Chapter Text
The couch is suspiciously sticky, and it makes Beth wish she hadn’t worn a dress. She can feel the mysterious substance clinging to the backs of her thighs.
Lifting her leg so that her skin peels off the seat, she thinks to herself, It’s beer.
Probably.
(Hopefully.)
Grimacing, she squeezes herself further into the corner of the cushions, one leg crossed over the other, trying hard to have as little of her body in direct contact with the pleather as possible.
She’s in the half-finished basement of some senior she’s never met. A generic rap song thumps out of a burst speaker, tinny and crackling, and next to her, a pair of drunk juniors gossip about how supposedly Asmita Carson once gave AJ Bowers a handjob under a blanket in the bleachers at a football game.
Desperate not to hear one more detail about the creative use of a Gatorade bottle, Beth inches further away from the pair. It’s hard to ignore them, though.
They’re loud, for one. But there’s also not much else to focus on.
Or not much else interesting, at least.
Across the room from her, the boy who invited her to the party cheers with a sharp whoop when the tiny plastic ball he’s thrown lands with a plink in a red Solo cup of beer.
A chorus of chug, chug, chug follows this apparently amazing feat, and the boy opposite Dean—she’s pretty sure his name is Jeremy—indulges the crowd by gulping down the beer and then smashing the empty cup against his forehead. Dean brays, gasping laughing like the whole thing is very funny.
It’s the sixth time the whole charade has been repeated since the game started, but the small crowd gathered around the ping pong table seems no less enthusiastic. If anything, it seems like they get rowdier with each successful turn.
Through the throng of people, Dean finds Beth’s eye and grins. She smiles back, toothless, but before Dean seems to register it, his attention is rehooked by a fresh round of taunts from Jeremy.
Beth shifts. With her free hand, she tugs down the hem of her dress. It keeps riding up and exposing her to the elements, which includes more than the thriving ecosystem of bacteria that have colonized the couch cushions. The concrete walls and floor—also sticky, she’s discovered, from the way her flip flops squelched earlier when she’d tried to move from a place she’d been standing in too long—have made the room bizarrely cold for May.
Nobody else seems to notice, though. They’re all flushed, beads of sweat collecting on their reddened necks, dipping outside for “fresh air,” which Beth’s come to understand is an ironic code for “cigarette break.”
She shivers, looking down at the Solo cup Dean had pushed into her hands when he’d promised her he was just going to play one quick round of pong. She’d stared at it blankly, wondering if she was supposed to drink it. She hadn’t asked for it. It was fizzing and it smelled weird, nothing like the bourbon her mom liked to drink.
“It’s just that Eric’s down a partner because Patrick was dared to drink some bong water, and now he’s, like, throwing up in the bathroom,” Dean had explained with a shake of his head. He’d slid his arm around Beth so that she’d glanced first at his fingers curling around her shoulder before she looked up at him with a smile as he’d led her over to the couch. He’d squeezed her arm and, eyes twinkling, he’d promised, “It’ll just be a sec—then I’m yours for the rest of the night, okay?”
Beth had nodded in a daze, the ghost of Dean’s fingers still warm against her arm. She hadn’t minded waiting. Yours for the rest of the night had played on repeat in her head as she watched him play. It sounded nice.
(It had sounded like what she’d hoped this night would look like when he’d ask her to come.)
But that was over a half hour ago, and the seat next to her had been taken by the annoying gossipers, and the longer she’s here, the more out of place she feels. All around her are drunk girls giggling and egging each other on to flash boys too dumb to be paying attention, and the bubbles in Beth’s beer are still bursting at the top of her cup, undisturbed.
She wishes Ruby were here to judge and mock the stupidity with her, but this wasn’t her scene. God, it wasn’t Beth’s scene. Everyone else seems to be having a blast, but she wants to crawl out of her skin.
(How many times had Rio told her she didn’t know how to have fun? That she was wound too tight? That she needed to learn how to relax?
Every Monday morning he’d plop down next to her on the bus and ask what she’d done over the weekend, and when she’d say “homework” or “babysit,” he’d groan like it was a personal affront to him that she didn’t come to these kinds of things. He’d even started calling her Queen Elizabeth because according to him, she was “so prim and proper” that he wasn’t even sure she even knew how to laugh.
That was obviously stupid. Rio had made her laugh dozens of times—though she was much more likely to try and hold it in, looking out the window and smiling privately to herself to avoid giving him the satisfaction.
Rio laughed all the time, though. At her, at himself—the second even more embarrassing than when he made fun of her. He loved laughing at his own jokes, and she had a front row seat to it too often: On the bus… on the walk home they shared every day after school…
In the hallways with the rotating string of girls he was always parading around—the ones that gave their laughter to him easily.
She hated it.
Didn’t they see he didn’t need any bigger of a head than he already had?)
Beth scrunches her nose. What did Rio know, anyway? She could be fun.
