Fingering the necklace at her throat as though I might snatch it off and run out the door, she spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Landon. Hello. Melody will be down in a minute.’
Her father was less subtle. One glance at me, and he turned to his wife. ‘Barb, may I see you in the kitchen?’
‘Wait here, please,’ she told me. I nodded.
Melody came down the stairs a moment later wearing a short red sundress with boots, and my mouth went dry, immediately imagining those red lacy things she’d promised to wear underneath. I knew every detail of them except how they’d feel to the touch, because I’d stared at those photos for so many hours that they were all but burned into my retinas.
‘Ooh, cool vintage shirt,’ Melody said, running a hand down my chest. My whole body responded to her touch, everything constricting at once. I was in deep shit with this girl.
We could hear her parents arguing in the kitchen. ‘Did you approve her going out with that Maxfield boy?’ her father said.
‘Of course not –’
‘What the hell were you thinking? What happened to Clark?’
Her mother’s answer was inaudible.
Melody rolled her eyes. ‘God. Let’s get out of here.’
She got no argument from me.
We took the ferry and drove to a Peruvian seafood joint for ceviche and fish tacos.
‘So you like working on cars?’ Melody asked, sipping her iced tea.
I’d hung around Boyce a few times when he was working at his dad’s garage. He liked the grease under his nails, the smell of the exhaust, and getting his hands dirty while diving into the bowels of the machine under a hood. That wasn’t me. ‘Kinda, but not really. It might be cool to design cars. I mean, I like figuring out how mechanical things work, but only so I can use that knowledge to build something else. Once I know how it all connects, it’s not that fascinating any more. When I was a kid, I took stuff apart all the time – radios, clocks, toasters, a doorbell chime …’
She laughed. ‘A doorbell?’
‘Yeah. I made my mom nuts with that one. I got it back together, but she said it always sounded like a wounded moose after that.’
She smiled. ‘So that’s what some of those drawings on your wall were. The mechanical stuff. I thought maybe you were like, into steampunk or something.’
‘That’s cool in fiction.’ I shrugged. ‘But I’m more into sketching new technologies.’
She took my hand and traced the tattoo across my right wrist. ‘What about your tattoos? What do they mean?’ When she started to turn my hand over, I threaded my fingers through hers instead. I wasn’t ready for her to discover those camouflaged scars.
‘Enough questions about me. What about you? What do you like to do?’ I arched a brow and leaned closer. ‘Besides sending me pics that drive me crazy for two days straight.’
Lips pressed together, she grinned and then stared at the table, shrugging one mostly bare shoulder and swirling a fingernail in a pool of condensation. ‘I dunno. I like fashion. I like being a part of the dance squad.’ She peered up at me and chewed her lower lip. ‘I kind of like history? Like, art history?’
I nodded. ‘That’s cool.’
She looked dubious. ‘You think?’
‘Yeah – but it shouldn’t matter what I think.’ I squeezed the hand I held. ‘If you like it, you like it. Is that what you want to major in when you go to college?’
She sighed. ‘Maybe. But my parents expect me to do something like be an accountant or a doctor. They got all excited when Pearl and me got to be best friends, because Pearl wants to go to medical school. But I’m not like her.’
I couldn’t help the smirk that stole across my face.
‘What?’ She frowned and started to withdraw her hand.
I clenched my fingers tighter and smiled. ‘Nothing! I was only remembering how super-excited you were to do that frog autopsy. Not. I’m thinking medical school might not be in your future.’
She rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘Seriously. I couldn’t have given two shits to slice that thing open, and Pearl was pissed off she was out sick that day because she missed it. You did okay with it, though.’
I shrugged. ‘I was only interested how the stuff inside worked.’
‘Like the doorbell and the radio?’
Nodding, I said, ‘Speaking of radios – do you wanna go park somewhere and listen to music?’
Leaving the windows rolled down so we could hear the radio, I pulled two sleeping bags, a quilt and a pillow out of the toolbox in the truck bed.
‘The cemetery, huh?’ Melody peered around as our eyes adjusted to the meagre light cast by the moon and a sky full of stars. ‘It’s kinda spooky here. Like maybe all the ghosts are spying on us.’
I watched her through the fringe of my hair. ‘The beaches are full of drunk tourists. No one in here is going to bother us. Unless you mind those ghosts watching me kiss you.’
She twisted her lips and smiled. ‘Guess I don’t mind that so much.’ She pulled her boots off and climbed into the truck bed, and I followed suit.
Five minutes later, I sat back on my heels, regretting the fact that I didn’t dry-run this at home first. The truck bed’s ridges cut through the meagre layers of cloth. It was made for hauling stuff, not making out. ‘Not the most comfortable surface …’ There was no way I could lay her down on this. Dammit.
‘It’s fine.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not.’