Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“It’s been a revolving door in here since we opened this morning,” she hissed. “People want to buy wakeboards, and they want to buy them from you.”

“Wow! Really?” I’d feel a little guilty selling people wakeboards, considering my experience two days before. But after all, my wreck was caused by a brain cloud and a broken heart, not equipment failure. I patted my head to make sure my bangs hung down over my stitches.

“Yes, really!” Mrs. Vader said. “Adam’s been covering for you, but he just mumbles at customers.”

“Where is Ad—,” I started to ask. en I saw his broad back, and the door to the warehouse closed behind him. Where he’d stood, a rose protruded from behind a Liquid Force on the wall.

He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me six roses. But I did extract the new rose carefully and put it with the others in the vase Mrs. Vader set on the counter. Then I found another rolled up in the boat twine, and still another lying across the containers of worms.

In the late morning, as I manned the cash register (after pulling out the rose inside), Dad and Frances came in. My heart pounded when I saw Frances. I wanted to vault over the counter and throw my arms around her. Instead, I asked her in a British accent, “Please, marm, are you to be my new mother?”

“Lori!” my dad burst out. Flushing red, he realized he desperately needed a new slalom ski right then, and bolted for the display.

Frances watched him go. “Very funny,” she told me through her teeth. en she leaned across the counter, kissed me on the forehead, and gave me a grudging smile.

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, marm.”

She reached for my hand. “What a beautiful ring.” She moved my finger back and forth so the ring glittered under the fluorescent lights, and smiled at me again. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

“What a pretty dress,” I said. “Is it hemp?”

Holding her chin high, she said self-righteously, “It’s organic cotton.” She took a long whiff of the roses. “You and Adam have gotten yourselves in a mess, I hear. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ Sir Walter Scott.”

I patted her hand. “That’s nice, dear.”

“‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ Alexander Pope.”

I squinted across the showroom. “I think I have a customer.”

My dad recovered and decided he could put off that slalom ski purchase after all. He came to the counter, put his hand on Frances’s back, and asked her, “Is Lori giving you lip?”

“She’s making fun of me!” Frances exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I’m offering her aphorisms and she’s making fun of me!”

“They do that.” Dad turned to me and said, “We’re going to wish Bill luck before the show. Aren’t you at least riding in the boat with the boys?”

“Ha! I’d rather go shopping.” Snort.

As Frances pushed open the door into the sunshine, she said something in Russian. Something long that she was determined to get out in full. Dad stood in the doorway and waited for her with a look of pure luv while she finished.

I didn’t need any sage advice on honesty and I definitely didn’t need any from Dostoyevsky. “ Do svidanya,” I muttered. en I realized the customer from across the showroom was approaching the counter. “Yes ma’am, may I help—” It was Tammy.

She slid a candy bar onto the counter. “Hook me up, would you? Now that I have a boyfriend, I’m trying to maintain my girlish figure.” As I scanned the candy into the register, I looked over my shoulder to see whether Mrs. Vader was listening from the office. I’d told customers off before when Mrs.

Vader wasn’t around, if they really deserved it. Tammy was McGillicuddy’s girlfriend. I didn’t want to be the annoying little sister she dreaded seeing when she came over to our house. But damn if she was going to follow me around and taunt me! She could have bought a candy bar at a gas station.

She must have seen I was gearing up to tell her off. She knew me better than I’d thought. Either that or she recognized the fixed killer stare I got before I served an ace.

For whatever reason, she said in a hurry, “What draws me to McGillicuddy as a boyfriend is the same thing that draws me to you as a friend. You’re both so honest, to the point of being clueless. After years of being stuck at tennis tournaments with Holly and Beige, it’s refreshing.”

“Eighty-three cents,” I said. “You’re not helping yourself here.”

“And if I wanted honesty, I should have been more honest myself. When you left the party, I told McGillicuddy what I did to you. He didn’t un-ask me out, but I could tell he was disappointed.”

