Chapter 6 #2
We finished out that school year avoiding the upperclassmen, busied ourselves with summer plans, then went through senior year with him out of sight and, allegedly, out of mind.
I’d heard he was working and taking his prerequisites over in Gandon and otherwise avoided him as a subject as much as possible.
“I know where I recognize you from,” Ravi interrupts, coughing one last time and gesturing Silas’s way with his freshly opened beer. “That picture in your room.”
Silas cuts him a meaningful glare. I beam. I’m pretty sure it’s the weed, but I feel luminous, the bubbly feeling in my stomach turning thick and drippy. A lava lamp in a dark room. “You have a picture of me on your bedside table?” I say, a teasing lilt in the words. “Do you kiss it good night?”
“It’s on my dresser. Yards and yards away from my bed. And it’s of me and my sister,” he argues. “From prom. You just so happen to be in it, too.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
He uses the railing to pop the cap off a beer. “Honest,” he says.
“I’m sure you were once.”
“Still am,” he declares. “Can’t you do that trick, still? Where you get people to share their secrets with you?” He bumps his bottle against my thigh, and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop a grin.
“It’s not a trick, it’s just my face.”
“That good, huh?”
I slip the beer from his grasp and take a gulp, licking a stray bead of it off my bottom lip. “You tell me.”
“All right, well, I think I’ll just go now,” Ravi interjects. “It was nice to meet you—?”
“Bea,” I say, neck warming when I realize I’d forgotten he was here.
Silas’s eyes haven’t strayed from my face. “Yeah. I’ll be there in a bit,” he tells Ravi.
We each take one more hit of the joint before Ravi stubs it out and walks down the porch, half-empty six-pack in hand.
I clear my throat a few moments later. “So . . .” I start.
“So,” Silas says.
“How are you at this party?” I ask.
His head turns in the direction Ravi headed.
“Renting a house with four other guys who went through the academy, too. We’re just down the street.
Easier to find rentals around here by the university.
” His gaze swings back to his feet. “We all just finished out and were celebrating a little tonight. Ravi and I were walking back from the liquor store and he saw someone he knew, so we stopped and bullshitted with him before he had to go. We were just polishing off the joint when you surprised the hell out of me.”
I laugh through my nose. “You didn’t look surprised to see me at all.”
He pats the spot beside him on the railing, and I oblige. “I’d spotted you through the window already,” he admits, nodding that way. I look through it now and see Shane quickly avert his eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’re with that guy?” Silas says.
I’m playing with fire, but I can’t bring myself to care. “Why not?”
He snorts. His chin dips, big head rolling to the side. “You mean the guy that’s like if oral thrush was a person?” he says, brow screwing up with exaggerated disgust.
I belt out a sound that might not qualify as a laugh, then crush my lips together and shove his shoulder with mine. “What does that mean?”
His nose scrunches. “Gross, inconvenient, annoying—”
“Silas!”
“—but, ultimately, not that serious.”
I give up on trying not to laugh. “Maybe his appeal has nothing to do with his looks, you brat.”
“First of all, didn’t say it did,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“But for the record, he does also look like he sits crisscross applesauce to jerk off. Yuck.” He keeps on going before I can process that particular anecdote.
“Secondly, I heard him having a conversation out here earlier, too. I’ve had more scintillating dialogue with stale bread.
” He nudges my arm. “So? You with him or what?”
I blink heavily, my skin buzzing under the influence now . . . from the weed or him, I’m not sure. “Just hooked up a few times,” I say.
He slices a lethal look at the window. “I hate him.”
My ribs hurt with the laugh that bursts out of me. “You don’t even know him, Silas!”
His eyes track back to mine, brow raised indignantly. “I wish him grievous bodily harm,” he insists.
“You do not!” My cheeks pull so tight they ache.
He lets his expression relax. “All right, maybe not. But I do hope he gets one of those painful swollen taste bud things right on the tip of his tongue, and I hope it lasts forever.”
“You’re insane.”
“You have no idea.”
Our chuckling fades into a weighted silence. “Great line, by the way,” he says. “The porn thing.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. It’s layered. You got him instantly searching his memory bank, doubting himself. Unsure what to say.” His mouth turns down at the corners. “Don’t love that he was trying to picture you with a cock in your mouth, though.”
There’s a quick, sharp tug behind my belly button.
I go liquid below the waist and nearly slip off the railing before he catches me by the elbow.
Hearing the words cock in your mouth come out of Silas reminds me that we are very much adults, now—inane banter notwithstanding.
My feelings are explicitly adult at the moment.
“How about you?” I ask. “You with anyone?”
He makes a show of looking around before landing back on me. “Tonight? Not yet.”
I scoff and glare at him sideways. “Don’t be a dog.”
He sticks his tongue out and pants, and I’m laughing again despite myself.
We’ve moved closer together at some point. I can feel the warmth through his hoodie soaking into my bare skin.
“I should probably order my ride,” I say and wish it didn’t sound so half-hearted.
A muscle flexes in his jaw. His throat works on a hard swallow. “Or you could walk me home?” he asks quietly.
“I shouldn’t,” I say, heartbeat deafening in my ears. Something tugs again, unspooling and winding into a new shape.
“Okay. I’ll wait with you, then.”
“I shouldn’t, but yes,” I blurt. “I’ll walk you home.”