No, she thinks. She is fun. That was why Dean—a senior—had invited her to this party. Sure, she had thought he’d been about to invite her to prom—but still. He’d wanted to hang out with her outside of the confines of their study hall class.
He didn’t think she was boring. He didn’t tease her for being a nerd. He liked that she could help him with his English essays, marking up his comma splices and correcting his spelling and rewriting his run-on sentences. He’d wanted to see her on a Friday night. Had made it clear, with a straightforward, unambiguous invitation. And then, he’d borrowed his dad’s ‘vette, driven over to her house, and picked her up like it was a real date, coming up to the door and complimenting her dress and everything.
(If he’d been around, she even thinks Dean would’ve shaken her father’s hand, called him Mr. Marks, and promised to get her home by curfew—well, if such a concept existed in her house. But still, she thinks. He would’ve done things properly.)
And if everything went well tonight, maybe he would ask her to the dance. And then maybe at the end of the night, after he’d held her in his arms as they swayed (maybe after he’d snuck a kiss in during the last slow song) he’d ask her to be his girlfriend. They’d hold hands in the hallway, share milkshakes at the diner during lunch, and on weekends, she’d go to his baseball games and sit in the bleachers with his mom. She could ask for her recipe for the lemon sugar cookies Dean always brought to class and shared with her.
(Dean thought they were just okay—“too sweet,” he’d told her once—but Beth thought he was crazy. They were soft and melted in her mouth, and it was hard for Beth to stop at just one. It was just—she can’t even remember the last time her mother made anything that didn’t come in a can, if she bothered to make anything at all.)
Catching her eye, Dean lifts his red cup in her direction, a crooked grin on his face. Beth mirrors him, pretending like she doesn’t feel her thighs melding to the couch cushions.
“Five more minutes,” he mouths apologetically, flashing his fingers at her.
She starts to nod, but Dean’s attention is quickly lost to Eric tugging on his sleeve, drawing him back to the game.
Beth’s face falls, but she shakes herself off. What was five minutes, really? She could do that, no problem. She could be flexible. After all, she’d have him for the rest of the night—he’d promised.
Fun, she reminds herself. This is supposed to be fun.
Squaring her shoulders, Beth swishes the beer around in her cup, letting it lap up the sides, threatening to spill out over the edge. She brings it to her mouth, ignoring the way the sour smell makes her eyebrows pinch.
“What are you doin’ here?”
The beer wets her lips but gets no further. Wiping the remnants off with the back of her hand, Beth lowers the cup, looking up to find Rio staring at her like she was a pigeon in the middle of the cereal aisle: strange and out of place. He looks almost exactly the same as he did at school—black jeans, black hoodie—only she notices he’s changed his shoes. High tops now, instead of Jordans.
“Excuse me,” Beth says, offended at the implication. “I was invited.”
He laughs. (Of course he laughs.)
“Yeah, that’s not what I meant.”
Beth doesn’t dignify that with a response. She knew that. It was a joke. Obviously. She lifts the cup again.
She’s about to take a sip when Rio distracts her by dropping down next to her just like he does every morning, only on the bus there’s enough room on the seat that only their knees jostle together as they rumble down the street, and on the couch they’re squished together so that they’re touching from their shoulders all the way down to their toes. The girls on the other side of him hiss in annoyance, shunted over so that they’re practically on top of each other.
“Hey!” one of them whines, but Beth hardly hears her.
Suddenly, she understands everyone’s need for fresh air. Her skin burns now, all the blood rushing to the surface, and she’s now acutely aware of the muggy heat of too many bodies in an enclosed space.
Tugging her dress down again, Beth pulls the fabric over her exposed knee.
The girls shoot Rio a dirty look. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“You changed,” he says dumbly, watching her hand fiddling with her hem.
“So?” Beth asks defensively.
She feels Rio’s eyes scan over her and her cheeks blaze under the scrutiny. He’d teased her once about her floral blouses—asked what was on her agenda for the PTA meeting after school, whether she was going to make muffins or brownies for the bake sale.
He probably thought the dress was ugly and matronly too.
The girls he liked didn’t wear anything like this. Their clothes were strappy or tight or revealing. This was a stretchy wrap dress with scrunched sleeves. The scoop neckline was lower than her usual shirts, but it was still modest.
Boring, some might think.
Beth glances over at Rio, waiting for him to answer. He blinks and locks eyes with her, eyes black and shiny and focused as a camera lens, and if she didn’t know any better she might think—
Swirling the beer in her cup again, Beth looks away.
“So nothin’.” Rio shrugs, clearing his throat, his shoulder rubbing against hers. She shoots him a look like it’s irritating, but his eyes are on the strip of knee that’s been exposed from her dress riding back up, and of course Rio would be the one to notice the patch of blonde fuzz she’d missed in the shower this morning.
He noticed everything, always. He’d tug on strands of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail, poke at ink stains on her hands, even point out when there was a typo in the book he was reading over her shoulder.
