6. Allie
ALLIE
Age Seventeen
“Is it always like this at your school?” I mutter, leaning into Willow as I take a sip of the rum punch she made. It tastes awful, but I don’t want to tell her that, so I force it down. This will be my first and last drink tonight, I fear.
“Yeah,” she scoffs.
We watch a group of teens stare after Zander starry-eyed as he recounts a fight he got into during the Pacific Shores’ hockey season opener last night.
He shows off a cut on his lip. One girl gently pulls it down with her thumb before closing the distance between them and running her tongue across his mouth.
I gag dramatically. “That was repulsive.”
“They’re freaks of nature, Allie. Ever since the two of them shot to six feet tall in eighth grade and began tossing balls and sticks around, people at school look at them like they’re gods. It’s obnoxious.”
I glance at Willow, my lips twitching with amusement. She says this as if she’s not the spitting image of her father—a former Sports Illustrated model. She’s immune to the way every person in this room who’s not into dudes is drooling over her too.
She’s too wrapped up in her boyfriend, Camden, to notice.
But I’m sure she’s the envy of many girls at her school.
She doesn’t have a lot of friends—they call her weird and artsy, claim that Cam only likes her because he wants to be a surfer like her dad, that she’d be an outcast if not for her cousins who are more like brothers, but truthfully, those girls are insecure and jealous.
Fine by me, honestly. I’m possessive, and unwilling to share my best friend.
Cam sidles up beside Willow, handing her a plastic cup as he tosses an arm around her shoulder. My gaze drifts to Archer across the kitchen. He’s listening in on his brother’s animated story, watching with bemusement, rolling his eyes often at Zander’s dramatics.
Tonight is the first time I’ve been in Pacific Shores since the end of the summer, and the first time I’ve seen Archer since we went to second base the night before I left in August. Willow was right, he is a freak of nature.
Massively tall, wide, and strong. Menacing, really.
Except, his hands are soft, almost as soft as his lips.
A little over two years ago, we kissed for the first time, and since then, I’ve seen Archer differently. He’s still my best friend, above all, and I know that if we decided to stop… whatever we’ve been doing, we’d still be best friends. That’s the mutual agreement between us.
He’s not my boyfriend. We live apart and it doesn’t make sense to use those labels, but I’m not interested in anyone else, and I know he feels the same.
Archer is busy with football, and between my dance troupe and my part-time job at the art gallery, I am too.
We don’t have time to date anyone, or focus on anything except our passions.
It’s just that…those passions become each other when we are together.
In the summer. Over Christmas break, when our families meet at the cabin they co-own in Lake Arrowhead, and on nights like tonight.
We’ve experimented in just about every way two people can—kissing, touching, dry humping.
We’ve never quite made it to the point where clothes come off, besides that night when I slid his hand up my skirt a couple of months ago.
It’s early October now, and I can still feel him on me.
My parents and I drove down to Pacific Shores for a fundraiser the boardwalk is hosting for the memorial of a family friend they lost long ago. They hold it every year for the foundation in his name, raising awareness about water safety in coastal communities.
The adults finally let us stay back from the event this year, but I came down with my parents so I could stay with the Grahams this weekend. They left Willow and me at her house, under the guise we were having a sleepover and completing a buddy read of a new book we’d both just bought.
In reality, we snuck out the back door—if we stick close enough to the side of the house, the cameras in her backyard won’t catch us—and skipped across town to Archer and Zander’s.
Z figured out a way to disable his parents’ porch camera, and so long as we can get the place cleared out, cleaned up, with Willow and me back in bed by one a.m., we should pull off this house party.
Willow paid one of the college girls who works for her mom to buy us alcohol, and years ago, the twins found the place where their older sister, Lou, used to hide her own stash when she was a teen.
There is a loose panel in the closet of the sunroom that creates a space just large enough for a few bottles and a couple twelve-packs when you pull it out from the wall.
Willow makes punch, throwback classics are blasting through the speakers—right now, “Knock Knock” by Mac Miller has the walls vibrating—and everyone is either dancing, drinking, or hooking up.
Archer’s eyes flash to mine, the corner of his mouth tilting upward, causing a familiar flutter in my chest that only he can create. He nods toward the staircase, and my legs are immediately moving. He’s the planet anchoring my gravitational pull—I have no choice in the matter.
