I swear the living room looks like a battlefield.
Except instead of corpses, it’s just us, five human slugs melted across Gio's furniture playing dead. Lorenzo is upside-down on the couch for some reason. Daisy has her face buried in a pillow, mumbling to herself. Gio is lying shirtless on the floor with an ice pack on his chest.
And I have become part of the beanbag. A singular organism. A sad one. Noah suddenly shoots up from the floor."Okay, what the fuck. This is pathetic. We are disgusting. It's my last day and we're all rotting like wet bread. Get the fuck up!"
Lorenzo, without opening his eyes, just raises a hand and murmurs, "Respectfully...die." Daisy lifts her head. "We could go for a swim?"
And that's when Noah loses it. "No, we fucking can't, Daisy! We ALL got fresh tattoos like absolute morons. We're walking infections. We're human scabs. We go in the sea, we die."
Gio, still on the floor, grunts. "At least you idiots chose your tattoos willingly. I don't even know who picked mine. Or if they were clean. I was blacked out. There could be actual bacteria in it with a name and a family."
I snort. We all do. It’s so dumb that it loops back to iconic.
Lorenzo finally sits up. "Alright. We can't swim, but we can still go to the beach. Sit in the sand. Drink. Listen to music. Play cards. Touch grass."
"I'm not playing shit unless it's for real money," Gio says, stretching his arms behind his head, flexing like a walking thirst trap. "Otherwise y'all can keep your peasant decks."
I. Want. To. Die.
The way his arms stretch, his chest arches, the muscles on his legs tensing like they’re sculpted by war gods...Jesus Christ. I want to leap across the room and grab his stupid massive thighs like a feral animal, but no. No.
Because we’re still in that post-fight weirdness.
It’s been twenty-four hours, but my body acts like it’s been months since I touched him. Noah claps his hands so loud it snaps me out of my misery. "UP. ALL OF YOU. LET'S GO HOME. SHOWER. PUT ON YOUR STUPID CLOTHES. WE'RE GOING TO THE BEACH EVEN IF WE HAVE TO DO IT IN PLAGUE MODE."
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. Anything to distract me from the way Gio’s back flexes when he stands up. I'm fine.Everything is fine. We’re all just friends. Who thirst silently. And rot in sync. Great.
...
My room looks like a war zone made out of swimsuits, half-zipped tote bags, and Daisy screaming at Noah for trying to pack three different sunscreens "just in case."
"No one needs SPF 90, you're not fighting the sun god, Noah!"
He rolls his eyes and holds the bottle up. "Speak for yourself, bitch. I burn like a Victorian ghost in direct sunlight. I willnotbe crispy in group pictures." I am sitting cross-legged on the bed, holding up two pairs of shorts. "Which one says ‘I didn't cry in the shower this morning’ more?"
Daisy points at the left one. "That one."
The door creaks open. My mom walks in, smiling.
"God, it smells like sunscreen in here," she says, walking over with a bowl in her hands.
"Welcome to the jungle," Noah says, dramatically stepping out with a Hawaiian shirt he absolutely did not own five minutes ago. She laughs and walks over.
"So…are you guys…going with Gio?"
Dead silence. Noah stops mid-button. Daisy freezes mid-lip gloss. I blink once. Daisy slowly turns her head. "Is that…a trap question?"
Mom tilts her head, feigning innocence. "Why would it be a trap? I know about Gio."
Daisy drops her lip gloss. "You—what?!"
Noah gasps theatrically. "You people don't even know what group chat means, huh?"
She just smiles. "I've known for a while."
"She knows??" Daisy whisper-shouts. "You KNEW?? And you didn't TELL ME THAT YOU KNEW?! WE COULD HAVE TALKED ABOUT IT TOGETHER!"
Mom snorts. "I thought you knew that I knew!"
