“But this sucked!” she cried.
“You picked it.”
“I want to trade it in for something else.”
“We’re already here. You can’t trade it in.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“I won’t make you listen to any more of my playlists.” Phoebe threw on a dazzling smile, sweetening the deal. “We can ride the rest of the way in silence. Or you can listen to boring podcasts, if that’s what you’re into.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, anticipating the wrinkle in his brow. “I don’t listen to podcasts,” he said stiffly.
Phoebe brushed a sweaty piece of hair out of her face. “Audiobooks, then.”
He walked away. Phoebe deflated, eyes dimming, looking more like the kid I’d take out for ice cream after she scraped her knee than the surly teen who rolled her eyes when I saidgood morning. My palms itched with that familiar Phoebe-pleaser habit.
“Hey, go stand next to Yogi so I can take a picture.”
She sneered. “Why?”
“Because it’s fun.” She rolled her eyes. “And Dad would think it’s hilarious.”
“Dad thoughtTwo and a Half Menwas hilarious,” she muttered.
I waved this off. “Yeah, he had a terrible sense of humor. Just go. I’ll grab the camera.”
She let out a dramatic groan and stomped toward Yogi, grass audibly crunching. I smiled, despite the sweat dripping down my butt crack. Dex stood by the car tapping away on his phone with a grim expression behind his Ray-Bans, the back of his button-up soaked through.
“Ready?” he asked as I approached. I leaned a shoulder against the metal and nearly cried out; I peeled myself off, rubbing at the burn.
Dex’s attention remained on his phone.
“Hey,” I said. My reflection blinked back at me in his sunglasses; it looked like I’d just finished running a marathon. “Don’t you think—”
“No.”
“Come on, man, you know Yogi sucks.”
“I could’ve told you that an hour ago,” he said flatly. “Oh, wait. I did.”
This might’ve been true, but I had no recollection of it. I’d spent a lot of time tuning him out considering he spoke exclusively in grunts and complaints. And then he proved that to be patently untrue, and the tuning out turned into something more like oblivion, where rather than listening to a single word out of his mouth, I stared at the faint lines by his eyes, remembering what it was like to watch him earn them.
Something had shifted in that elevator. We’d laughed until we cried, missing our floor twice before finally stumbling to our room. Dex’s face seemed frozen in that smile and I’d stared, drinking it in. In the morning, I’d wondered if it was a dream,but as we checked out, Dex leaned against the pink desk and smiled right at me.
“That felt so fucking good,” he’d said softly, like a secret. It set my every vein aflame. And we got back on the road without a mention of the hesitation he broached last night.
So we were friends. Ish. In the friends realm, or somewhere in that vicinity.
Dex glanced down the road, the tendons in his neck pulling taut, shiny with sweat. I averted my gaze, focusing on Phoebe as she squatted down to inspect something in the grass.
I withdrew my phone from my shorts, his words lighting a fire in my gut. I squinted at the dark screen, attempting to tap it awake, but the glare from the sun made it impossible. “Come here,” I said, beckoning Dex. He looked at me, expression stony. “I need you. Your size, I mean. Height.”
Heat ripped up my neck, sizzling my cheeks. The sun had gotten to me. Ignoring the embarrassing drivel, Dex stepped forward—he smelled fresh, as if damp from a shower instead of sweat. His form blocked most of the gleam so I could at least punch in my code. Still, I had to lean in close to make out anything clearly. In the middle of mistyping “cool things near me” in the search box, Dex’s hand curled over the top of my phone to shield it further, his veins spiking like the inner workings of an umbrella. I had to reread the typo-ridden search to remind myself what the hell I was doing.
I’d always been a sucker for hands.
