My fingers were raw from my death grip on the bridge, and my bare toes were rough. Other than that, everything had gone perfectly my whole sixteenth birthday. After our huge fight last night, Adam and I had gotten back together today. We’d had a great time at the lake festival. We and our brothers had performed a wakeboarding show for an enormous crowd. Not even Adam had broken a bone. And now we’d spray painted our love for each other on the bridge without a single mishap? is night was Too Good To Be True.
As he opened the passenger door for me—he never locked the doors, because he liked to tempt fate—I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Even after my test run in a life of crime, my hair was gorgeous, I tell you. It clumped a little in the humidity, but it looked like I’d created that piecey effect on purpose with styling gel. I was a vision of blonde loveliness.
That was the last straw. A day this happy and good hair, too? Now I knew something awful was about to happen.
Adrenaline had propelled me through my artistry on the bridge. at started to drain away now. Fatigue set in—from wakeboarding in the festival show that afternoon and worrying the last few days about whether Adam and I would ever get together.
“What’s wrong?” he asked from behind me, tossing the paint can in the payload.
“I’m having a good hair day.”
“I hate it when that happens.” Gathering my hair and pushing it forward over my shoulder, he kissed the back of my neck.
I shivered in the heat. The adrenaline came rushing back, and I was not so tired.
“e night is young,” he growled between kisses. “I have an idea of what we can do now. We’ve kissed before.” Kiss. “We’ve made out.” Kiss. “But we’ve never made out as an official couple, in the privacy of my Secret Make-Out Hideout.”
I turned to look sideways at him. I found I couldn’t do this without denying him access to the back of my neck. So I gave up on the sly look and enjoyed his soft lips on my skin. “You have a Secret Make-Out Hideout?” I whispered with my head bent.
“I do.” His low voice against my neck sent chills through me. “Just for you.”
“What are we waiting for?” I hopped forward through the open door, into the truck.
“You won’t regret it,” he said before he closed the door and rounded the truck to the driver’s side.
I missed him for ten seconds, looking forward to the instant he slipped back inside the truck and we laughed together again. Decision made. It wasn’t my first bad judgment leading to an Adam-Related Catastrophe, and it wouldn’t be my last.
“Adam,” Lori whispered. I’d known her all my life. I was used to her scent of warm skin and water. But in the last couple of weeks she’d started wearing perfume. I caught another whiff of it every time she shook my shoulder.
Without opening my eyes, I sniffed deeply, inhaling all the perfume I could get. Her hair tickled my face. I nuzzled her neck.
“Adam Vader.” Now her voice sounded pinched, like she was clenching her teeth. “I am trying to remain calm so as not to alarm you, but wake the hell up already.”
at made me open my eyes. She lay on top of me, looking down at me. I couldn’t see her features clearly in the shadowy cab of my truck. Her long blonde hair cascaded around me and glowed pink in the light of sunrise.
Sunrise!
“Oh, God.” I sat up, dumping her off my chest and onto the passenger side. For the perfect end to a perfect day, I’d driven her here. My secret make-out hideout was a point of land jutting into the lake with a dirt road leading to it, a primo lot that nobody had built a house on yet. It was at the other end of our neighborhood, and we could actually see our houses and my parents’ marina from here. My truck was hidden from their view by the trees around us, which was the beauty of it. I loved having the upper hand for once in my life.
But that was last night. Now the sun peeked over the highway bridge in the distance and reflected in the smooth lake.
“What time is it?” I looked toward the clock in the dashboard of my truck, which hadn’t worked since probably 1995.
“I don’t know,” she said. “My cell phone went in the lake with me a couple of nights ago. I’d say five thirty or six.” I pulled my own cell phone from my pocket. “It’s five fifty-three, and my mother’s called me eleven times.”
“Why didn’t it ring?” Lori wailed.
“My brothers kept texting me about hooking up with you. I turned off the sound.” Which was shooting myself in the foot. My brothers were good at making me do that. I turned the key in the ignition and threw the truck into reverse. We backed through the cloud of our own dust, which billowed through the open windows and glinted in the sunlight. As soon as I hit a clearing with more room, I jerked the truck around in a hasty three-point turn and hit the gas.
“Stupid,” I muttered. I would get in trouble for staying out late. She would get in more trouble because she was a girl, and her dad was kind of high-strung. Plus, we’d slept all night on that abandoned point with the windows open. I should have protected her better. Maybe I’d watched snippets of too many action movies, but it seemed to me that falling asleep with a woman was just asking for snakes.
Lori crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down her skin, warming herself. e air was heavy with humidity, and chilly. is was the coldest part of a summer day in Alabama. “Faster,” she said.
In the three weeks I’d had my license, I’d driven as fast as I could every chance I got. Most people, Lori included, thought this was not a good idea. It was a rush for her to tell me to go faster. I pressed the gas harder. “Are you sure you want me to take you home? We could run away together.” I felt her looking at me across the cab. I met her gaze and held it for one second, two seconds, three seconds longer than I should have been keeping my eyes off the road.
The truck hit gravel. I swung the steering wheel to point the truck back onto the pavement.
She laughed. “Better not.”
“You thought about it, though.” I grinned.
“I did.” She slid her hand onto my thigh, which was bare below my shorts. “Go faster.”
I put more pressure on the gas. The engine revved higher, echoing weirdly against the dense woods flashing past the open windows on both sides.
“No, wait, stop, stop, stop!”
I stomped on the brake and threw my arm in front of her to keep her from going through the windshield before I realized she had put on her seat belt. (I had not.) e truck screeched to a halt. I expected to see the huge body of a deer I’d just missed as it crashed into the woods and escaped—but outside the truck, the morning was pink and still. “What is it?”
“Sorry,” she sighed. “I just realized we need to pick up where we left off last night and enjoy it for a few minutes. I have a feeling we won’t get to do it again for a while.” Her eyes were sad as she said this. I should have bear-hugged her and comforted her. But when the girl of your dreams, who you’ve been chasing for years and have finally caught, tells you to make out with her, are you going to tell her you’d rather just hold each other for a while? Why, hell no. I put the truck in park.
en I put my hands on her face and kissed her. She opened her mouth. Funny that she’d been so unsure about this when we’d first fake dated a couple of weeks ago, but she caught on quickly. Sometimes she even took the lead. Like now. She drew back from the kiss, touched her lips so gently to mine, licked my bottom lip with the very tip of her tongue. A chill ran through me and I shuddered.
She kissed me again. “Mmm,” she said. I thought she was telling me how much she enjoyed it. I agreed completely. When her shoulders shook, I figured out she was crying.