Turning around, I found myself before someone I recognized. Long hair, incredibly tall—it was Rivers’ friend from earlier today. He knelt before my niece, holding a dollar before her with a warm grin.
He wasn’t alone; a large group of people I’d assume were his friends waited behind him. In the mix was River, leaning against the wall and staring at the ceiling. His eyes weren’t on me for once.
Millie grasped the money with eagerness, but she kept the good manners I instilled in her. After she thanked him, he held his hand up for a high five, and Millie met it.
“Carson, that’s so sweet of you,” one girl in the group cooed.
“Thanks.” My lopsided smile was genuine, as he just spared me from having to deal with a whiny kid for the rest of the night.
He returned the smile. “It’s no problem.”
As the candy bar was about to fall out of the slot, it got caught. Millie raised her hand and slapped it with force. “No!”
Sighing, I shook the machine as best I could, but it wouldn’t budge. Instinctively, I gripped the sides and tilted it, shook it three times, and kicked it once. I had learned that trick as a kid and had never forgotten it since. The only difference was that it was working then, but it wasn’t working now.
Everyone was a witness to my losing fight against a vending machine, and I was about ready to call it quits. Millie already got something out of it, and she really didn’t need a second snack anyway. I also wanted to keep the little dignity I had left from battling with a machine.
Before I could leave, River appeared beside me, his hands on either side of the machine. “You’re doing it wrong.”
Woah, I hadn’t realized just how tall River was until we were side by side. The top of my head was about level with his mouth, and that was generous. He was always taller than I was as a kid, but back then, it was a couple of inches. Now he towered over me so much that it cast a shadow. It wasn’t that I was small; he and his athlete friends were freakishly tall.
River shook it gently, and then he tilted it to the side. Lastly, with one hard shake, the chocolate bar fell out. Millie’s pout disappeared faster than I could register, and she cheered as she reached her hand into the machine and took the prize.
River faced the vending machine, but his eyes watched me. “You do it too aggressively. It doesn’t like that; it just needs a nudge.”
Of course, River would know; he was the one who taught me the trick.
“Thank you,” I forced, half of me wanting to be pissed and the other half reveling in the fact that he was so close to me. Not wanting to be around River any longer than I needed to, I gripped Millie’s hand and tugged her down the hall with me.
And as I turned into my room, the group was still down the hallway, now getting their own snacks. I looked for River, who clearly had the same idea as me, because he was already watching me. Our eyes locked, and this time he gave me a lopsided smile.
I pulled my eyes away and shut the door behind me, not bothering to return his gesture.
Chapter Five
RIVER
This was a mistake.
Accepting Lola’s invitation and convincing Carson to join me was a poor decision on my part. She wasn’t lying about it being a small get-together. I’d thought we were walking into a mini-party, filled with loud music and wrong decisions. Instead, we walked into a hangout of childhood friends.
Turned out everyone in the room had grown up in the same town, one not too far from here, and all ended up in college together. As they laughed and shared stories from years ago, I felt out of place. They were a tight-knit friend group, the type that finished each other’s sentences and enjoyed themselves together like this was the best thing since sliced bread.
Personally, I couldn’t imagine having a friend group as large as theirs, with over ten people. When I was part of a group of six in elementary school, that shit became a mess of lies and betrayal.
I think they wanted a few new friends to add to their group, but as I sat and listened to Lola ramble about her encounter with a stranger a couple of days ago, it wasn’t making me want to be their friend. Instead, it was making me miss my childhood friend.
It was ironic that Trevor, the resident of the apartment we were all in, lived in the same building and on the same floor as Alex, and it was even more ironic that we ran into him.
At this point, I wondered if it was fate trying to push us together. No matter what I did to stay away, circumstances forced me back to him. It was like the universe didn’t realize I was staying away for his own good—like it never believed me when I said it was torture to have him just within reach, but not be able to have him.
I almost burst into laughter watching his battle with the vending machine. His immediate thought to fight it was predictable and hadn’t changed since we were ten, even down to the embarrassment he felt after. It was so fucking cute that I couldn’t stop staring, making myself look like even more of a weirdo than I already did.
When I helped him fix the issue for his niece—who was much bigger than the infant I last saw her as—the irritation morphed into an expression that twisted something inside me. His muscles tensed, and his body froze, but that wasn’t what got me. It was the clear hurt in his eyes that did it to me.
I was an asshole, but I’d rather be the asshole than the reason he got hurt—and I meant more than emotionally.
“So, like, River,” a girl named Faye spoke as she smacked on her chewing gum, “what was going through your mom’s mind to name you after a body of water?”
