Wanna Bet On That?
“Are you my distraction?”
My brows lifted at the question, as another cute boy climbed onto the boat, appearing and acting the opposite to Levi, but how I had expected.
He was a bit bulkier—I’d find out later he played baseball—and taller. His shorts were a similar style, just that kind that guys wore, but darker, and so was his shirt. His hair too. His flirting was heavy in his voice and in his smile as he took the few steps toward us, eyes on me, waiting for my answer.
My head knew that smile. The one that spelled trouble. And like the other girls who had been on the receiving end of such a look, I felt a buzz beneath my skin. But I also learned from them not to give him the satisfaction of knowing.
He had the energy of being at the top of the high school hierarchy. The type of guy who was popular and hung out with all the other popular people. I guessed Levi was, too, after finding out the two were best friends, but he wasn’t as obvious.
Really, they were both the type of guys who wouldn’t have looked twice at me if we had met in a classroom or a crowded hallway, instead of in private, under the stars.
But—we were here. And I’d been looked at twice. So I decided to give myself some brownie points.
I kept quiet and still, my brows still lifted. And Levi must’ve been giving Adam a look, too, because after a quick glance to where Levi stood beside me, he held up his hands and said, “I’m joking. Ha. Ha.” He dragged out the haha s in a lighthearted way, with a softer smile, nudging at my own.
Levi had given me the first introduction to Adam, a kind of warning, having already told me he could come on strong. He’d just gone through a breakup, and he’d been calling Levi some sleepless nights to get his mind off of it.
That was the perfect opening for me to find out Levi was single, too, without giving away how much I wanted to know that he was.
“You’re new,” Adam observed as half a blurt, observing me. He said that and my head replayed, I would’ve remembered seeing you. “You’re the one who just moved into the old Freeman house.”
“Was that their name?” I asked with a laugh, less actually seeking an answer, as I fingered my hair and tugged the hem of my pajama shorts at the two pairs of eyes steady on me, feeling like a freak of nature that not only was I the only one who had to sneak out, for sure, I was also still the only one wearing what I rolled out of bed in every morning.
Levi mumbled something that sounded like you look great at the same time Adam joked, “It was when they were here.”
My amusement was a secret shake in my chest, staying locked inside with my gaze locked with Levi’s, as I mentally bet this entire night on those three words being what he said.
“ My name is Adam.” The stress was subtle for my attention as he moved in close to me. He didn’t offer his hand, but he offered another smile that made my heart hammer a single beat under his nearer stare.
Hazel. His eyes were hazel.
“Summer,” I told him. “My name,” I added quickly to avoid—
“My favorite season,” he said, without blinking, his face stilled in his focus on me, his flirting there but more calmed.
There was always someone with the season cracks, and I hadn’t had that feeling one was coming with Levi, but I did with Adam.
If my mom were still alive, I would’ve demanded she change my name by now. But besides my life, my name was really all she was able to give to me. So in her death, I cherished it.
“I like spring,” I said, to disagree and divert. My voice was touchy, as a new thought came into my head that I didn’t want to be seen as just a season. Here one moment and gone the next. Or left alone when I wasn’t needed anymore. I didn’t want to be treated like or seen as any of that. I was steady. I just needed the same. Somewhere, with someone, safe and stable to explore my restless soul.
Adam made a face and a noise, then moved us on. “So what’s going on? What are we getting into?” He glanced between me and Levi, his face animated in his expectancy, both the sight and the question reenergizing me for this night.
I met Levi’s gaze and he gave me his half smile, with a quick raise of his brows to give me the floor for what came next, and something inside me tugged toward him a bit more.
I caught Adam up with what Levi knew, and when I divulged I was up for adventure, on the path of discovery, Adam practically jumped up and down.
“This summer just got a lot better,” he cheered out, sounding like a strange kind of compliment with my name inside the line, and remembering his heartbreak, and knowing how those breaks felt in my own way, I was fine enough to be his distraction.
I was getting what I needed too.
“You did good,” he teased to Levi, with a slap to his chest, then spun around to climb off the boat. “Let’s go.”
Levi and I exchanged a look, a reflection of what I felt in my own, a blink of something weighty, a similar passing thought, before we were stepping forward at the same time to follow Adam out, his steps pausing to let me go first.
Adam thought that Levi had a good find in me, when really, Levi and I both knew I found him.
“What’s your favorite season?” I decided to ask him, a whisper when he lined back up beside me.
He looked at me another long moment, his dimple making a slow, small appearance, before he whispered back, “Fall.”
And that look, that word and the way he said it anchored my instincts about him.
****
Adam was a talker. He prattled on about everything we passed, throwing his hands around, and I smiled over his enthusiasm for the performance, as sardonic as it was. It seemed like he was humoring me while he’d rather have been doing anything else besides explaining where he grew up. And I was humored, watching him a few paces ahead, barely listening, my distracted brain only focusing in on what it thought was important. I wanted to be shown around. To kind of be guided through where I’d be staying for however long that would be.
I wanted to let myself just breathe in my surroundings—their voices, their laughs, their body heat when our almost distracted strolling brought each of them in closer, the occasional gravel beneath my flip flops, the stroke of the breeze—while batting away warnings of what could happen when the sun put me back in the light.
I had to live in this moment in case it was the only one, while hoping it wasn’t, and that this was the night my own story was finally being written.
But I didn’t want to live inside the pages of a book. For sure, I wanted the fairytale. Who didn’t? But I wanted to experience . I wanted something real . So real it lived inside of me . So real I could touch it and taste it, have it consume my every breath and heartbeat.
