18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Then
“Peyton says that Lori Ann and Mitch are making out.”
I gasped, shuffling across the back seat of the truck so I could see Sage’s phone. “Really?”
She tilted it toward me. I could barely read Peyton’s message as Sage’s thumbs flew, typing out a reply that was full of capital letters and exclamation points. “What about Amy?”
“I think that was a one-night thing.”
Quinton was in the passenger’s seat, and he turned around to look at us. He wore his hair in something resembling a mullet—it was chopped close at his ears with the ends brushing his collar in the back. “Isn’t Mitch the abstinence kid?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he practices what he preaches,” I said, pulling a Red Vine from the bag in my lap.
“What his father preaches,” Theo corrected from the driver’s seat.
“Right.”
“You’re lucky I love you,” Sage told me. “I can’t believe I’m missing this.”
“It must be real hard for you,” I said, “having to spend your evening drinking on the water.”
The beer was in the bed of the truck, along with a cheap inflatable boat that Theo brought along. We were going down to the pond, which was nothing special but was at least big enough for the boat and deep enough to swim in. It was only a couple of miles from my neighborhood—as kids, we ended up there often when we were outside playing—but still relatively isolated, set far back from the road and nestled among the trees.
As was generally the case on weekend nights, most people we knew were at the Redding farm. Theo and I couldn’t go, so we decided to hang out at the pond and convinced our best friends to come with us. Quinton didn’t really mind, actually, but Sage hated being away from the action that would fuel the gossip mill for the week.
We reached the pond, rolling through the brown, trampled grass where others had driven before. Just as we expected, we were the only ones there.
Sage and I spread out our picnic blanket on the bank of the pond while the boys grabbed the cooler. The beer was in the very bottom, beneath some gas station deli sandwiches and a thick layer of ice. Since the police department turned a blind eye to the massive amounts of underage drinking going on at the Reddings’, they compensated by patrolling the streets closely on weekend nights. We hadn’t seen any cops on the way here, but if they showed up, our plan was to throw our bottles into the pond.
We each grabbed a sandwich and a drink and spread out on the blanket. I situated myself at a healthy distance from Theo, only to have him scoot over and wrap his hand around my hip. I winced reflexively, not used to being like this in front of other people. Ever since Brock walked in on us a few days ago, I’d been especially on edge.
Sage and Quinton could be trusted, though, so I mentally ordered myself to relax and leaned into him. He leaned toward me, and I lifted my head in anticipation of a kiss. Instead, he swerved his head to the side and took an enormous bite of my sandwich.
“Hey!” I shoved him away. “You have your own!”
Theo grinned at me with a full mouth. It was disgusting—there was a mayonnaise-soaked piece of lettuce stuck to his front teeth—but because it was Theo, it managed to be endearing as well.
“Gross,” said Sage. “Your sandwich has boy cooties."
“I hope you don’t act like that at the store,” Quinton added. “If you do, your cover’s gonna be blown pretty quickly.”
Theo unwrapped his sandwich and held it out to me. “Here. Let’s make it even.”
I took a bite—not like the one he took, since I wasn't an animal, but enough to make my point.
He gave me an affectionate smile that gave me tingles before turning back to our friends. “We’ve barely glanced at each other in the store since Brock caught us.”
“To the point where that might be getting suspicious,” I said. “It’s not like that’s how we acted before.”
“Yeah,” agreed Theo. “You’re right. They might think we’re mad at each other.”
Sage squinted against the sun, sitting low in the sky. “Have you two ever been mad at each other?”
“I was pretty mad at you,” Theo told me, “when you stepped on my phone and broke it in middle school.”
“That was your fault for leaving it in the floor!”
“Definitely your fault,” Sage concurred.
“ I was mad,” I said, determined not to be outdone, “a couple years ago when Henry Green came into the store looking for me, and you told him I’d been in the bathroom for fifteen minutes. He had been flirting with me for weeks, but we never spoke again after that.”
Theo threw his hands up. “It was the truth!”
“I was in there fixing my hair , which you knew and conveniently didn’t tell him.”
He shrugged. Quinton was snickering under his breath. I glared at him, and he stifled it with a pull of his beer.
Sage set aside her half-eaten sandwich and stretched out on the blanket, lying on her side with her head propped in her hand. Her toes poked at my thigh. “ Sounds like another Lori Ann situation,” she said in a sing-song tone.
I glared at her and then looked at Theo, unsure if he would care that I told her about his jealousy. There wasn’t a trace of irritation on his face; rather, he was nodding. “It was,” he said. “I wanted her all to myself."