McGillicuddy would never un-ask a girl out. Even if he hated her guts, he’d keep his promise and act like a gentleman about it. I didn’t tell Tammy this because she was genuinely concerned about what he thought of her now. It was sort of sweet. “If it makes you feel better,” I told her, “he dreamed about you last night.”

“He did?” Her face glowed in the sunlight streaming through the showroom windows. Then she quirked her eyebrows at me. “He tells you about his dreams?” I nodded. “Me and Dad, every morning at breakfast. Are you going to pay for that?”

She dug in her pocket, peered at the change in her palm, and picked out some coins. She had the same purse-carrying issues I had. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m sorry for using you. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I didn’t give it a thought. But I should have.”

“Maybe I’d like to be used by a girl.” As she passed me the change, I said, “I’d like to be good enough friends with a girl that we use each other without asking, and help each other without question. I’d like to know a girl always had my back.” I tossed the coins in the register and slammed the drawer shut. e nickels had slid into the dime compartment, which would drive Mrs. Vader insane.

Tammy nodded. “We’ll work on it. So, the wakeboarding show’s starting soon. You want to go watch it with me?”

“Can’t,” I said, gesturing to the crowded showroom that was my responsibility. Wait a minute—it had emptied while I wasn’t watching.

Mrs. Vader popped her head out the door of the office. She gazed suspiciously at the cash register drawer, like she just knew something was amiss in there. “Lori, why don’t you take a few hours off? You should go outside and watch the boys.”

“I don’t want to go outside and watch the boys.” Actually I did. More than anything. I’d never missed a show before. And I’d never missed Adam so much. But I wanted to watch them from the roof or a tree or somewhere else Adam wouldn’t see me watching them. He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me nine roses.

Mrs. Vader folded her arms. “Go outside anyway.”

I folded my arms too. “I don’t want to go outside.”

“Well, I don’t want you to work.”

“I want to work.”

She pointed at me and screamed like I imagined real mothers did when their daughters turned out too much like them. “You’re fired!”

“All right!” I threw my cash register key onto the counter and stomped outside.

en turned right back around, smacked into Tammy, stepped inside, and took the roses Mrs. Vader held out to me wrapped in a paper towel. Her lips were pressed together, just like Adam’s expression when he was trying not to laugh.

I stalked down the sidewalk outside. Tammy scampered to keep up with me. “Are you really fired?”

“Of course not,” I sighed. “She fires me about once a week in the summers. I guess I’ll take the rest of the day off, though. What’s all this for?” I slowed to a stop at the edge of the enormous crowd. e air smelled like hamburgers and funnel cakes. People stood or sat together on towels, picnicking. I could hardly see a bare patch of grass or wharf, but it wasn’t quite time for the wakeboarding show.

“They’re crowning the Crappie Queen!” Tammy said.

“If you’re going to hang around here, you need to use the correct pronunciation. It’s Crappy Queen.”

“It’s Rachel.”

Sure enough, down on the wharf, Mr. Vader was calling Rachel forward as the new Crappy Queen. There was some justice in the world.

And then I changed my mind. Instead of the evening gown I’d seen at Crappy Festivals past, Rachel skipped onto the wharf in cutoff jeans pulled over her bathing suit, and bare feet. She grinned while the outgoing Crappy Queen pinned a tiara in the shape of a fish into her hair. Maybe old Rachel was all right after all.

“Pardon,” McGillicuddy said right behind me. He shoved me off the sidewalk. I shoved him back, then realized that when he pushed me, he’d tucked another rose into my bouquet. Walking backward down the hill, he blew a kiss at Tammy. Tammy giggled and blew him a kiss back.

Another voice behind me said, “A-choo!” SOMETHING FLEW INTO MY BOUQUET. I almost dropped my beautiful roses to avoid further contact with nastiness.

But it was only Cameron, pretending to sneeze another rose at me.

