Chapter 27 Playlist Don’t Listen If Unstable
“NOW, THIS IS A party.”
Julian hands Ruby a plastic cup of beer he just pumped from the keg and lifts an eyebrow at me.
I shake my head. “I’m good.” I take in my surroundings, agreeing with Ruby’s comment.
To be fair, this is the first year I’ve come to these beach parties, so I’m not the best judge of what’s typical, but there definitely seems to be more people here than what I’ve seen earlier this summer.
“It does seem a little… rowdy tonight, doesn’t it? ”
Music blares from a massive speaker in the back of someone’s truck, and several people are dancing.
I don’t know if it’s the heat or the reality that summer’s ending soon, but I’ve never seen so many of my classmates drunk.
Chloe Sanders greeted me in French and kissed my cheeks when I arrived, and with the way Tanner’s waving all his buddies over, I’m pretty sure I’m about to witness my first keg stand.
“Definitely.” Julian seems thrilled by this.
“So who else is coming tonight?” Ruby asks.
“Um, everyone,” Julian replies.
She rolls her eyes. “I meant, like, which of our friends.”
He names off a few people.
“Shelby said she wanted to go to her grandparents’ place and change after work, but she’d come by after,” I add. “Myles gets back from California tonight, so I bet he’ll be here at some point too.”
“Speaking of Myles,” Ruby says, a gleam in her eye that she gets only when she’s got gossip to share. “I heard he’s got a thing for Kat.”
I choke on my soda, and Julian claps me on the back. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I croak. I arrange my face into something more neutral before turning to Ruby. “Where did you hear that?”
“Someone was talking about it at the pier the other day. Chuck, I think? Said Myles has been texting someone a lot but wouldn’t own up to who it was. Just that she’s a junior, and Chuck remembered Myles saying he was gonna get Kat’s number before she moved.”
“Huh,” I say. I wish my body would disintegrate into granules of sand on command. “Huh.”
Ruby and Julian give me identical strange looks.
“I just, I… Kat hasn’t mentioned it to me, is all,” I scramble. “Seems like something she’d tell me if it were true.”
Ruby nods like this makes sense, and Julian suggests that maybe Chuck was just “talking out of his ass.”
“Who’s talking out of their ass?” a familiar voice asks from behind me.
I’ve never been happier to have someone interrupt a conversation. I shake out my hands and the nerves from my fingertips.
“You, probably,” I say, hoping none of the awkwardness lingers from the last time Gregory and I were together. We texted some yesterday, but I’m still a little on edge.
His tall form sidles up beside me. “Thank you, darling,” he says, batting his eyes.
I blow out a relieved exhale, because he seems totally normal.
He’s wearing a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and his usual baseball cap. The silver necklace shines in the light of the nearby bonfire. I noticed he stopped tucking it underneath his shirt after our beach conversation a few weeks ago.
“I can’t decide if it’s a good thing all these drunk teenagers are by the ocean when they need to vomit later,” he remarks. “Or if that’s environmentally irresponsible. What will happen to the sharks?”
“Don’t be too cocky,” I warn, eyeing the cup in his hand. “You could be one of them.”
“Nah,” he says. “I found this one empty on the ground and was just looking for a trash can somewhere.” I love that he’s cleaning up my precious beach. I’ve trained him well.
“That’s environmentally responsible,” Ruby says. Julian asks if she wants to go dance, and we wave them off as Julian grabs Ruby’s hand and leads her away.
Now that it’s just the two of us, I turn to face Gregory. He smiles at me, and something about the sincerity and warmth in it catches me off guard. It’s like he’s finally happy because he’s talking to me.
Something shifts in my chest, and it knocks me off-kilter. This emotional whiplash is disorienting. “How’s Waffles?”
Gregory lets out a long, beleaguered sigh. “That cat, I swear.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Yesterday he got the zoomies for, like, forty minutes straight. I’m talking tearing around the house like his tail was on fire even though my mom and I were just sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing.
Then, on one rampage from the kitchen to the laundry room, he made a pass by the couch, flew up into my lap, and passed out. ”
I laugh, remembering when Margarine used to get the zoomies when she was younger.
“He’s also decided to implement a No Phones in Bed rule. Remember that weird message you got last night?”
“You mean the string of random letters and emojis?” I was also texting with Myles and Kat last night, so I was so concerned about keeping those conversations straight, I didn’t even comment on the obscure message from Gregory.
