“I heard y’all talking about the party in bio.”
She frowned, more sober than I’d thought she was. “Then you must have heard it was a private party to celebrate Melody’s birthday. You weren’t invited.”
Ouch.
She took two steps away from me before going straight back down in the sand on her ass, gasping and holding her knee. “Dang that hurts. Adam’s head must be hard as a rock.”
I knelt next to her, fingers inspecting her bare kneecap, all too aware of her soft skin and short shorts and how she smelled like a handful of flowers. “You’ve got a pretty good lump going here.”
Her fingers slid between mine, testing the rapidly swelling spot. “Great. I should get some ice on it…” She frowned at Yates, who’d begun to snore, and then to the water’s edge. “Clark just left me here? How the hell was I supposed to get home?”
“Surprise, Pearl, Richards is an asswipe. He took off with Dover and a few other people. Probably giving Yates time to make his move.”
She glared—luckily at Yates. “Make his move?” Her gaze shifted back to me. “So how are you here?”
I shrugged. “I have a boat.”
Studying the shoreline for the second time, she asked, “Is it an invisible boat?”
“Ha-ha.” I pointed, chuckling. “It’s down the beach a ways.” I stood, swinging her up into my arms. “C’mon, bruiser, let’s get you home.”
Between the low drone of the bayside waves and the sensations crashing over me—her soft hair grazing my arm and my cheek, the feel of her body pressed against mine, the perfect weight of her—I almost didn’t hear her question.
“Do you remember… when I died?”
I almost tripped on nothing. I crushed her tighter, unable to look at her. I could feel her eyes on me. “Yeah.” The word escaped me, jagged, rough, and that day rushed back like a nightmare.
Her voice was low and full of wonder instead of the terror I’d experienced. “All I remember is jellyfish scattering and a flash of panic—just a few seconds, really. Then a sort of peaceful feeling, and the smell of Mama’s churros, and darkness. Darkness, and then nothing.”
I stopped by my boat but didn’t put her down, staring into her face. Her dark eyes shimmered, reflecting the stars.
“And then there you were… staring down at me like you are now, but with the sun behind you instead of the moon,” she whispered. “You had tears in your eyes. Why?”
Jesus fucking Christ, this girl. “I thought you were dead.” My eyes burned, and I braced myself against the memory of the last time I’d held her like this—when she was heavy and lifeless, her head drooping over my arm.
“So did I. When I opened my eyes, I thought you were an angel—but those tears… And you were holding my hand.”
I smirked. “Accusing me of being a player back in the day, Pearl?”
“I used to dream that you’d kissed me then, in front of all those people.” Her gaze flicked to my mouth. “But you didn’t.”
Goddamn. I swallowed. “Well. I could kiss you now, to make up for missing my cue when I was seven.”
Her lips twisted, just barely, and I waited for her to laugh, but she didn’t. “Okay,” she said, and everything inside me went still.
I lowered my mouth to hers, hovering a breath away. Our eyes locked and she didn’t back down, didn’t close her eyes like she was just yielding ground. She held my gaze like the lit end of a firecracker. I’d been kissing girls for years, had popped my cherry with an older townie girl on the beach the previous summer, right before I turned sixteen. But none of that prepared me for kissing Pearl. I was starting from scratch.
Pearl
When I mentioned the sandbar as a possible burial spot for his father’s ashes, Boyce started to reply, hesitated, and then stared at his boots. I wasn’t sure if I’d said something wrong or if he was remembering the same thing I was.
I was nearly twenty-one years old and a college graduate, but my mind could still summon every precious second of a kiss that had happened when I was fourteen. I couldn’t decide if that was sweet or pathetic.
Adam Yates had been my first (unsolicited and revolting) kiss, not ten minutes prior. When he’d nuzzled the back of my neck, it was almost pleasant until he’d wrecked it with a slavering onslaught seconds later—all tongue and alcohol breath and drool. Blech.
I’d seen Boyce making out with girls on the beach or pushing them up against lockers to steal a kiss at school. Girls like Brittney Loper, who was dumb as a stick but stacked and sort of pretty. Hooking up whenever it suited her with whatever guy was interesting and interested, Brit was a carefree, perpetually cheerful pothead. Hating her felt mean-spirited, and honestly I wouldn’t have cared what she did, except Boyce. Watching him with her made me spitting mad. And restless. And aroused. Which made me more furious.
I was appalled to realize that I was jealous. Not just of Brittney, but all of them. Boyce had been mine for years, or so my heart had—unbeknownst to me—decided, and now suddenly he was touching and kissing and who knows what with all those girls and I didn’t want to see it or think about it stop stop stop.
I couldn’t tell my best friend, who would think I’d lost my mind or needed to schedule an exorcism. I couldn’t tell my mother, who still considered me her nerdy, quiet, undersized bookworm who hadn’t hit puberty and who certainly hadn’t dreamed and fantasized and hungered for Boyce Wynn’s lips on hers.