“Racking up, aren’t you?” Tammy asked, and I had to grin.

Right after Cameron came Sean. His nose was only a little blue. I could hardly tell it had bled the night before. Sean was like that. And he held a rose between his teeth.

I smirked at him. “Don’t tell me. You want me to come and get it.”

“Oh no,” he said through a mouthful of stem, holding up his hands in warning. “Adam would kill me.” He handed me the (spitty, ew) rose. “Did Dad crown Rachel the Crappy Queen yet?”

“Yes,” Tammy and I said together.

Sean’s face fell. “Oh!” He ran down the sidewalk. At the bottom of the hill, he caught Rachel by the arm and talked to her for a few seconds. His face fell further, and she shook her head. He walked away after the other boys, toward the wakeboarding boat. I almost felt sorry for him.

“I’m going to congratulate Rachel on her coronation,” I said to Tammy.

“You aw?” Tammy said with her mouth full of candy bar. “Uhhh—”

“Come with me, because you’re my friend and help me without question. I may need someone to call 911 if she breaks my arm.”

“I’w be wight behiwd woo.”

I maneuvered down the hill through the crowd, using the roses to clear the way in front of me. Now Rachel talked with an elderly couple, which might make her less likely to deck me. “Rachel!” I squealed, jumping up and down, spilling petals. “Congratulations!” She stared at me like a fish out of water, but the elderly couple thanked me in the manner of clueless grandparents, which got us out of that embarrassing little moment.

“I need to tell you a couple of things,” I said, hugging the roses to my chest and putting my other arm around her.

“Come this way,” Tammy said, moving along the seawall. Rachel looked back to signal the elderly couple to save her, but I moved in, blocking her view. What a team Tammy and I made. Beyond the crowd, Tammy sat on the seawall with her legs hanging over. I did the same, and Rachel sat between us.

“It wasn’t my idea to enter,” Rachel spoke up defensively. “I caught a two-pounder, and my granddaddy said we could not let the mayor’s daughter win again this year with only a one-pounder and a plastic minnow.”

Rachel rose further in my opinion.

“I don’t need to tell you how bizarre that is,” I said. “Obviously you have a sixth sense about these things.” I nodded toward Sean cranking the boat and backing it away from the wharf. My brother was in the bow, Cameron sat further back, and Adam was bent below the side of the boat, gathering something. “I needed to tell you Sean is really in love with you.”

Now she looked toward the boat puttering across the inlet. “How do you know? You can just tell, right? You can tell by the way he acts? After the last couple of weeks, I’ll never be able to trust that again.” She tried to sound tough, but her delivery was stilted, and her eyes rolled for emphasis at the wrong place. I’d never actually talked to her before—I’d only watched her from afar—or I would have noticed this. She came off as a lot younger and more unsure of herself than I’d expected. Which made me like her even better.

“I know because he told me,” I said. e boat pointed in our direction, almost like it was heading for us rather than the open water. “I also needed to tell you your wakeboard bindings came in at the showroom this morning.”

“Oooh, I forgot Sean gave you a wakeboard!” Tammy said. “I wish I could learn.”

“It’s fun,” I said. Maybe McGillicuddy could take Tammy out wakeboarding. Maybe Sean could invite Rachel again and hope she showed up this time. Of course, both Sean and McGillicuddy would have to fight the boys every step of the way. We were good together, but it would be nice to wakeboard with other people once in a while, without a freaking outcry and rumors of mutiny.

“Hey,” I said suddenly. “I have a boat.” ere it was, tied on the side of the dock in front of my house. We hardly ever used it because we were always in the Vaders’

boat. I nudged Tammy. “If you want, come over after I get off work tomorrow, and I’ll teach you to wakeboard.” I turned to Rachel. “You too, Miss Crappy.” Of course, they probably didn’t have boaters’ licenses, which meant I’d have to drive. ey’d be learning to wakeboard, so I’d just take them around in slow circles. Surely I couldn’t mess that up. They wouldn’t suspect a thing.

