“Haven’t had a cold in four years.”
“Full. Of. It.”
“I got food poisoning last year. No colds, though.”
“Like, we need to get theGuinness Bookpeople on the phone. No one has ever been so full of it before.”
An ache pinched at my cheek—I was still smiling. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d carried on a conversation with a steady smile, but the amusement lighting up Dex’s neutral expression was so much more interesting than sadness.
“Weak reference,” he said. “No one talks about theGuinness Bookanymore.”
“Third graders do,” I pointed out. The corners of his mouth twitched into something dangerously close to a real smile. “There are few things third graders care about more than theGuinness Book of World Records.”
“You need to spend more time with people your own age.”
“You probably do too. How else would you get conned by a fourteen-year-old?”
He scratched at his cheek and the audible scrape sent a little zip down my spine. “Fair enough,” he conceded. I cast Phoebe a quick glance—she’d moved forward another pace, now three people away from the ride—and then shifted on the bench to face Dex.
“So, why Sequest?” I asked. I hadn’t realized how relaxed he’d become until it was sapped out of him, every muscle in his body seeming to tighten at once. “You were asking me about work. I figured it was fair game.”
He wouldn’t even look at me, his gaze fixed on Zenobia as its riders’ screams filled the air. I’d ruined this somehow. We were vibing, maybe even bonding, and a simple question about work burned down what little progress I’d made. It took a second for my brain to remind me what exactly Sequest did (assuming it wasn’t a front for anything illegal), and my stomach dropped.
“Wait, shit.” I winced. “You don’t have to answer that if it has to do with, like, your identity.” He looked at me, his expression flat. “Or sexuality. I mean, I’m bisexual, so, you know. Safe space. But it’s none of my business.”
He tipped his head back, letting the sun kiss his skin. “Nice save.”
“I am nothing if not a wreck. You know this about me,” I replied. Across the way, Phoebe stepped up to the attendant with a bright smile. “Ugh. Tell me again that she’ll be okay.”
“She’ll be okay,” he said. “Physically. Mentally, I don’t see how she could ever recover.”
I laughed again and bumped his elbow with mine. “Look at you making a joke.”
“Wasn’t joking.”
I turned back to Phoebe, weighing Dad’s camera in myhands. Before stepping up to the ride entrance, she glanced over and waved, reminding me of the excitable little girl who used to cling to my leg for an hour when I returned home from college.
“Nah,” I said, lifting the camera to my eye to capture the moment. “She’ll be fine.”
Ten
POCONOS, PA
The GPS announced we’d reached our destination, but the heart-shaped sign arching over the stony driveway was saying otherwise.
Pocono Woods Couples Resort, it proclaimed.Where lovers love to love!
I turned to Dex, wincing as the leather gripped my sunburned legs. He stared at the sign.
“So,” I said. Phoebe tittered in the back seat, surrounded by a moat of prizes, empty bags of cotton candy, and kettle corn. “Do you want to explain why you decided we should stay at a couples resort in the Poconos?”
“I didn’t,” he said.
“Did you plug the wrong address into the GPS?”
“No.”
He pulled out his phone, squinting at the brightness. It was after seven, the sun sinking behind the trees, and we were exhausted from two and a half hours in the car after a day at Coney Island. If I didn’t have access to a hot shower and a pillowy bedin the next fifteen minutes, I couldn’t be held responsible for the monster possessing my body for the foreseeable future.
