Jasper refuses to sing. But as I howl into the mic I lock eyes with him and neither of us can help smiling.
Finally, after all this time we’re going to be together, without school or college getting in the way, without pack relations, friend drama…no kidnappings, mystical powers, or psycho wolves to distract us.
This just might have been the best birthday ever, and this summer is going to be one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME
“You’re so lucky,” Katie says, spinning in a circle on my desk chair. I drop a sweater in my duffel bag and shoot her a smile. “I wish one of my mates had a holiday house in California.”
I laugh a little and consider the pile of clothes I pulled from my wardrobe, wondering what else I should pack.
“Do you think I need to take more than one pair of pants or just shorts? Does it get cold at night?”
“I don’t know,” Katie says, stopping her spin to face me, a devilish grin slapped across her face. “Do you think you’ll be wearing clothes at all?”
I toss a pair of balled-up socks in her direction. “Staaaaahp.”
“What?” She shrugs, acting all innocent. “It’s romantic. You and Jasper alone in the desert. No one around but coyotes and cacti.”
My face is burning up so I turn away from Katie, grab a handful of T-shirts and shove them into my duffel.
“What’s up?” she asks. “Are you nervous?”
I take a large breath. “I dunno. Maybe. I haven’t—I’ve never—what if I’m…?”
“What, Max?”
“What if I’m bad at it?” Once the first question is out the rest seem to follow of their own accord. “What if he doesn’t want to? What if we’re not a good fit? Like incompatible or something? What if he’s done it a bunch of times with other people and they’re, I dunno, better? What if I don’t like it? What if he doesn’t?”
“Max, Max, Max,” Katie says, jumping up and coming to stand at my shoulder. “Stop. It’s okay. It’s natural to be nervous.”
Something about the way she says that last part, as if she knows what she’s talking about, clues me into something I’d been wondering about. “Wait, have you…?”
Katie shoves the pile of unpacked clothes across my bed and sits. She glances up at me through her eyelashes, her cheeks turning pink.
“You have!”
She covers her face with her hands.
“Katie!” I take her hands, pull them away from her face, and hold them. “You didn’t tell me. When? With…with which one?”
“After my birthday,” she says. “With both.”
My mouth drops open and my eyes shoot wide. Katie sees my expression and matches it.
“Not at the same time!” she shouts, toppling backward in an embarrassed pile.
I move my bag and flop down next to her.“Katie, that’s so…I mean…how was it? Tell me everything.”
We both turn onto our sides. “I was really scared. Simon came to my house the day after my party while my mom was out and one thing just sort of turned into another and he was really careful, he kept making sure I felt okay and wanted to…you know”—she blushes a deeper shade—“keep going.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was. He was. It was all really nice. I mean it sort of hurt at first but after a while it was…” Her smile spreads and her eyes sort of glaze over as if she’s lost in the memory of it.
“And Todd, how did that happen?”
“The day after,” she says. “I went over to his house and he’d made this whole sort of setup in his room with fairy lights and music.”