“That would be great!” Tammy exclaimed. She touched Rachel’s bare toes with her toes. “I’ll pick you up, Your Crappiness.” In case Tammy got the wrong idea, I warned her, “McGillicuddy won’t be with us. He’ll be with the boys. This will be a girl trip.”

“I know,” she said, as if she did really know and wasn’t trying to get out of it.

“But we could cruise by the warehouse very slowly like we need to borrow another tow rope,” I said. “I have become an expert at seduction.” Rachel snorted, then gave up suppressing it and proceeded to laugh her ass off. e Crappy Crown detangled itself from her hair and would have fallen in the lake if I hadn’t caught it for her. Finally she calmed enough to cough out, “I don’t know. I’m not very graceful.”

“Who am I,” I asked, “Michelle Kwan?”

“Not hardly,” Tammy said at the same time Rachel said, “I see your point.” But neither of them was looking at me. ey watched the wakeboarding boat float right in front of us, full of boy.

Specifically, full of Adam. He stood in the bow, one arm cradling a bouquet of roses—a funny contrast, this muscular football player carrying pink flowers. He held his other hand out to me.

McGillicuddy leaned over the bow, too, and caught the seawall, holding the boat there so it didn’t scrape against the wall and didn’t drift away. e boys had planned ahead. For once.

Ninety-nine percent of me leaped up immediately and knocked Adam over, hugging him. One percent was still bitter about the bitch comment, and angry that I’d been tricked into coming out here to wait like some airhead flirt for Adam to happen by. is one percent was heavier than the rest combined and anchored me to the seawall. I elbowed Tammy. “Traitor.”

“I was helping you without question,” she said.

“And your mom!” I yelled to Adam. “Did you ask your mom to get me out here?”

“I told her to fire you if she had to,” he called. “Did she fire you?”

“Mama Vader has some feminine wiles!” I exclaimed.

Adam laughed. “She’s got maybe one more feminine wile than you, and you’ve got about three-fourths of a wile.” He tilted his head and wiggled the fingers of his outstretched hand. “Come with us. We want you to close the show. Right, Sean?”

“Right!” Sean said with fake enthusiasm. From the back of the boat, Cameron waved my wakeboard at me to show me, again, that they’d thought ahead.

“I’m not supposed to get my stitches wet,” I reasoned.

“Don’t fall,” Adam reasoned right back.

I wanted to go. I couldn’t quite detach the heavy one percent. “You called me a bitch. I’m not running back to you when you leave me a dozen roses.”

“Four more.” He waved his smaller bouquet at me. “Sixteen total. Birthday or what?”

Rachel shoved me forward—which, since I was sitting down, didn’t push me into the boat. It only folded me over like a movie theater seat.

“You can think about it,” Adam said. “The four of us can take our turns, and we’ll come back to see if you’ve changed your mind. But I want you to come with us now.” In a singsong voice he coaxed, “I’ll let you drive.”

McGillicuddy and Cameron stared at Adam, eyes wide with fear. Sean coughed, “Bullshit.”

“I’ll let you drive when I’m wakeboarding, anyway,” Adam said.

“It’s love,” McGillicuddy said, motioning with his head for me to get in the boat. “Let Tammy hold your roses so they don’t go bald in the wind.” McGillicuddy’s blessing was the final push I needed. I held out my arms for the extra roses from Adam and inhaled one last long sniff before handing off the whole huge bouquet to Tammy. en I took Adam’s hand and let him help me in. McGillicuddy shoved the bow away from the seawall and walked into the back of the boat, muttering, “Freaking femme fatale.”

As we puttered out of the idle zone, I gave Rachel and Tammy a pageant wave. ey waved back and clapped for me. e boat reached the open water and sped up. e motor and Nickelback drowned out the clapping. Adam grabbed my waving hand, and we did the secret handshake.

