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“No,” he said, his eyes on the street, searching. “She wouldn’t have been able to resist talking to us. You know how she is.”

I thought about Taco Bell. “You’re right.”

“Glad you think so,” he said with a smirk, eyes back on me.

“So we can probably relax,” I said, my back still against the tree. My hands were now on his chest, one still un-gloved.

“Probably,” he said, only moving closer.

My eyes fluttered closed, waiting for the connection, wanting the connection.

And then there was that grating tinny horn to my left.

“Ryan!” Honk honk! “Ryan!”

His friends were here.

Chapter 18

Ryan muttered, his breath warm on my lips, which made me realize just how close we had gotten to actually … connecting. My eyes flew open as he pulled away, the front of my body instantly chilled by his departure.

“What are you doing?” the driver of the golf cart, Phillip, asked. “We tracked your location. Whose house is this. Hers?” He nodded to me.

“No,” Ryan said, and just when I thought he might ditch me and jump in the cart with his buddies, he took my hand and led me toward it. “Give us a ride back to my house?”

He shooed his two friends on the middle bench seat and they shifted, one moving to the open rear-facing seat and the other scooting all the way to the edge. With a hand on my lower back, Ryan guided me through the hanging tinsel into the center of the cart. A piece of tinsel got stuck in my mouth, and I tried to blow it out, my lips making a raspberry sound. When that didn’t work, I batted it with my hand until it was gone, and I settled onto the seat, my cheeks hot.

I was now surrounded by his friends, who stared at me expectantly.

“Hi,” I said. Where had my other glove gone? Had Ryan stuck it in his pocket? Handed it back to me? I couldn’t seem to remember the last fifteen minutes clearly.

As if reading my mind (or maybe I had looked at my hand), Ryan produced my glove from his pocket and pulled my hand onto his lap. He slid the glove back on my hand while saying, “Everyone, this is Jasmine. My neighbor.”

All at once, everyone was talking. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it seemed like they knew who I was, or at least had a general idea of me. From school maybe? I wasn’t processing any of their questions properly because Ryan still had ahold of my hand and was adjusting the glove on each of my fingers.

One last question was spit out at the end of the barrage, and it hung in the air loud and clear. “The snob?”

“No,” Ryan said, his voice stony. “She’s not. And nobody will say a word of this to my parents. Now drive.”

I was the one with a smirk on my face now as I moved my hand to my own lap, glove firmly in place. “The snob?” I asked, under my breath. “I’m the snob?”

“I mean, you kind of have been,” he teased, also under his breath. “Never acknowledging my existence until I forced you to.”

“So, you’re the one who made it so that pantry locked shut?”

“Okay, then it was fate that forced this.”

“Fate?” I asked with a laugh.

“Something,” he said, almost to himself. It reminded me of what he’d said earlier—that we had something. But what?

As the cart slowly made its way along the block, I kept my head down and raised my scarf over the bottom half of my face again. Just in case anyone could see us through the hanging tinsel. It took us at least ten minutes to reach our street. It would’ve taken twice as long walking.

“Stop here,” Ryan said when we were still several houses away. Phillip obeyed.

Ryan and I slid out of the cart.

“You leaving?” Phillip asked him.