Uh-huh, yeah. It’s pretty obvious. Hell, there was even a guitar on a stand in the cabin in his back yard. “Of courseyou play guitar.”
Blake grins modestly, his dimples deepening, and a pink hue spreads over his cheeks in a cute flash. “I play guitar and I” – he pauses shyly – “sing.”
“You can sing?” I echo. “Like,actuallysing?”
He stares deadpan back at me. “What other kind of singing is there other thanactualsinging?”
“But I’ve never heard you sing!” I exclaim, nearly dismantling the tower of haphazardly stacked objects in my arms.
“Well,” says Blake, “the quicker I get this bonfire started, the quicker you’ll get to hear me sing.”
Guitar case balanced on his shoulder and a chair under his other arm, he reaches out to close the tailgate of his truck, but the sound of someone calling his name stops him. He cranes his neck at the same time as I peer over the bag of Doritos for a better look, and my heart skips with a beat of panic as a familiar face approaches.
“Howdy, Barney!” Blake says.
Barney beams back at him as he rests his arm over the back of the truck. “Lacey got back from vacation yesterday, so she’s here, and I may or may not have just overheard her say that if you’re actually nice to her for once you might just get lucky tonight.” With a salacious howl, he digs a teasing elbow into Blake’s ribs, then meets my reproachful stare. “Oh, Everett Harding’s kid! You’re still around.”
“Her name,” Blake says in a hard voice, slamming the tailgate shut, “is Mila.”
Blake strides off and his truck beeps as he locks it behind him, leaving Barney and me staring at each other in surprise. I am hyperaware that my phone is sticking out of the back pocket of my jean shorts and that my hands are tied up carrying all this stuff in my arms, so I quickly shrug and then dash off after Blake before Barney can eventhinkabout stealing my property again.
I catch up with Blake and fall into step alongside him, power-walking to match his long strides. We’re advancing past the parked trucks, down onto the rocky beach that surrounds the lake, and a crowd has already gathered at an open clearing up ahead, laying out their chairs and the same coolers they all brought along to the tailgate party last month. Only tonight, I notice, the group of partygoers is slightly larger.
We pass under some trees and emerge along the water’s edge; it looks murky and uninviting in the dark.
“I thought my name wasMissMila,” I tease Blake while we still have a few moments alone.
“It is,” Blake says, then lowers his voice and purposely brushes his arm against mine. “But only to me.”
Despite nearly buckling under the weight of all this campfire stuff, I skip ahead a few steps so he can’t see how painfully shy I get whenever he whispers one of his easy flirtatious remarks. I don’t quite know why he gets under my skin so much, because it’s not like I’ve never had a boyfriend before. I’m not a complete novice when it comes to boys.
There was Jack Cruz back in the fall who has been my lab partner for the entirety of sophomore year – we went out a couple times, shared our first kiss together on the beach, and even got a little handsy in his car one night. However, Dad wouldn’t let me bring him home, not because he didn’t approve – Jack Cruz’s mom is a very affluent fashion designer – but because Dad, as I have learned growing up, is immensely paranoid with a whole mountain range of trust issues. Heespeciallydoesn’t like strangers entering our home. I suspect Dad fears they’ll see Everett Harding for who he really is when he isn’t the handsome, Oscar-winning actor with the swagger to match. Jack Cruz thought my family was crazy – “Who do you guys think youare?” – and, thanks to Dad’s all-around weirdness, Jack and I returned to being nothing more than lab partners.
But those two months I spent dating Jack feel awfully bland now in hindsight. I blushed around him too, and I found myself often lost for words whenever he whispered something sweet and flirty, but I never felt. . . I never feltelectricity.I never felt that surge of energy in my veins or the flip-flopping of my stomach or heart palpitations so intense they hurt.
I never felt any of the things I have felt recently with Blake.
We reach the others by the lake and the ground is made uneven by rocks and dirt. The wide clearing Blake has chosen to host tonight’s bonfire is, thankfully, a safe distance away from the nearest trees. Above, the sky is filled with twinkling, mesmerizing stars.
I dump the crate of soda cans and everything else piled on top of it down on the pebbles next to where Savannah and Tori are unfolding the chairs. Myles has already scampered off to get touchy-feely with Cindy. Everyone else has formed a wide circle with all the chairs, cracking open sodas, and protectively stashing their snacks between their feet as though a bear will emerge from the trees and loot the lot.
“I’ll get the fire started,” Blake says, setting down the last of his chairs. Carefully, he slides his guitar case off his shoulder and holds it out to me with a hint of trepidation flickering across his eyes. “Mila, I trust you to keep my guitar safe.”
Savannah steps forward indignantly, flapping her arms around in protest. “You trust Mila and not me, your cousin? Your ownbloodline?”
“Savannah, I stopped trusting you when you lost my favorite Hot Wheels car ten years ago,” Blake deadpans, then thrusts the case into my hands. He smirks as he walks away, playfully shoving his shoulder into Savannah’s and dodging the whack she tries to give him in return.
“If you break that guitar,” Savannah says in between tutting, “you’ll break his heart.”
The fire takes a while to get going – Blake, Barney and a handful of other guys spend a long time systematically arranging all of the logs, newspapers and tinder into a circular pit marked out with pebbles. It takes even longer for them to light it, frustratedly passing the lighter around the group until, finally, a spark emits, and an orange glow can be seen catching and gently growing from deep inside. Satisfied, Barney and the others saunter back to their chairs, but Blake remains crouched by the fire. He pokes at the burning wood with a stick and occasionally tosses in more tinder as the fire begins to rage brighter and brighter.
“She’s staring at him, isn’t she?” Savannah says.
“Mmhmm,” agrees Tori.
Their voices drift straight over me at first, but then I repeat their words in my head and realize they’re talking about me. I blink through the dryness of my contact lenses and tear my gaze from the blazing fire, glancing between the two of them with a perplexed look.
“What?”