“O-kay,” Beth says, mouth rounded in an “O.”
Why was he still staring?
“It’s just different.”
Beth pulls at the dress’s hem again. “Not really.”
“I ain’t never seen you wear it before.”
“Well. That’s because it violates dress code.”
Rio nods slowly, processing the information, acting like she’s just tried to explain quantum physics to him when really she’d just said a simple sentence about the length of her skirt.
Why was he being so weird? Was he stoned?
The song changes. Now it’s something slower, something bearable.
“I only wear it on weekends,” she feels the need to clarify when he still doesn’t say anything. “So... that’s why you haven’t seen it.”
“Right.” He nods, then his eyes sparkle and she knows before he does it that he’s going to tease her. “‘Cause you’re always too busy babysitting to kick it, yeah?”
Beth rolls her eyes. Recently he’d started suggesting she come “kick it” with him whenever she told him about some boring thing she was planning on doing that weekend—cross stitching or reading a book or taking Annie to the park. It’d started around the time he’d started walking her home about a month ago. Technically, his bus stop was down the street from hers, so he got on after her in the morning and he should’ve got off after her, too, in the afternoon—only one day he’d followed her off instead, determined to finish their argument about Pride and Prejudice (he said Darcy was “just being honest” in the proposal scene, as if honesty were more important than decency , and even now her blood boils at the thought). Beth didn’t think anything of it, too distracted and annoyed that he refused to concede even though she was clearly right (her argument had included an historical analysis of the social mores of the time period, too, something he’d blatantly ignored ) , but then the next day he followed her off again. And the next and the next—each time deboarding with a little two-footed hop off the last step—regardless of whether or not they were in an argument.
She had no idea what to make of any of it.
“You’re killin’ me, ma,” he’d always say, hand to his chest in mock anguish whenever she told him her plans. “You really gonna sit at home doing that when we could be kickin’ it?”
Sometimes she fantasized about saying yes—just to surprise him, to catch him off guard and see his jaw drop—but she imagined him laughing at her and she always stopped herself.
She didn’t want him to think she actually believed it was a serious offer.
It was one of his dumb jokes, a trap no matter which way she played it. If she said no, she looked serious. Dull. If she refused to answer, she looked bothered. But if she said yes? Then she’d look like she wanted to hang out with him. Like—like she’d been hoping he’d ask.
But she’d never give him that satisfaction—not when she knew he’d never meant it as a real invitation.
They weren’t friends like that. He didn’t hang out with girls like her. No, he hung out with girls that came to parties like this.
Giggly girls. Funny girls. Cool girls.
She and him? They sat together on the bus, that was it. Sometimes he’d try to catch her eye in the hallway and he’d smirk at her like he was daring her to come up and talk to him, but she always looked quickly away, pretending she hadn’t seen him.
It wasn’t like he made her nervous—it was just weird imagining translating the bubble they existed in on the bus to school. She tried to picture him and Ruby interacting, and she just… couldn’t.
(If Ruby knew that Rio was a drug dealer, that’d be enough for her. She wouldn’t even care that he’d made it to Regionals in Debate last year as a freshmen, or that he loved to brag that his sister was going to be a famous chef one day, or that he’d somehow befriended the grumpiest neighborhood tabby so that it followed them almost the whole three blocks from the bus stop to her house, winding around Rio’s legs and rubbing against him begging for pets.
Once, they’d just kept walking, just to see how far it would follow—they’d gone an additional four blocks away through the alley in the cul de sac all the way to Rio’s house—a brown bungalow, a little smaller than hers, but more vibrant with a large, overgrown garden populated with marigolds and dahlias lining the edges of the yard.
The cat had trotted after them the whole way, meowing happily.
Rio was just magnetic like that.
Not that she thought that would sway Ruby, who had exactly one thing in common with Mr. Darcy: her good opinion once lost was lost forever.)
“But you’re here,” Rio says, pulling her back from her thoughts.
“I am,” Beth assents, and then she remembers herself. Remembers where she is. Remembers why. Her gaze flits across the room, finding Dean, laughing, his arm hooked around Eric’s neck as he rubs his knuckles across his staticked hair in a noogie, and she breathes a sigh of relief that he hasn’t noticed her.
She doesn’t know how it’d look, that’s all—her and Rio squished together on this couch, her skin flushed red from the heat.
“Of all places.”
“Yup.”
She prickles, feeling him studying her like he thinks she doesn’t fit in here.
Was it really so unbelievable that she’d be invited to a party? That someone would see her and think she looked normal? That for one night, she could blend, pretending to be a regular teenager and forget everything waiting for her back at home?
Rio nudges her. “Now we can finally chill, yeah?” He grins.
“Oh, yeah, well, I know you’ve been so desperate for that,” Beth says sarcastically.
Her eyes widen.