As we sank to the bow seat, I touched his skull-and-crossbones pendant on a new leather string. “They still have these in the bubble gum machine?”

“Sean went under the dock and found it for me.”

I nodded. “He was the best choice to rescue it for you. He has no fear of bryozoa.” Squinting into the sun behind Adam, I looked up into his sky-blue eyes. “One day on the boat when we were kids, did you tell me you wanted me to be your girlfriend when we were old enough?” He slid his hand down a lock of my hair and twisted it around his fingers. “I don’t remember saying that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I wasn’t lying that day in the truck.

I really have loved you forever. Why else would I wear a skull-and-crossbones necklace you bought me from a bubble gum machine? It turned my skin green.”

“It didn’t.” To make sure, I moved the pendant aside and peered at his chest, which looked the normal scrumptious tan to me. “It didn’t,” I repeated with more confidence.

“It did when you first gave it to me. Any metal coating that might have been clinging to it wore off on my chest years ago.” Come to think of it, the pendant was a funny color not found in nature. I’d probably given him lead poisoning, which was why he acted like that. I ran my fingertips down the bones, and poked the skull in the eyes. “You know, you could have told me you loved me a long time ago, before things got so crazy.”

“No, I couldn’t. I like to take chances. I’d blow a chance on anything but you. You didn’t love me.” Didn’t I? It was hard to believe I’d called him little dolphin just two weeks before. “I didn’t think about you that way. Clearly I was capable of it. Because I love you now.”

He grinned and took my hand. “We should add another step to the secret handshake.”

“en we couldn’t do it in public.” I turned his hand over and ran my fingertip lightly over his palm until he shivered. “When Sean came up to your mom because a fish had mouthed his toe, and my mom said I should just wait until I was sixteen… That wasn’t Sean. That was you. Right?” He put his head close to mine, watching my finger trace valentines in his open hand. “I didn’t want you to like me because you thought you were supposed to. I wanted you to like me for me.” His breathing sounded funny. He was about to cry—which was going to cause him a world of trouble with the boys. He could live the first time down owing to the shock of seeing me crash into a very large, very stationary object. But if he cried again, he was toast.

I knew one way to stop him. I hollered above the motor, “Oh my God, Adam, are you about to cry?”

“Oh my God!” Sean echoed in a high-pitched girl-voice. Cameron squealed, “Adam, don’t cry!” My brother called, “No crying on the boat.” Adam laughed with tears in his eyes and kissed me softly on the forehead, the side away from the stitches. And suddenly, to my complete horror, I was the one crying, sobbing into his chest. I was happy, but that wasn’t why I was crying. I was relieved. Relieved of a weight I couldn’t even name.

He held me more tightly and kissed my forehead several more times, then made his way down my cheek, dangerously close to my ear. I giggled at the same time I cried.

If he didn’t stop, he was going to give me hiccups—which would be so incredibly sexy, on top of messing up my timing for wakeboarding jumps.

He kissed my lips. “What do you want to do tonight?” he whispered.

What a question!

“Put our names back on the bridge,” I said. “Only, you hold the sailboat this time, and I’ll take care of the handwriting.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, enjoying the warmth of Adam’s arms around me against the wind. We sat back and watched the other boats and the crowded banks of the lake spin by. When the show started, we spotted for the other boys while they took their turns. Then it was Adam’s turn, and mine.

E n dless S u m m er

This book is for all the readers of

The Boys Next Door who asked me

to write a sequel. I would not and could not

have done this without you.

Acknowledgments

anks to Simon Pulse, for believing in this book; Emilia Rhodes, for a smart edit; my literary agent, Nicole Kenealy, for taking care of me; Erin Downing, for reading an early draft and offering terrific suggestions; and as always, my critique partners, Catherine Chant and Victoria Dahl, for sticking with me every step of the way.