There was a question on the tip of my tongue: how long? Because the Henry incident was during the fall of my sophomore year, and Theo had definitely had girlfriends since then.
When he looked back at me, though, his expression gave me pause. It wasn't one I was used to seeing from him, as laidback and upbeat as he was. Theo looked vulnerable, as if there was a spotlight shining on his most personal thoughts. My words died in my throat.
“Do you have the bottle opener?” Quinton asked Theo, effectively changing the subject.
He tossed it over, and the conversation turned back to Mitch and Lori Ann, to what a dick Vince was, to our plans for the rest of the summer. Quinton would be leaving for college in August, and he spoke about it as if he was going to the West Coast. In reality, he would be attending a relatively cheap state university that was about ninety minutes from Amity. About half of the kids we knew who went there were back by Christmas, and my suspicion was that Quinton would be one of them.
Still, Theo played right into the conversation. He groaned about Quinton leaving him behind, hyped up all of Quinton’s plans for his supposed last summer in town, and then dramatically threw his arm around me. “At least Sass isn’t going anywhere,” he said. I leaned into his side, a silent reminder that he was right: there was nowhere I’d rather be than right by his side.
Talking about Quinton going to college did reignite my curiosity about Theo deciding not to. His grades were much better, after all, and he had been accepted into a much more selective school. We finished eating and stripped down to our swimsuits, but when we headed to the dock, I hovered a few steps behind Sage and Quinton.
Theo seemed to know that I was trying to talk to him alone, so when the others went sprinting down the dock, he stayed at my side. “What’s up?”
I watched Sage and Quinton jump into the water, their shouts filling the air. They weren’t paying any attention to us. “I was just wondering if you were ready.” When he looked confused, I clarified. “To tell me why you aren’t going to college.”
“Why I deferred for a year,” he corrected.
“Right.”
Theo smiled gently at me, and I knew his answer before he said it. “I can’t tell you yet,” he said. “But I will. I promise.”
I put my little finger in his face. “Pinky swear.”
He wrapped his around mine and held on tight. I smiled at him, showing that we were okay. Although I burned with curiosity—with a need to know if this mysterious reason had anything to do with me—I trusted Theo, and whatever his reason for not sharing this with me, I knew that it had to be a good one.
Theo’s expression became mischievous. Keeping our pinkies twisted together, he slipped the fingers of his free hand just under my bikini strap. His touch on my bare shoulder made my stomach swoop. “This is cute,” he murmured.
My mouth twisted. “Cute?”
His eyes lifted to mine. “You don’t like me calling you cute?”
I shrugged. He had never made a habit of commenting on my appearance, positive or otherwise, which was part of why I accused him of lying when he said I was beautiful out at Train Bridge. But after that, along with a week of feeling his hands trace my face, of watching his eyes spark with heat when he looked at me, cute felt like a downgrade. Like he just looked at me and saw the little girl he’d grown up with, rather than someone to be desired.
“It’s a little…kiddish?” I said uncertainly.
Theo dropped both of his hands. Even out there in the warm June sun, I felt inexplicably cold without his touch. Then it was back, on my hips this time, and so was that fire. His eyes followed his hands as they traced a line along the waistband of my pink bikini bottoms, up my stomach, to the band of my top. One of his thumbs brushed the underside of my breast—accidentally, I thought, although I couldn’t be sure—and I fought to control my breathing.
“You’re not a kid,” Theo said huskily.
“I know.”
“Do you like hot better?” he asked. His hands settled on my lower back, dangerously close to my butt. I didn’t mind it one bit. “Gorgeous? Sexy? They all fit, Sass. Just tell me which one you want to be.”
What I wanted was to say something that made his world shift the same way mine just had, but I couldn’t. I had no words of my own; just his, echoing through the humid air.
“Hey!” Sage yelled. Her voice startled me, and I instinctively jerked away from Theo. She was splashing near the edge of the pond, her dark hair plastered to her head. “Either get a room or get in here!”
Theo hoisted himself onto the dock, then reached back for my hand. I let him pull me up to stand beside him. He jogged in place for a few seconds. “Alright,” he said, rolling his shoulders back. “You ready?”
“Ready,” I said, and then we were off, sprinting down the dock and throwing ourselves off the end of it. My hand stayed twisted around Theo’s as we went airborne, and in that split second that we were suspended above the water, I had time for a single coherent thought: I never want to come down.