“What are you guys on?” I asked him.
“A little this, a little that,” Seth said. “You sleepy?” He turned his head toward me, and it took his eyes another second to catch up.
“Yeah.” I was exhausted and also irritated that they were in la-la land, where I was not.
Seth shook out our blankets and made a little nest. He told me to put my head on his lap and he’d sing me a lullaby. Then he sang an acoustic version of “Tonight, Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins like I’d never heard it before. So beautiful it made me want to cry.
“You sing like an angel,” I told him as I was drifting off to sleep.
Seth smiled. “An angel, huh?”
“Yeah, but dark too…like a fallen angel.”
“So…like Satan?” Seth asked with amusement.
I chuckled at that, drunk with fatigue. “Yes, exactly. You sound just like Satan.”
At some point in the night, I felt Seth at my back with his arms wrapped around me. I awoke in the morning to his erection pressed up against my ass cheek.
“Morning,” he whispered in a scratchy voice as the sun rose over our messy, thrown-together campsite. Seth tightened his arms around me, and I arched back into him so that our bodies made complete contact. He placed one hand flat against my chest and ground his pelvis lazily against me as my own erection swelled in my pants. The urge to reach down and stroke myself was overwhelming, but all around us, people were starting to stir.
“Something to look forward to,” Seth whispered and rose from our blankets, stretching his arms dramatically above his head, leaving me cold and aching and alone. A little bit bitter too, if I was being honest.
We ate whatever food was left over from the night before, which for me was another hotdog bun. They dropped me off down the road from my house midmorning. Before he opened the door to let me out, Seth drew me to him and kissed me long and hard on the lips.
“Jeeze, Seth,” Sasha said, “Let the kid come up for air.”
Jeannie fanned herself dramatically like a swooning Southern belle. Seth broke away and stared at me like he was looking for my reaction. It was a cruel thing to do, leave me with all of that unquenched thirst.
I had to wonder if Seth was building the suspense for our next sexual encounter, the same way he did in conversations and in songs. So many times he’d rev me up with a word or a calculated touch, only to drift off to other matters. Part of me thought I should just make my desires known, but I didn’t have the courage to do it, so instead I was stranded and waiting—always waiting—for him to make the next move.
“Think of me,” Seth said with pursed lips, and I hoped his friends didn’t catch on to the unstated portion of that sentiment.
Outside their car, I pulled my backpack onto my shoulders like Atlas bearing up the world and watched them speed off with a hollowness in my gut and a low frequency humming in my balls.
My mom was on the phone with my grandma in Japan when I came inside the house. It was something like midnight over there, so I just waved at her and headed upstairs. Dad was in his study, thankfully. I needed a shower to wash the campfire smell off of me and a real meal because I was starving. I was gathering up a change of clothes when Mai came into my room.
“You forgot to knock,” I said. Mai and my mother didn’t always follow protocol for privacy.
“No, I didn’t.”
I detected attitude in her voice, rare for Mai. She wasn’t like your typical teen girl, more like a middle-aged woman. She shut the door behind her. Her phone was in her hand as she approached me.
“How’s Sabrina? Mom told me she’s going through a breakup.” Mai tilted her head like a songbird and waited for my response, her arms held akimbo.
Mai knew enough about my social life to know Sabrina didn’t have a boyfriend. I suspected Sabrina might even be into girls but, like me, hadn’t made it known.
“She’s fine.” I chose not to elaborate any further.
“So, why’d you lie to Mom and Dad about hanging out with her last night?”
My sister always knew when I was lying, for better or worse. The good thing about it was she usually didn’t tell on me.
“I was with some friends at McKinney Falls. We left school at lunchtime. Dad would have freaked out about it.”
Mai glanced down at her phone. “And since when are you friends with Seth Barrett?”
I came over and looked down at her phone. Seth had posted a video to Instagram of me jumping off the cliff in my underwear.#enjoyingtheview at McKinney Falls.Thank God my dad wasn’t on Insta. Anyone who followed Seth would infer things from that hashtag, just as Mai had. Seth had low-key outed me to our high school. I should probably be upset by it, but in a weird way, I felt relieved and even a little flattered. He’d more or less went public with his feelings for me.