Adam boosted me from the concrete embankment onto the narrow ledge that ran all the way down the highway bridge. From here I’d have the perfect platform to spray paint our names on the six-foot wall separating us from the cars—that is, if nothing went wrong.

I could have painted LORI LOVES ADAM right where I was, above the embankment. At least technically I was still on dry land, or over it. But his brothers would call us lightweights. ey’d been more daring when they painted their own names. Using each seam in the metal wall as a handgrip, I walked carefully along the ledge. e embankment fell away. I was over the lake.

A quarter of the way across, which seemed respectable enough, I stopped. Shaking the can of spray paint with one hand and hanging onto the bridge for dear life with the other, I turned to look behind me. My house, Adam’s house, and Adam’s parents’ marina lay across the water from us, but I couldn’t see them in the starlight. Only a few lights edging the marina dock shone in the summer night, their reflections rippling in the water. Everyone must have been pooped from the festival on the lake that day.

Not a single boat motor broke the silence—only the occasional clackclack, clack-clack of a car passing on the other side of the concrete wall and a nervous vibration through the bridge.

“Kkkkkk,” came radio static. “You on the bridge. Lori McGillicuddy. This is the police.”

I glared at Adam standing on the ledge beside me with his hands cupped over his mouth to sound more like a police radio. He wasn’t holding onto the bridge at all.

“You startled me,” I said. “What if I’d fallen?” e lake wasn’t far enough below to kill me, but the impact might still hurt. And we were not here for his adrenaline rush.

We were doing something romantic, and we were in it together.

He touched my elbow. “I would have caught you.”

He probably could have. What he lacked in good judgment, he made up for in strength and coordination. Of Endless Summer course, the poor judgment often trumped the strength and coordination, which accounted for at least one of the times in grade school he’d broken his leg.

But his fingers on my elbow made my skin tingle. His skull-and-crossbones pendant glinted in the starlight, and his strange light blue eyes watched me in the hot darkness. Though I was precariously balanced and about to deface public property, I used my own poor judgment to lean forward and kiss him.

He seemed surprised for a split second. Usually he was the one to start things between us. Then he slid his hands into my hair and kissed me back.

I felt the paint can slipping through my fingers. Gripping it harder, I loosened my hold on the bridge. I was falling.

He pulled me closer and held me steady. “Even I think this is not the best place to make out,” he breathed.

“If you say so.” I was kidding. Personally, my bravado had pitched off the side of the bridge along with my balance.

“I could have fallen instead of you,” he said in mock outrage. “Oh, wait, I already fell.” He touched the tip of my nose with his finger. “For you.”

“Awwww!” I cried. “Adam, that’s so sweet!”

He grinned. “Did you like that? I thought of it about an hour ago, when we were in your basement looking for spray paint. I’ve been saving it.”

“I did like it. You are a very good boyfriend. Who would have guessed?” With a final moony gaze at him—God, we were such idiots, but it was fun to be an idiot in love

–I turned back to the bridge and scanned the surface for a clean space to write our names. Over the years it had gotten crowded with graffiti. Just above me was AOAN

LOVES LOKI, which Adam had painted very sloppily last weekend, then crossed out when we had a fight. I could have moved farther down the bridge or reached higher up for a blank slate, but I was not as fond of playing Tarzan as Adam was. Finally I decided on a space down low that had been painted over so many times, it would make a nice dark backdrop for my red paint. I shook the can one more time, held it out to Adam to pry the top off, and crouched to write.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to do it?” he asked.

“No thanks. When you want your name written legibly in graffiti, you have to do it yourself.” He laughed. “I was in a hurry, and the paint ran when it rained. Besides, you knew what I meant.” Smiling, I started the first downward leg of LORI LOVES ADAM. “Yeah, I knew what you meant.” In only a few minutes I was finishing the M. “There. Some couples swap class rings to show they’re together. Some people switch their online profiles from single to in a relationship. We commit a misdemeanor.”