She hadn’t meant to—she was caught off guard—that’s all. She’d thought he was saying—but then he’d come out of nowhere with—
His eyebrows pop up and she’s mortified. Whenever she was around him, it was like her impulse control malfunctioned. Words flew out of her mouth like they’d been lobbed out of a slingshot, and it felt like there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“I—”
But then—of course—she should’ve known—Rio laughs. Head thrown back and everything.
“Damn, ma, tell me what you really think.”
Her cheeks burn furiously, but Rio doesn’t linger on it. He wipes his smile away by smoothing his fingers over his lips, then asks:
“So if you’re here, who’s watching your sister?”
“She’s at a sleepover,” Beth says stiffly.
God, she wishes she would burst into flames. Now Rio probably thought she thought he was in love with her or something—but that wasn’t it. She’d only meant that he was always trying to pull the same stupid prank, and it was annoying.
(She knows he isn’t desperate for her. Why did she say that?)
“So, you got newfound freedom, a new scene...” Rio starts, jutting his chin out toward the party buzzing around them, “a new dress…” Her knee is exposed again, but before she can fix it, she jerks to look at Rio when she feels his arm snake around her back, “and some new, ah... proclivities?”
Beth gapes. He makes the word sound almost—dirty.
With his arm draped over her shoulder, Rio reaches his hand on top of hers to tilt her cup so that the beer sloshes dangerously close to the edge; Beth gasps—holding her breath—waiting for the spill. It never comes.
“Didn’t peg you for a Natty Lite fan.”
“I don’t think that’s what ‘proclivity’ means,” Beth says when she can breathe again. When he takes his fingers off hers (even if he leaves his hand so that it dangles, his fingerprints brushing against the bare skin below her sleeve).
“You sure ‘bout that?”
No.
“Pretty sure.”
Rio chuckles. “Well, if you wanna maintain your nerd crown, Queen Elizabeth, you gotta earn it.”
“What does that mean?”
He lifts his chin, gesturing to the rickety wooden stairs that stand in the middle of the room leading to the main party upstairs. “Let’s go break into the office and look for a dictionary, yeah? And if you really want to drink somethin’, I’ll get you some of the good stuff. I know where they hide the key to the liquor cab—”
“I don’t want to drink.”
Rio quirks his lips. He waits a beat. “And here I was expectin’ you to tell me stealing is wrong.”
“Well. That too,” Beth tacks on, picking a piece of lint off of Rio’s knee and flicking it to the ground.
His eyes crinkle, amused.
“You know nobody cares if you don’t wanna drink,” Rio tells her. His thumb grazes against her arm and she almost swears it’s deliberate. “You don’t have to pretend.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“No? You got a beer in your hand that people only drink if they want to get drunk on the cheap. You know this stuff’s poison, yeah?”
“I didn’t—pick it,” Beth corrects, suddenly determined that he doesn’t see her as naive. Inexperienced.
“Nah?” He doesn’t believe her. She can tell. “Who did?”
Her eyes find Dean, pretending to be an ape scratching at himself, finding and eating imaginary fleas—a distraction for his opponent, who stands rigid, practicing flicking his wrist before his shot.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spies Rio’s head turn away from her, following her gaze, landing on—
“You're here with Boland?”
The basement door bangs open and a cascade of feet pound on the rickety wooden stairs as a trio of boys come down from the main party to check out the beer pong table. In the opposite corner, a girl in Beth’s grade sputters and coughs after taking a hit, the bong loose between her fingers until a boy reaches across to catch it from slipping onto the concrete floor.
Beth swallows, looking away to smooth her skirt. “Yeah, so?”
His tone confuses her. He sounds almost… judgmental. Worse than that, even. Contemptuous, one of the words she’d learned from her Pride and Prejudice chapter vocabulary lists. It was how she’d always imagined Wickham’s name sounded in Darcy’s mouth.
But that didn’t make sense. Everyone loved Dean. He was the student body Treasurer, and as quarterback he’d gotten the football team to the finals, and he’d had the funniest skit at the Spring Talent Show (she’d been very impressed. Later, she’d found out it was a famous SNL sketch, but still. He’d done a good job). On top of that, his father always loaned the school a fleet of sports cars from his dealership to decorate for the prom court float parade every year, and his mom had organized the fundraiser that had paid for the new turf field. Sure, none of that was really Rio’s scene but still—she couldn’t imagine what problem Rio could possibly have with him. Dean was one of the most popular boys in school.
“He’s a weasel.”
“Excuse me?”
“His mom drops him off at school every day. Picks him up too.”
“I don’t see—”
“She packs him a lunch.”
“Why do you say it like that?” Beth demands. It was nice. Loving. Ordinary. She wished—
“He’s a senior,” Rio deadpans, like this is an explanation.
Like you could outgrow wanting your parents to take care of you.
“You’re saying that if you could, you wouldn’t take the chance not to ride the bus every day? To sleep in an extra half hour? To be able to—”
“No.”
Beth blinks, taken aback. The way he says it—the word is weighted. Pointed, almost. Something twists in her as she tries to untangle his meaning, but Rio’s already moved on.