I wanted to be…overwhelmed.
We didn’t make it to the main part of town, and we didn’t go down any neighborhood streets, but Adam pointed his out when we passed the next strip.
The light in the window on that street from earlier lit up inside my mind, and I asked him if his house had the garden out front. He said yes. And a corner of my mouth lifted the smallest bit.
Not a Clara. But an Adam .
Levi pointed his street out and the name slipped into a spot in my memory.
Levi was the opposite, the opposer. He loved Rosalee Bay. That also had me smiling, because I wanted to love it, too, as he and Adam argued in a friendly way back and forth over the ordinary versus the extraordinary.
“This town isn’t all that, but it has a few things,” Adam added in at one point.
“This town is great,” Levi argued, copying the way Adam threw his arms around, but adding a spin, as if to let our past and present surroundings speak for themselves.
Then, with me wearing a beam I tried to simmer down from watching him now, he leaned in and mock-whispered, “He’s lived here his whole life and still doesn’t know where to look.”
Adam, a few paces ahead again, spun around now, but to face our snickers, his steps halting, then ours. “Wanna bet on that?”
Those words tickled my spine straighter as the angst between the boys hovered around us like a fog.
My smile wobbled as I caught Levi’s fading, a bit of a twitch in his stare on Adam, who grinned in response and started skipping backward.
“Let’s go,” he called to us, and I hurried off after him, Levi’s speed jump started by mine.
We ran like a bear had escaped the woods around us and was on the chase. Giggles held themselves inside my chest as I thought about how we must’ve looked if anybody could see us.
We stopped at some dead end, a patch of grass leading down to more trees, and stared down the hill as we calmed our breathing. We were winded, our hair having gotten the brunt, messy from being blown all over. But my adrenaline was rushing too much for me to care about how I looked now.
“Ready for this?” Adam asked me with his grin back in place.
“Adam,” Levi said, a tension in his tone, and I discovered his dimple also made a small appearance when he scowled.
The fog thickened as Adam scoffed him a laugh. “What? You know it’ll be fine.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
That word again. But Levi wasn’t imitating somebody else. He wasn’t leaving anything to smile about.
“What’s dangerous about it if I’m still here? It’s fine,” Adam repeated. “She wants adventure,” he added with some emphasis, gesturing to she—me.
“What is it?” I interjected, pressing for what was going on so I could actually make a decision.
They both eyed me, then Adam took a side step toward the dip. “If you’d keep following me…”
“Do you want to dodge a train?” Levi asked me, and my breathing skipped.
My mouth opened, then got stuck on the word dodge .
“You didn’t have—” Adam cut himself off into a mumble about ruining the surprise .
Adam dodged trains? Levi didn’t? Did I want to?
The skip in my breathing stayed as I considered that idea, my instincts leaning me away from the image of me standing on train tracks, blinded by the lights as a train sped toward me.
I was restless, not reckless. But, as I held my stare on Adam, seeing his adventuresome spirit twinkling back at me, my feet shifted me closer to the hill as my mind wondered what was past those trees.
But I still remained planted on the pavement.
I’d seen that look in Levi too. But this was another way they weren’t entirely the same. They both thrilled themselves, but they did so in different ways. And it was manifesting with me.
Adam was ready to plunge in and Levi was making sure I didn’t nosedive.
My heart was open to anything. To everything. But as they waited for my move, the fluttering beats couldn’t decide which type they wanted more.
My bladder ended up deciding for me, all the thudding and buzzing and squeezing of my insides pushing the soda I had on the boat right down. I had to pee, and if I didn’t go soon, my thighs would be doing a different kind of clench than the sexual one I’d read about.
And I needed some sleep if I didn’t want this part of my night ratted out to my dad in the morning.
And maybe…the part of me that kept my feet near Levi decided too.
“I don’t think so,” I finally answered honestly, as close to the truth as I could get for this moment.
Through Adam’s sigh came the distant whistle of a train. “And we had perfect timing too,” he lamented toward the trees, and I muttered out how I had to be heading back, my own lamenting that put a slumpy feeling in my chest.
“Yeah, I need to go back too,” Levi added, taking the steps backward toward the direction we came, his eyes already on mine when I met them, soft and shining, and I followed after that glow.
Adam caught up to us with unintelligible grumbles that still managed to sound lighthearted. He talked some more, and Levi and I listened, walking side by side, but my brain was distracted again, my focus pulled back to Levi every time he brushed against me. It felt intentional, with the position of his hands in his pockets, his elbow giving a subtle sway into my arm whenever we stepped into each other.
I didn’t know what was happening, but something was happening.
This night was beautifully bizarre.
Levi’s elbow swayed into my arm one more time as we slowed at a break in the path that led to his street, the three of us stopping and exchanging looks.
“I’ll stay with her,” Adam said to Levi’s hesitation. He wasn’t offering like I needed protection, just company. And I let the easygoing nature to the words settle over my nerves about going back home, putting a cover over them for just a bit longer.
Even if maybe he was only offering because both our streets were still on the way.
Even if maybe I wanted my company on that walk to be blond.
Levi didn’t stop him. He didn’t argue. He didn’t say something like, hey, we started this night together . He didn’t push it at all.
Why would he? I asked myself to brush away the thoughts, even as my arm still felt his brushes. He has to get back too.
“I’ll see ya,” he said to me, low, before going off toward his home. It sounded like a promise, and I hoped it was. I wasn’t done getting to know him.
And I liked to think he wasn’t done getting to know me.