He took the paint can from me. “e police chief ’s son’s name is up here, so I wouldn’t be too worried. Come on.” He headed for the shore, placing one battered deck shoe in front of the other, but still barely holding on to the bridge, his fingers brushing the metal. Just following him seemed dangerous.

We reached land and hiked up the embankment, over to the city boat ramp, then into the parking lot. e streetlights gently lit the trucks and empty trailers of the night fishermen. No one stopped us as we walked up the steep asphalt to Adam’s truck. We’d gotten away with it.

My fingers were raw from my death grip on the bridge, and my bare toes were rough. Other than that, everything had gone perfectly my whole sixteenth birthday. After our huge fight last night, Adam and I had gotten back together today. We’d had a great time at the lake festival. We and our brothers had performed a wakeboarding show for an enormous crowd. Not even Adam had broken a bone. And now we’d spray painted our love for each other on the bridge without a single mishap? is night was Too Good To Be True.

As he opened the passenger door for me—he never locked the doors, because he liked to tempt fate—I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Even after my test run in a life of crime, my hair was gorgeous, I tell you. It clumped a little in the humidity, but it looked like I’d created that piecey effect on purpose with styling gel. I was a vision of blonde loveliness.

That was the last straw. A day this happy and good hair, too? Now I knew something awful was about to happen.

Adrenaline had propelled me through my artistry on the bridge. at started to drain away now. Fatigue set in—from wakeboarding in the festival show that afternoon and worrying the last few days about whether Adam and I would ever get together.

“What’s wrong?” he asked from behind me, tossing the paint can in the payload.

“I’m having a good hair day.”

“I hate it when that happens.” Gathering my hair and pushing it forward over my shoulder, he kissed the back of my neck.

I shivered in the heat. The adrenaline came rushing back, and I was not so tired.

“e night is young,” he growled between kisses. “I have an idea of what we can do now. We’ve kissed before.” Kiss. “We’ve made out.” Kiss. “But we’ve never made out as an official couple, in the privacy of my Secret Make-Out Hideout.”

I turned to look sideways at him. I found I couldn’t do this without denying him access to the back of my neck. So I gave up on the sly look and enjoyed his soft lips on my skin. “You have a Secret Make-Out Hideout?” I whispered with my head bent.

“I do.” His low voice against my neck sent chills through me. “Just for you.”

“What are we waiting for?” I hopped forward through the open door, into the truck.

“You won’t regret it,” he said before he closed the door and rounded the truck to the driver’s side.

I missed him for ten seconds, looking forward to the instant he slipped back inside the truck and we laughed together again. Decision made. It wasn’t my first bad judgment leading to an Adam-Related Catastrophe, and it wouldn’t be my last.

“Adam,” Lori whispered. I’d known her all my life. I was used to her scent of warm skin and water. But in the last couple of weeks she’d started wearing perfume. I caught another whiff of it every time she shook my shoulder.

Without opening my eyes, I sniffed deeply, inhaling all the perfume I could get. Her hair tickled my face. I nuzzled her neck.

“Adam Vader.” Now her voice sounded pinched, like she was clenching her teeth. “I am trying to remain calm so as not to alarm you, but wake the hell up already.”

at made me open my eyes. She lay on top of me, looking down at me. I couldn’t see her features clearly in the shadowy cab of my truck. Her long blonde hair cascaded around me and glowed pink in the light of sunrise.

Sunrise!

“Oh, God.” I sat up, dumping her off my chest and onto the passenger side. For the perfect end to a perfect day, I’d driven her here. My secret make-out hideout was a point of land jutting into the lake with a dirt road leading to it, a primo lot that nobody had built a house on yet. It was at the other end of our neighborhood, and we could actually see our houses and my parents’ marina from here. My truck was hidden from their view by the trees around us, which was the beauty of it. I loved having the upper hand for once in my life.