irritated with me, but he doesn’t look like he’s getting out of here without an explanation. And he’s at max levels of irritation anyway. Might as well just lean into it. “I was putting some stuff in your room earlier and—”
He folds his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes on me. It’s the lookBeforeAsher would have given me. “What stuff?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I hesitate, suddenly unsure of how committed I am to dying on this hill. He cocks his head to the side and pins me with a hard stare. “I had laundry for you, okay?”
Asher raises his eyebrows and I know I’m caught—there’s no reasonable reality where I would bring him his laundry without ulterior motives—but he doesn’t say anything.
“It doesn’t matter why I was there.” I shake my head, hoping I can shake away the feeling that I’m the one who did something wrong.He’sthe one trying to lure me into the meanest prank of all time. “I saw the necklace.”
He smiles, and shakes his head like I just said something ridiculous. It’s the kind of smile that tells me there’s something coming. That I’ll wake up to my flip-flops glued to the floor or self-tanner smeared in my swimsuit. It’s a menacing smile, a predator’s smile. It’s the only kind of smile I used to see on hisface, but it feels strange and wrong, now that I’ve seen his face look so many other ways.
“Come here,” he says, pulling me by my hand before I can stop him. I follow him through the bathroom and into his bedroom. With the focus of a heat-seeking missile, he goes right to his dresser and pulls the little box out of his drawer. The lid tumbles to the ground as he flicks it off with his thumb and holds the box out to me. His look is a command and a warning.
I shake my head, bewildered, and cross my arms over my chest. “That’s it.” I’m not sure what he wants me to say.
He rolls his eyes. “You don’t recognize it?”
“Why would I?” But then I look at it again—the strange purple-blue color of the little stones that hang from it. At the delicate silver chain and charm of entangled fish that dangles next to the biggest stone. I hadn’t noticed the charm before. It catches the light and sparkles, and my stomach slowly plummets to my feet as recognition hits me.
“Yeah.” He smiles but he’s not happy. “You should recognize it, because two summers ago,youwere basically obsessed with it.”
I pull my eyes away from the necklace and look at Asher, whose face has gone from angry to sad.
“My mom wouldn’t buy it for me. She was on that kick about limiting our material possessions and focusing on experiences, and I had already spent all my money on that stupid wakeboard I never used.” The words trail off as I reach a hand out toward the box.
Asher moves it back just a hair, and I retreat. “Right,” he says.
“I don’t…” I shake my head at the little box, at the way he’s looking at me while he holds it. “Why do you have it?”
“I have it because I was on that miserable shopping trip with you, and I saw how much you wanted it.” He looks away from me, his eyes fixed on something to my left, and then sweeping across the ceiling to land on the other side of me. “So I boughtit.” There’s a pause, a long stretch of dead air where I think about bolting for the door. “And every year I told myself I was going to give it to you.” He swallows and his throat bobs. “But every year it was the same, with the pranks and… all of it.”
His eyes meet mine again, and I don’t know what to do. I just stare at him, feeling like I’m seeing him for the first time. Wondering how I’ve spent so many years pretending he was my enemy. Wondering just how long ago he stopped feeling like I was his. I bought that stupid wakeboard because I had secretly hoped that he’d take pity on me and show me how to use it.Holy hell, we’re a hopeless pair.
Asher walks around me, and I can feel him step up behind me. His arm brushes my shoulder, and his hands stretch in front of me, the silver chain hanging there. I’m frozen in place, but it feels like my whole body is lightly buzzing. Asher’s fingers brush my neck as he clasps it and pulls my hair out from beneath the tangle of metal. The necklace is cold on my skin where it falls low on my chest, and it feels heavy, even though it’s dainty and delicate. But I can feel it—the necklace and his words—hanging there, around my neck, pressing in on me and making it hard to breathe.
We stand there, both of us silent, his front so close to my back that I’m not positive we aren’t still touching. Even breathing feels too loud. Asher sets his hands on my shoulders, and then his breath is at my ear. “Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten how to say anything nice to me.”
There’s an angry edge to his voice, and the words sting. He’s right, I’ve spent so much time poking at him, convincing myself that he’s nothing but the enemy, that I’ve forgotten what he really is. What I had once hoped he could be.Wecould be.
His voice is still a whisper, the hard edge still there as it brushes against my ear. “This is where you say thank you.” His tone is all off. It’s hard again, so different from what I’ve become used to these last few weeks. I hadn’t realized how much it hadchanged until I heard the old Asher again tonight. No, something so much harder than the old Asher.
“Thank you.” The words are so soft, I’m not sure I even said them out loud. His hands fall away from me, as if those two words have released him from some kind of spell, but I can’t move. Even as he closes the door, and I hear his footsteps move down the hallway and the screen door slam behind him in the kitchen. I’m still frozen in place in the middle of his bedroom when he walks past the window. There’s a soft rumble of an engine and the crunch of gravel. By the time I reach the window the taillights are just two bright spots in the shadow of the trees.Gone.
I sit on the bed and lie back, letting the smell of Asher’s sheets wash over me. It’s strangely comforting. I love this smell, how it’s just as much a part of my summer as all of the other smells of the house, and the lake. The necklace is long, and I hold the chain away from my chest, running my finger over the details of the two fish tangled together there. A tear slips down the side of my cheek, and then another, and it would be so much easier if it were Asher and not me who was the absolute worst right now.
Asher
When I get home that night, the house is dark and quiet. Dad’s SUV is gone, so the parents must be out, reliving their glory days once again. They all seem to be taking this impending empty-nest situationreallywell. I grab a can of beer from the refrigerator, since no one’s going to miss it tonight. Sidney’s door is closed, and no light seeps from the gap, but she’ll probably be home from her date soon.Or maybe she won’t.It’s the second date. The second time she’s gone out on a date with another guy after I’ve kissed her. She’s basically screaming what she wants at me; I don’t know why I can’t just listen.
Sidney out on a date shouldn’t irritate me as much as it does. It’s not like kissing someone gives you any sort of claim to them. There’s not some binding contract of exclusivity that goes along with a kiss. It doesn’t even mean she likes me, just that she was bored enough, or lonely enough, or mean enough to put her lips on mine. I think about all of the girls I’ve kissed just once. One time, no expectations. Maybe it’s the fact that shekissed me backlast night that’s really irritating me. That second kiss was all her.
As I walk into my room, I pull my T-shirt off, flinging it onto the floor. Like all of the bedrooms, my room only has a fan—that I leave on all the time—and several little lamps scattered throughout. By the time I reach the bathroom door, my shorts are around my ankles, sent flying with a gentle kick. I flick on the light, and I’m about to close the door when I notice something illuminated by the crack of light streaming from the bathroom. It’s Sidney. In my room.In my bed.
