“Hi, Miles,” I manage without my voice cracking.
A whisper of a side smile ghosts his lips at the sound of his name before he reciprocates a hello. He’s quick to look away from me and at the girl clinging to his arm.
Unlike Ruby with a full face of makeup, this girl doesn’t even have to try to look pretty. There isn’t a single angle to her face that doesn’t remind me of a Disney princess—from the way her long brunette hair frames her sloping chin to her mascara-less eyelashes fanning her big round eyes. The swell of her lips looks like she just ate a handful of raspberries, and unlike me who burns just by stepping out of a shadow, every part of her shimmers in bronze. She leaves her right hand laced with Miles’s and extends her non-dominant hand to shake mine.
“Hi, I’m Lexi. I’m Miles’s girlfriend.”
Girlfriend.
Miles has a girlfriend.
A beautiful girlfriend.
I flick my eyes back to Miles, and he’s watching me.
WILDFLOWER.
WILDFLOWER.
WILDFLOWER.
I choke on the words as I mutter them over and over, but I clear my throat at the same time to cover the sound.
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way,” Reed interrupts, “let’s do this thing!”
Miles follows Lexi to the front of the boat where they cuddle up on one side, Ruby on the other. Rex and Alex share the captain chair facing Reed. That leaves Ronny and me at the back of the boat… on a bench that screamsWe’re single.
Rex unwinds the rope tethering us to the dock while Reed kicks the engine to life. We idle out past a sole red buoy, and all I can stare at is the dock that Miles and I shared getting smaller and smaller in our wake.
Boats and jet skis pack the lake, leaving us to go quite a ways from the cabin to find a spot vacant enough to wakeboard. I volunteer as the flag girl, which seems like a good idea up until the point where Reed suggests Miles wakeboard with Lexi balancing on his shoulders. I have a front row shot that requires me to watch him hold on to her ankles while she giggles and runs her fingers through his hair. When Miles wobbles too far to one side, she tips off his shoulders, and they both sink beneath the water.
Reed circles the boat back to them. Miles is no longer laughing along. He’s looking right at me like I have something he needs.
Reed’s brothers are horsing around with Ruby at the front of the boat and for a moment, it feels like it’s just the two of us. Looking at him I see my best friend—the boy whose every monumental summer intertwines with mine. But it’s not true. He has a whole different life here that I know nothing about. At that thought, I can feel my eyes mist over again, and I pinch them together to control it.
“That was awesome!” Reed hollers.
I plant my eyes anywhere other than the place in the water where Lexi circles her legs around Miles’s hips. They take turns climbing onto the back of the boat, and Ruby hands them a towel from the bench next to me to dry off with.
“Hey, Miles, you take the boat, I’m going next,” Reed says.
“Dude, I should be the one taking the boat,” Rex complains.
Reed shakes his head as he clips his lift jacket buckles together. “You won’t go fast enough. You can be the flag person.”Then he falls like a tree, arms outstretched into the water with the wakeboard.
Rex grumbles, grabbing the flag from my hand and positioning himself on the bench beside us.
“Come on, let’s go sit in the front. I want to get to know the girl who broke Miles’s heart,” Lexi says, grabbing hold of my hand.
I didn’t know a person could swallow their own tongue, but that’s what this horrible knot that just asphyxiated my lungs must be. She grabs my hand and clutches the towel around her middle. Miles and I exchange a concerned glance as she yanks me next to her.
“I can’t believe you’re from Boise! I’ve always wanted to go there. Tell me everything you love about it.”
She knows Miles and I have history and that I’m from Boise… what else does this girl know about me?
“Uh, there’s not much to tell,” I say in my desperate quest for distraction from this conversation.
