Savannah and Tori roll their eyes in perfect unison.
“I’m not staring at Blake,” I say without a single ounce of conviction.
“Right,” says Savannah. She crosses one leg over the other and stretches back in her chair, and for the first time tonight I squint for a better look at her choice of earrings for the evening – two dangling flames. “Tori, you should have seen the two of them together in my pool! Blake couldn’t keep his hands off her.”
I narrow my eyes. “You were supposed to be napping!”
“You like each other!” she shoots back with triumph ringing in her voice. She jolts upright again and points a finger out at me, her face beaming. “Admit it!”
“Blake couldn’t keep his hands off you?” Tori repeats, tapping her index finger against her lips as she stares down at Blake by the fire. “Damn. Lucky. I dared him to kiss me in eighth grade once and he chose the forfeit instead.” With the drama of a Hollywood actress – I would know – Tori feigns heartbreak, clasping a hand over her chest and throwing her head back with a whimpering sigh.
Savannah casts her a glance of disapproval. “Tori, please let go of your childhood crush on him already. This is about Mila.”
“No, this isnotabout Mila,” I say. My face grows hot, but I convince myself it’s from the spreading warmth of the fire that slowly radiates around the clearing. “Barney said something about – um – Lacey? Who is that?”
“Lacey?” Tori says curiously, taking a sip of her soda. “That’s her over there; the one with the red streaks in her hair. And, for the record,” she grumbles, “I started the colored hair trend around here.”
As Tori shakes out her exuberant pink hair around her shoulders, I stare off in the direction she indicated. On the opposite side of the bonfire, there’s a trio of girls standing around sipping from bottles of beer, giggling and chatting loudly. One of the girls, I remember, was at the tailgate party and had been thoroughly excited that Everett Harding is my dad, but I focus on the brunette with the red streaks in her hair that shine in the firelight.
Through the growing flames, she catches my stare. With a flash of recognition in her face, she turns to one of her friends and murmurs something in her ear.
“What did Barney say about her?” Savannah asks.
I scuff my chair against the uneven rock and angle more toward Savannah so that I’m not directly facing the fire or Lacey and her friends anymore. I cross my legs together on my chair and fiddle with the bracelet around my wrist. “That if Blake is nice to her, he might get lucky.”
“Mila, you’re not. . .jealous?” Savannah gasps and covers her mouth with her hand. “Did you know jealousy often means youlikesomeone?”
I fix her with a heavy look. How can I be jealous when Blake and I aren’t anything serious? But then why do I feel. . . weird? Why do I feel hostility toward a girl whose name I only just learned?
“Ignore Savannah being her usual annoying self,” Tori says, glowering at Savannah in an attempt to silence her incessant teasing. Tori sits forward, clears her throat, then locks eyes with me. “Lacey Dixon is about to be a senior, which means she has had the joy of sharing classes with Blake for her entire life. She also has eyeballs, which means, like the rest of us – except for Savannah, because that would be incestuous – she thinks Blake isfiiiiine.Also, her parents are close friends with Blake’s mom.”
Savannah laughs and grabs herself a soda, listening.
“However,” Tori continues, “unlikethe rest of us, Lacey believes Blake possesses the ability to care about anything other than his music. They spent all of last year going in circles with each other, mostly because Blakeclearlyisn’t that interested in her, but dear Lacey still thinks he’ll write her a love song one day. Bless her heart. God loves a trier!”
Tori suddenly goes mute and retreats into her chair again, and when I check over my shoulder I realize why story time is over – Blake is on his way over here.
“How’s that fire looking?” he asks, giving the bonfire a clipped nod to show off his hard work. “Mom forcing me to go to Boy Scouts when I was a kid has paid off at last. These fires of mine get better each time.”
“Okay,ego-head,” Tori says with a scoff.
Blake flicks her shoulder with his finger. “Okay, DJ.Shouldn’t you be on music duty? I don’t hear any music. Do y’all?” He looks at Savannah, then at me. He doesn’t look away again.
With a sigh of acceptance, Tori stands, but before she leaves she pulls out her phone. “Wait. Cute picture time! With Blake’s crappy Boy Scout fire in the background.”
“Oh, c’mon, Tori!” he groans, then laughs as he reaches for my elbow and pulls me to my feet.
“Wait,” I say, panicking as Savannah rises too and the three of them crowd in around me, our heads pressed together, and Tori’s phone held out before us, the fire behind. “You aren’t going to post this anywhere, right?”
“It’s just for memories! It’ll end up in my scrapbook,” Tori reassures me, then with cheery enthusiasm she urges us to “SMIIIIILE!”
I’m not quite sure if I manage to pull my face into a smile in time, but Tori doesn’t bother to check. She puts her phone away and traverses the cluster of chairs before disappearing completely beyond the bonfire to get some music up and running.
Blake falls back into the vacant chair she’s left behind, reaches for a soda, then admires his burning fire from afar. “A nice height, huh?”
There’s a strangled cough from Savannah. “I’ll – um – be over there if you need me,” she says, waving a hand at nothing in particular, then dashes off in the same direction as Tori.
“I bet ten bucks she’s off to hit on Nathan Hunt,” says Blake.
