Reese
That night after everyone’s asleep, I sneak into the cottage from the porch and then out the front door, Venmoing Wyatt twenty
bucks in advance to keep quiet.
I move through the woods alone. When I step out of the trees, I find Daniel’s dreamy, out-of-focus face hazy against the backdrop
of the night sky, which is spotted with a million tiny stars.
Tonight, he stands on the end of the pier, as promised, waiting for me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say back. I step onto the pier. As I do, it sways and I hesitate, afraid and wondering if it can hold us both.
“You’re okay. I won’t let you fall,” Daniel says, reaching for me. I go to him, feeling anchored and safe in his arms.
Once there, I tell him, “I found the gift you left me.”
“What gift?” Daniel asks, smiling, giving himself away.
When we came back from the pool today, there was a flower waiting for me on my bed, which meant only one thing: that when we were gone, Daniel was there, inside the cottage, that he let himself in with his key, that he was still thinking about me.
It made me happy. For the rest of the day, I found myself grinning at nothing.
Mae asked what I was smiling for. I told her I wasn’t, and then, when she wouldn’t shut up about it, I asked, What? Am I not allowed to smile?
She giggled and said, I thought you weren’t smiling.
“That wasn’t from you? Oh,” I say, giving him a gentle shove, knowing I’ve never done anything like this before, I’ve never
flirted with a guy like him in my life. I feel different, like I’m not me, but someone better, someone new. I grin and say,
“Must’ve been from one of the other guys I’ve been sneaking out at night to see.”
He wraps his hands around my wrists and whispers into my ear, “You better tell all those other guys to get lost, ’cause you’re
mine,” and I feel a rush of adrenaline as he says it, thinking of all the boys from back home that never liked me. If only
they could see me now.
Daniel and I lower ourselves to the end of the pier, where we sit with our legs dangling over the edge. The night is clear,
though the lake itself is so dark I almost don’t know it’s there.
“You drink, don’t you?” Daniel asks, as he pulls a can from a six-pack’s plastic rings and holds it out to me, though I hesitate
because it’s hard to see what I’m reaching for in the dark.
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”
“You sure?” he asks, because of the way I hesitate.
“Yeah.”
I do drink, but I almost never drink beer. I don’t like it. I hate the taste of alcohol, and so, when we want to get drunk,
we get the cheapest, most disgusting vodka we can find to get drunk fast. Skylar has a thing for the flavored vodkas like
Burnett’s, which her cousin buys for us, and then we sit in her bedroom taking shots out of the bottle before we go to parties
that she was actually invited to (I just tag along, and as long as Skylar’s there, no one really cares), though that was before,
when we were still friends and people didn’t think of me as a freak.
“Then let’s see,” he says.
Sitting beside me, so close that our legs almost touch, he cracks open his can, waiting for me to copy, which I do. I try
not to think about the taste as it goes down, about how much I don’t like it. Uncle Elliott was the first person who let me
drink beer, when I was about nine. I remember still, him holding out his glass when no one was around, grinning, a mischievous
look in his eye. Wanna try? he asked, and I did. I didn’t like it. I almost spit it back up. He laughed and told me it was an acquired taste, that I’d
get used to it one day. Same with boys, he said. You think they’re gross now. Just wait.
He was right.
“I went back to the cemetery today,” I tell Daniel as he slides closer to me on the dock so that our legs actually do touch.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see it in the daytime,” I say.
“And?” Daniel asks.
“It’s not haunted like I said. And there’s an unmarked grave.”
He hesitates. “I don’t know anything about that,” he says, taking a long swig of his beer before setting the empty aside and
tugging another from the plastic ring. He offers me one, but I say no. “Don’t you like it?”
“No, I do,” I say, because I don’t want him to think I’m ungrateful or that I don’t like his beer. I lift mine to my mouth
to show him, to prove it to him, and after a few sips, the beer goes down easier so that my edges start to blur.
“I have something for you,” he says.
“You already gave me something,” I say, meaning the flower on my pillow.
“This is something else, something better. Close your eyes and hold out your hand.” I do. When he says, “Open your eyes,” I look, reaching into my hand and holding it up to the moon to see: a gold chain with beads.
I don’t know what to say. No one has ever given me something like this before.
“What’s this for?” I ask, as he turns me around, as I lift my hair and he fastens the chain around my neck, the soft stroke
of his hands on my neck making my heart race. I look back at him and say, “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“I know I didn’t have to. But you like it, don’t you?”
I touch the necklace. “Yes,” I tell him. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s because I like you. A lot,” he says with a smile in his voice. “I’m actually kinda obsessed with you.” I hesitate, only
because no guy has ever said something like that to me before. In my whole life, I’ve never had someone so super into me,
or even remotely into me. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it feels to be liked by a guy, because it’s never happened.
He lowers his head. The look in his eyes is hurt and then he turns away, gazing out over the lake.
He says, his voice quieter now, “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it.”
“No, it’s not that,” I say, scrambling for words. “I told you I did. I said that it was beautiful.”
“What then?” he asks, taking it the wrong way, feeling rejected. His eyes come back to mine and he asks, “You don’t like me?”
“No,” I say, speaking fast, reaching for him. “I do.”
“Do you? Or are you just saying that because you don’t want to hurt my feelings?”
“I do. I like you, Daniel,” I say. “A lot.”
He hesitates, not sure if he believes me at first, and then he softens.
He smiles. He squeezes my hand and says, “I like you a lot too.” He stares at me.
He reaches out to stroke my cheek, angling his body toward mine.
He says, “I think I could fall in love with you, Reese like the candy.” And I say nothing because I can’t breathe.
I can’t think. “It’s too soon, right?” he asks, laughing at himself, something self-deprecating that only makes me like him more.
“You probably think I’m crazy. We’ve only known each other a couple days, if that.
It’s just that I’ve never met a girl like you. And when you know, you know, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, breathless. When you know, you know. “It’s not crazy,” I say. “I’ve never met anyone like you either.” When
I smile, he leans his face down to mine. We kiss, moving fast, not letting a second go to waste. We stay outside like that,
kissing on the end of the pier until color creeps back into the edges of the nighttime sky.
Only then does he walk me home. He waits outside the cottage while I go in, and after he leaves, I lie in bed, wondering if
this is real or not, if it’s just a dream, and if, when morning comes, I’ll wake up to find it never happened.
Because it feels almost too good to be true.