“He cheated on his last girlfriend, you know.”
“You’ve had a million girlfriends,” Beth throws back, temper flaring. That wasn’t—she’d never heard—
Dean wouldn’t.
“Huh? So? That’s not the—”
“So,” Beth interrupts, rolling her shoulders so that Rio’s arm falls off her and onto the back of the couch, “why aren’t you at one of their parties? Dylan or Diane or Rhea—”
“‘Cause I don’t like them.”
“Why? Is it because their mothers pack them lunches? Because they don’t ride the bus? Because—”
Rio scoffs. “Yeah, Elizabeth. That’s why. It’s because they don’t ride the bus.”
Her brows knit and she scowls because—what did he even mean?
Before she can even think of something to say, though, a loud whoop sounds from the opposite side of the room, snapping her attention back to Dean, who fist-pumps the air. He looks for her, looks to see if she saw his last shot. She didn’t, but she smiles encouragingly like she had.
(It can’t be that different from the others, right?)
Before Dean can register Rio’s arm around the back of the couch, Beth pushes up and off the seat.
“Just so you know,” she says, peeling her flip flops off the dirty floor, “I think that’s a really dumb reason not to like someone.”
Rio looks at her, eyes hard, and she swears she sees him jerk his head briefly before he shakes the whole interaction off. She walks across the room, pushing through the small crowd of people surrounding the ping pong table, and she stands near Dean, hovering behind his left shoulder—only he sees her and reaches out a hand, pulling her to the table.
“Last shot, Bethie,” he whispers conspiratorially, as if she’s the only person in the room. “Blow for luck?”
He holds the ping pong ball out to her, just in front of her mouth, and she can smell the beer on it, faint but sour.
For a second, feeling completely stupid, she just looks at it, a flimsy white piece of plastic pinched between Dean’s thumb and forefinger. She can feel the weight of everyone watching her, waiting for her to make her move.
Then, through a gap in the circle of spectators, Beth’s eyes find Rio’s. He’s still sitting on the couch, eyes hooded and face impassive—but he’s watching her too, gaze razor-sharp.
You don’t have to pretend.
A flash of heat strikes through her, electric and all-consuming.
She wasn’t pretending. She could be fun. She could be cool.
Leaning forward, lips puckered in a perfect “O,” cheeks blazing red, Beth blows.
She doesn’t watch for his reaction. Instead, she watches Dean hold his arm perpendicular to the floor, his face screwed up in concentration as he lines up the shot. When he releases the ball, it flies through the air in a perfect arc before it clips the rim, circling the lip before falling into the cup.
A cheer erupts. The game’s over. He’s hers for the rest of the night.
When Beth looks back up, Rio’s gone.
“You’re not drinking,” Dean says, leaning over to peer in her cup—the same one he pushed into her hands earlier, now long-stale and lukewarm.
She’s been holding onto it like a lifeline, something that makes her blend, that makes it look like she fits in here—but it’s also given her something to do with her hands. She traced the rim with a finger and scratched her nail down the ridged side while they sat on the brick ledge of the fireplace in the den. In the corner, a group of kids had been playing some elaborate card game with a bunch of strange rules that led to them getting loudly and obnoxiously drunk—which prompted Dean to suggest that they look for “some quiet” and “a refill.”
Before they’d made their way into the kitchen, Dean had meticulously explained the science behind horsepower and vee engines and cylinders and other words Beth had never heard of. None of it meant anything to her—she knew nothing about cars and hadn’t been bothered to learn because she didn’t think she’d be getting one of her own for a long time—but Dean had studied up. It was impressive, Beth thought, even if she did tease him that maybe he should use that same energy to study for his math tests sometime. But while Dean didn’t care about his grades, he did care about this. Apparently his dad had promised that he could choose any car he wanted off the lot for his graduation present so long as he didn’t fail any of his classes, and he was determined to make the right pick.
Beth wondered what that would be like, to have options.
Now they’re standing at the island in a large and spacious kitchen—the kind of kitchen Beth imagines would typically be immaculately clean if it hadn’t been trashed by a bunch of drunk teenagers—Dean included. She’d watched as he’d accidentally sloshed half a ladle full of spiked punch onto the white marble countertop. He’d thrown a paper towel over it, then forgot about it the second he’d clocked her still-full cup.
“Do you, like, not drink?”
“No, no, it’s not that,” Beth starts, the lie forming on her tongue before she even thinks about it.
Dean blinks, waiting for an explanation. On the other side of the door, she hears a dull outburst of laughter.
“It’s just—Natty’s not my drink.” She shrugs, shifting her weight and playing nonchalant.
“Oh, right,” he says, grinning easily. He wags a finger at her. “You’re, like, one of those classy girls. I bet you like something fancy—like merlot or Chardonnay, huh?”
