He pulls his fingers out. “As long as you drunk off of me. I’ll take that.”
My phone chimes from across the room, but we don’t tear our eyes from each other’s.
“Go get it,” he grunts, slapping my thigh.
I twist and push from underneath him, gloating at the heaviness of his hand dragging against my ass and the back of my legs when I climb off the bed.
When I turn the phone over, it’s the text he was waiting on.
Bry: You good?
That’s it. He didn’t race from his dorm to beat on the front door and make sure I was home. He didn’t even call.
“That’s him?” Ace asks.
I nod, staring at the disappointing check in. After twelve years of friendship and hundreds of strawberry cool cups, I thought we were better than that.
I glance around my desk for the first time that morning.
An empty Shipley’s bag hangs off the edge. My swimsuit and sarong sit in a folded lump, and Ace’s mud-caked Jordans are shoved under the desk. It’s easy to connect the dots of the aftermath of Splashtown.
My bed creaks.
“You good?” Ace reads from over my shoulder, chuckling. “Tell him—you know what—nevermind.”
He reaches over me, swiping the Shipley’s bag and balling it up. “He always so careless with you?”
“I—I—no.”
The cursor in the message box blinks while it waits for me to figure out what to type, but I can’t think of anything because the boy I hate and like isn’t smiling anymore. There’s a smatter of red along his caramel cheeks.
“That’s hard to believe.”
“I don’t think he did it on purpose.”
That was that strawberry cool cup loyalty talking.
“Man, fuck that shit.Hepicked you up from this house in perfect condition and that’s how he should’ve brought you back to m—”
I hold my breath for him to belt out the rest, but he stops himself.
“Next time, bring that backpack with you. If you think it’s so childish, I’ll buy you a purse to take.” He dumps the Shipley’s bag into the trashcan next to my desk. “You should ask him how he talks about you in a room full of men and then tell me if you still think he didn’t do it on purpose.”
He mutters the last words under his breath, but I hear them loud and clear. There’s more that he knows and he won’t tell me, just like he won’t tell me more about Los Angeles or Cheyenne.
He breathes over my shoulder while I reach out and pull the front zipper of the backpack open. I was too excited about Dior swimsuits and Splashdown that I never even touched it. There’s a credit card stuck to the front of my Bubble Yum that’s tucked deep into the pocket.
“What’s this?”
“You should always have your own when you going out with a boy,” he replies, shaking his head.
“I don’t have my own when I go out with you.”
“Because I’m not a boy. That’s therealproblem with me and you. You keep thinking I am.”
My fingers slide across his embossed name on the credit card while the cursor waits for me to ask Bryson the questions he wants answers to.
The phone chimes again.