“I’m going to—” I call back to Willow, but her tongue is so far down Cam’s throat I fear it may come out his ass. “Gross.”
Leaving them to their business, I bound up the stairs toward Archer’s room. He stands at the end of the hall in front of his door, holding it open for me as I slip inside. He shuts it behind him, and before a single word can be said, I’m pressed into the wall and his mouth is on mine.
Soft lips, warm breath, big hands dragging up my waist—he has me on fire.
My arms slide around his neck, fingers tangling in the hair at his nape as I pull him closer to me, covering me with his massive body as he pins me to the wall.
“I missed you,” he groans, planting open-mouth kisses across my jaw. “So damn much.”
“I…” I pant. “Missed you too.”
“I think about this…” He licks along the column of my neck. “Every day.” Down and back up again, until he finds my lips, opening his eyes and searing me with his gaze as he presses his mouth to mine. “Kissing you. Touching you. God, I missed you, Allie Cat.”
The tender-laced words come out rough from his graveled voice. I lift to my toes, dropping my face into his neck as I whimper against his flesh. It smells like him—like his cologne, and Dahlia’s favorite laundry detergent, and something biologically Archer.
That’s my home.
I’ve been away for a month, and after tonight, I won't see him again for three more. It’s debilitating and painful, like I’m severing a limb and leaving it behind. My entire life in Los Angeles has a trail of blood following me around, because all the best parts of me stay here.
It’s why I plan to take a piece of him with me when I leave this time.
“Ar…” I moan as he slides a hand to my backside, squeezing hard. “Archer, what are you planning to do to me tonight?”
He pulls back, straightening before looking down at me with blazing eyes. “I just wanted to get you alone and get my mouth on yours,” he rasps. “Didn’t think too far past that, honestly.”
“What do you want to do?” I ask sheepishly, dropping my gaze to the floor.
He grips my chin, forcing my head up until our eyes clash. “Is there something you want, Allie Cat?”
I nod, face flushing.
His pupils expand slowly, drowning the deep blue of his eyes in darkness. “Tell me.”
“I…” I bite down my nerves, forcing confidence into my breathless voice. “I want to have sex.”
Archer licks his lips and swallows. My eyes track the movement of his throat, the way his chest expands with each deep inhale. “You do?”
“Yes.” I press against his chest, forcing him to step back as I peel off the wall, trailing my hand down his arm to catch his fingers.
Dragging him toward the bed, I sit down on his mattress and pull him with me.
We face each other as I take his hand in mine and place them in my lap.
“I’ve always wanted it to be you, Archer.
I wasn’t ready this summer, but I’m ready now, and I don’t know when I’m going to see you again after tonight. ”
“Isn’t that more reason to wait?” he asks softly, lifting an arm to cup my face. “It fucking sucks being away from you, and I can only imagine how much worse it’ll hurt if we do this right now.”
“It always hurts,” I whisper. “At least this way, I could keep a piece of you for myself.”
His gaze softens, full lips parting on a swift inhale.
Archer’s eyes drop to my mouth, and the hand on my cheek presses against my jaw, tilting my head upward as he drops his.
He kisses me gently—tenderly. He moves slowly, guiding me back onto his bed.
I inch toward his pillows as he crawls over me, though our lips never part.
Archer’s body envelops me in soul-deep warmth. A fizzy, vibrant sensation surfaces in my chest, spreading through my veins and gathering low in my belly, making me hot and needy. I wrap my thighs around his hips, drawing him closer.
“Hold on,” he says against my lips, pausing to stretch across the bed and reach into the cabinet of his nightstand. Lifting off me, Archer sits on his knees as he fiddles with a box of condoms.
“Why do you have those on standby?” I ask, raising a brow.
“My mom stocked us up when she found Z in bed with that girl last year.” His eyes snap to mine, sparking with amusement. “Clearly, I’ve never used them.” He shakes the box, showing me he just ripped it open.
After he fishes out a condom, he tosses it onto the pillow beside my head before throwing the box back on the bedside table. Archer pulls his shirt off, and when I move to do the same, he halts me by snatching my wrist. “I’ll undress you myself.”
His brash tone only has me more desperate to get my clothes off—they suddenly feel too tight, suffocating, keeping me too far from his touch. I’m too hot, and he’s too perfect, and I shouldn’t be anything but bare.