Classy? she thinks. At her house, ordering Domino’s pizza was considered a luxury. Every day after school, she watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Annie on an outdated TV set. She fixed her own clothes, sewing on lost buttons and stitching up tears to make things last longer.
Had she really passed herself off as classy? She’d just been aiming for normal. Like she wasn’t a girl with a mother that didn’t get out of bed until noon, or a father that spent the night on the couch (if he came home at all), or a baby sister that’d made her a Mother’s Day card in school.
Beth scans the counter. There are half-empty six-packs, two bowls of punch, and two-liters of pop—name brand—but no bottles of wine. Her mouth waters, thinking about the crisp sugary taste of a glass of Coca-Cola. She doesn’t remember the last time they’d had the fridge stocked with soda.
“You got me,” Beth agrees. “That’s—those are my drinks. But I’ll just have pop, it’s fine.”
She reaches for a fresh cup from a stack next to a mostly empty Doritos bag with only a few broken pieces and crumbs—but Dean spins on his heel and says, “They’ve got chardonnay. Mrs. Lewis, like, loves the stuff.”
He reaches the end of the island where there must be some kind of endcap wine rack because he leans over, popping back up with a bottle of yellow-green liquid.
Plucking the cup out of her hand, he slides open a drawer, pulls out a silver tool, and then uncorks the bottle.
“We shouldn’t steal,” Beth says, mouth dry. “I’m really okay with—”
“Mrs. Lewis won’t notice,” Dean promises. “She’s kind of a—” He mimes tipping back a bottle and chugging, “you know? She’ll just figure she drank it herself.”
The liquid glugs as Dean pours it into the cup, filling it all the way to the very top.
“That’s sad,” Beth says softly, thinking of the nights she used to tuck her mom in on the couch from staying up late, waiting for her father to come home, an empty tumbler on the floor, the light from the TV flickering across her slack face. Beth doesn’t have to do that anymore, at least. Her mom’s stopped waiting up.
“Yeah, it is,” Dean says. “But it’s also kind of funny? Sometimes she gets trashed and tries to get us to dance with her to old, cheesy ‘80s music. Jeremy always gets super mad and embarrassed, but it’s cool. She’s just, like, this bored, lonely housewife.”
Beth winces. “Where is she now?”
“Girls’ trip for the weekend, I think Jeremy said.”
“And Mr. Lewis?”
“Probably where he always is.”
“Where’s that?”
“His girlfriend’s.”
Dean hands her the cup and Beth takes it absently, her eyes focused on a wooden sign hanging to the left of a sleek, silver stove: Kitchens are made to bring families together. She wonders if Mrs. Lewis has also made Jeremy and his sister sit at the table watching the food get cold, waiting for Mr. Lewis to come through the door in a rumpled suit, refusing to sit down to eat until he’d had a shower and “washed off the day.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, I don’t get it.”
“Yeah, I mean—if you don’t want to be with someone, you should just break up with them… right? Let them go?” Beth asks, turning back to look at Dean, remembering what Rio told her. It’s not like she believes it—it was just a rumor, Dean would never cheat on somebody—but she watches him intently, waiting to see how he’ll react.
Dean takes a swig of his drink, smacking his lips when he swallows. “Exactly.”
Tension ekes out of her body. She knew she was right.
“But also Mrs. Lewis is still, like, really pretty?”
“So?” Beth asks, face pinching in confusion. What did that have to do with anything?
Scratching at his eyebrow, Dean laughs. “I don’t know. I think I’m drunk.”
“Oh.”
For a moment, neither of them says anything. Then, Dean leans back against the counter next to her, and he looks down at her, his face softening, reminding her of the way he looks at her in study hall when she’s finished fixing his essays, open and at-ease.
Like it takes so little to make him happy.
“ You’re really pretty,” he tells her, and his eyes scan over her face, landing on her lips.
Beth’s stomach drops and her cheeks warm. She tucks her hair behind her ear.
“Thank you.”
“And you look even prettier in this dress,” he says, taking a bit of the material between his fingers at her waist and snapping it against her skin.
Her palms start to sweat against the Solo cup.
“Thank you,” she repeats, softer.
“Every time you wear it—” He shakes his head. “You’re all I think about for the rest of the day.”
She should take the compliment. She should shut up and let it slide—
“But I’ve never worn this dress before.”
Frowning, she glances down at the daisy pattern. When she looks back up at him, Dean’s closer to her—like he’d been leaning in towards her. Like maybe he’d been about to kiss her. He pulls back.
Stupid, Beth curses herself. Why did she always need to be right?
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
“I mean, I don’t... think I have?” she says, playing uncertain. Maybe she could still salvage this. Get the kiss. Get the prom invite. Get the boy.
“Red daisy dress? I’m sure it was you. It had to be you. Nobody else—nobody else would be half as memorable.”
Beth smiles, biting her lip.
(Who cared about technicalities, anyway?)
“Really?” She chances looking back at him, and his eyes on her—only her.