Especially after he followed it up with a link to the fall lineup for Austin City Limits this year.
We spent the next ten minutes bemoaning the fact that our parents would never let us take off across the country to attend, but planning everywhere we’d stop on the road trip, anyway.
Gregory nods. “That was me and Waffles fighting. As soon as I turned my lamp off, he kept trying to bat my phone out of my hand.”
“Aw, he’s just worried about you. Too much screen time rots your brain, you know.”
“You’re right. Here, let’s go throw our phones into the water right now.” He reaches for me, and I spin away, laughing.
“Come on!” He lunges for me again, one arm sliding around my waist as he goes for the phone sticking out of the back pocket of my cutoffs. “I will if you will.”
“Gregory!” I screech. “Oh my God, you just touched my ass!”
“I touched your shorts,” he corrects and tries again. “I’m just trying to save your brain!”
I start wheezing, I’m laughing so hard. The thought that people are probably looking at us crosses my mind a split second before another voice says:
“Everything okay over here?”
We freeze, me hunched over and Gregory’s body curved over mine, his chest pressing into my back as he huffs out labored breaths.
Myles is a few feet away, regarding us in the darkness.
This is definitely not how I planned on greeting him after his vacation. His expression is unreadable, but he’s not smiling.
Gregory pulls his arms away slowly, like if it were up to him, he’d keep them right where they were. Conscious of Myles’s blue eyes on us, I make a point of pushing Gregory away a little, creating more space between us.
“We’re fine,” I say, trying to catch my breath. Though, I get the feeling his question was directed at me and he doesn’t give a flying flip if Gregory is fine or not. “Just, um, goofing around.”
I feel awkward as hell standing between these two guys right now. Gregory seems completely unbothered, and pulls his hat off his head to rake his other hand through his hair before replacing it.
“What’s up, Myles?” he says. His grin feels a little provoking.
Myles looks at him briefly. “Gregory.” That’s it. That’s all he says.
They stare at each other.
What is happening? Surely this isn’t some sort of standoff, right? I’m not the kind of girl that guys compete over.
At least… I didn’t used to be. Has that changed along with so many other things this summer?
“I’m gonna go find something to drink,” Gregory says and walks away.
Swallowing hard, I adjust my shorts, which feel a little sideways after my antics with Gregory. I turn back to Myles and smile, trying to act like my pulse isn’t racing through my veins. “You made it.”
“Yeah.” He smiles at me then—a real one—and opens his arms. I walk straight into him, breathing in his scent as he wraps himself around me.
He makes a kind of humming sound, which might be the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. “It’s good to see you,” he says into my hair.
I squeeze him tighter. “I’m glad you’re back.”
He pulls back and glances around. “It’s kind of wild tonight, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what I said. Is it a full moon?” I tip my head back to look at the sky.
“Dunno,” Myles says. I bring my chin back down to find that his eyes haven’t left my face. “I never pay attention to the sky when I’m on the beach at night, remember? I get distracted by pretty girls.”
“Right,” I say, and I wish my voice didn’t sound so breathy. “I remember now.”
“Wanna come sit with me?”
“Sure.”
He puts his hand on my lower back and leads me to the logs surrounding the bonfire.
I sit, and he settles in right beside me, his thigh and arm pressed up against mine.
The fire is warm and so is his body, but goose bumps flare across where our skin meets.
I shiver at the tingling sensation, and Myles looks down at me.
“Are you cold?”
I’m not, but say nothing because he wraps one arm around me.
His shoulder is behind mine, his thick forearm slides down my back, and his hand lands on my hip to pull me in even closer.
My breath catches and my stomach dips, like I just took a dive on a roller coaster.
His nose brushes my hair, and on his sigh I detect a hint of beer.
He doesn’t seem drunk, but he definitely had something before he found me. “You smell good,” he murmurs.
“I—I do?” I stammer. Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting here like this, cuddled up to him in public and where Gregory’s somewhere around, but it feels too good, and my confused heart’s about to explode.
“Yeah. Like vanilla or something. I noticed it that first night I drove you home from work.” His thumb brushes back and forth across my hip, near my belt loop. “Can I tell you something else?”
“Sure.” I’m a terrified kind of excited for what comes next.
“I’m glad you gave me your number instead of Kat’s.”
I stiffen. Kat. Kat. Kat.
I should pull away. Stand up. Tell him what a terrible person I am—that I was never supposed to get this close to him, and that I never told Kat he’d wanted to talk to her in the first place.