Dean nods, then says, voice low and serious, “Really.”
She’s buzzing with anticipation, waiting for him to try again, to close the gap and kiss her—
And then the door swings open with a bang and Beth jumps back and away, heart in her throat.
“Hope I’m not interruptin’ somethin’,” Rio drawls, surveying the gap that has widened between her and Dean, focus landing on the amber liquid that leaped out of her cup when she’d startled and landed on her chest.
She didn’t—
She thought he’d left.
“What are you doing here?” Beth snaps, setting her drink on the counter and reaching for a paper towel.
Ugh. Now she’s sticky. Or rather, stickier.
Rio looks around as if confused. “‘Scuse me,” he says, mock offended. “I was invited.” Then he laughs, but it’s not like his normal laugh. This one—it sounds… mean.
Beth dabs at the wet spot. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Huh,” Rio says dismissively. He lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug.
God, he’s driving her crazy.
Dean looks blankly between them, trying to catch up or piece it all together.
“You know each other?”
“We ride the bus together,” Beth explains.
“Every day,” Rio adds, as if that matters somehow. Then he slides between them and starts fixing himself a drink. Beth eyes him warily, but he ignores her, focused on flipping a cup off the stack and into his hand while scooping a ladle of punch into it in one swift, smooth movement. He doesn’t spill a drop.
Beth lips part in a gape. Show-off.
“That’s implied,” Beth says, recovering herself.
“Is it?” Rio challenges.
“Yes,” she insists, crumpling her napkin in her hand. She grabs the napkin Dean left soaking up his spill on the counter and walks both of them to a trash can that she opens with a foot pedal. “It’s how we get to school, so obviously it’s every day.”
“Lots of ways to get to school.” Rio claps a hand onto Dean’s shoulder, who looks down at it, dumbfounded. “Right, man?”
“Uh, right.”
“Let’s go, Dean,” Beth announces abruptly. She wants to get him away from Rio because he’s acting like—like—she doesn’t even know. Weird. He was always annoying, but never like this.
“Wait,” Dean says, planting his feet when Beth reaches for his hand to tug him away. “Your drink.”
“Yeah, can’t forget that,” Rio deadpans.
He holds the cup out to her and she scowls. To anyone else, he’d sound disinterested, even bored. But Beth recognizes the rebuke.
You don’t have to pretend.
“Thank you,” she says primly, ignoring the undertone entirely.
Rio sucks his teeth.
She and Dean are almost out the door when Rio adds one last dig:
“Think they’re playing Two Truths and a Lie in the livin’ room. Might be up your alley.”
Rio wasn’t making it up just to goad her: there was a game of Two Truths and a Lie going on in the living room, and when Beth and Dean walk in, they decide to join the group.
“Is that guy, like, into you?” Dean asks, leaning over to say it quietly into her ear as Dave Epperly rattles out his supposed facts (all related to sex, of course) on the other side of the circle.
“No,” Beth says quickly.
“Are you sure?”
Yes, Beth thinks. She was nothing like any of the girls he’d ever liked. On top of that, they were constantly arguing.
Plus, Rio was honest to a fault. If he liked her, she wouldn’t have any doubts. She’d know.
“I’m positive.” Her throat feels tight. Suddenly it seems very important that Dean believes her. If Rio ruined this for her—
Dean shrugs. “He seemed jealous, but if you say so—”
“I do,” she insists.
“Raise one finger if you think Dave never got a blowjob at the skate park,” Natalie Powers, the apparent leader of this game, announces. “Two fingers if you think he never made out with a pair of sisters in the same night, and three fingers if you think he’s lying about having sex with three different girls.”
Three? Beth thinks, astonished. This is not the game for her. She feels heat creep up her neck, feels her chest go blotchy and red. She raises three fingers, tugging her dress down to make sure that nobody can see underneath it while she sits criss crossed on the carpet.
“Who’s drinking?” Natalie asks Dave once everyone votes.
“Number three!” Dave declares, smiling lazily as if very proud of himself. “I’ve had sex with four girls.”
Dean whistles, impressed. Beth scowls. It was a little much, she thought, flaunting his business like that.
She wonders if maybe no one will notice if she doesn’t sip—but Dean’s eyes flick to her, watching her curiously. Pushing her shoulders back and sitting up straighter, she—for the first time that night—finally takes a drink.
When the liquid hits her tongue, she grimaces. The chardonnay is gross, bitter and somehow dry, acidic and coppery. For a second, Beth considers spitting it right back out into the cup—but Dean’s eyes are on her like a magnet. She forces herself to swallow.
“I thought you liked chard?” Dean asks with suspicion when she represses a shudder.
“I do. It must just be… a different brand,” she says with a wave of the hand. Internally, she’s cringing.
Why did she lie? She didn’t really think he wouldn’t like her if she’d refused that first drink, it’s only that—well—she didn’t want to be rude. Now she’s trapped herself.
She takes another sip to mask the reaction of the first one, determined to drink it down smoothly. Dean nods, but the second he looks away, she sticks her tongue out. She’d rather taste the Axe body spray lingering in the air than another ounce of chardonnay.
That’s not what happens, though. It turns out Beth’s really bad at this game. She gets Dean’s rounds right but for the wrong reasons (he never got grounded for doing coke—he just never got caught; he never grazed Ms. Vaughn’s boob; it was her ass) but he doesn’t get hers (he doesn’t remember that she’s already told him she’s never had a pet dog; he forgets that she’s the index editor for the school yearbook—even if he should know because he was so excited when she told him, even though it was against the rules, that the photo of his championship-winning touchdown pass was the centerpiece of the whole Varsity Football spread). He’s hit or miss about guessing correctly for other people’s rounds, but Beth’s abysmal. All of these kids are older than her, and their gossip has never reached her ears. It’s a stab in the dark every time, and she seems to keep sticking herself.
By the time the game’s over, her cup is empty and she's feeling funny—her body buzzes and she feels loose and warm. When she stands with the help of Dean holding out his hand, she suddenly realizes her leg is asleep when it wakes up with sharp, shooting pains in her feet. She’s wobbly, and Dean wraps his arm around her shoulders and leads her outside for some fresh air.
“I’ll get you some water,” he says, setting her down on a bench on the patio. “I’ll be right back.”
“‘Kay,” Beth says with an exaggerated nod. She sways forward, then shakes her head, pressing back against the back of the bench for proper stability.
Out here, she can hear the crickets singing. Distantly, the sound of cheers and the thump of speakers is a thrum further away in the yard. The air is chilly and it feels good on her skin. She sighs, blinking slowly. Briefly, she closes her eyes, resting.
She wonders if Rio’s still here.
Maybe he left. Maybe he went to Dylan’s party after all.
He said he didn’t like her but Beth still remembers how he looked when he was kissing her. She wasn’t supposed to see—they were tucked into some alcove once when she was out of class on a yearbook assignment—but she did see. A lot. She’d found it hard to tear her eyes away. The way his thumb swiped against her cheek before he buried his hand in her hair was seared into Beth’s mind. She couldn’t forget it. Sometimes, when Rio was talking to her, her eyes would drop to his plump bottom lip, and she’d think of it, the way he’d nibbled at Dylan’s.
Her stomach flips.
She doesn’t feel so well.
She hears the sound of the sliding glass door opening and then a fumbled, “Fuck!” accompanied by a hiss.
Blinking an eye open, Beth sees Dean with her glass of water in one one hand and a snowy white cat in the other—held up by the scruff at the back of its neck. The cat meows, low and angry.
“What are you doing?”
“Charlie slipped out when I was trying to open the door,” Dean says, voice laced with irritation. “He’s always trying to escape.” He twists the cat to stare him down. “You’re a troublemaker, aren’t you?”
Charlie hisses again.
“Little shit,” Dean mutters, and he drops the cat back into the dining room from his full height so that Charlie drops with a thud and then scatters deeper into the house, disappearing with a yowl.
“Sorry about that,” Dean says, holding the glass of water out to Beth, but she knows he’s not apologizing about dropping the cat.
“Thank you,” Beth says instead, taking the glass. She swirls the water around, watching as it creates a divet in the center of the liquid.
Dean settles next to her and he slides his arm around the back of the bench around her as she takes long gulps of water, relishing the way it washes away the leftover flavors of chardonnay.
“So, you didn’t want to share any of your dirty secrets in Two Truths and a Lie?” Dean asks with a mischievous grin when she finishes off the glass.
Beth scuffs the cement patio with her toe. The kind of secrets he’s thinking about—she doesn’t have any of those. It wasn’t like she was totally inexperienced. She’d kissed a boy in truth or dare once, and also her last boyfriend, Jimmy, but she hadn’t gotten much practice. He’d dumped her after three weeks for Gretchen Zorada—a cool girl.
“I'm kind of private.”
“Even with me?” he prods, nudging her.
“We were playing with, like, a whole crowd of people,” Beth points out with a shrug.
“Well, what if we weren’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s play right now, just us.”
He shifts, turning towards her so that he pulls up one of his legs and his shin runs parallel to her thigh. Beth swallows thickly.
She tries to come up with something that will impress him, something true—or maybe just true enough—but what’s impressive about a girl who spends most of her time taking care of her baby sister?
“I can’t think of anything,” she says quietly.
“That’s cool,” Dean reassures her. “I’ll go first.”
“Okay.”
He strokes his chin, pretending to think deeply.
“Alright, I’ve got it. One… I’m terrible at beer pong.”
Beth frowns because she instantly knows that one’s false.
“Two... I’ve had a crush on you for, like... weeks.”
He tugs a strand of Beth’s hair and her eyes widen.
“And three... I’ve been thinking about kissing you all night.”
Her heart hammers in her chest when she feels Dean’s breath fan over her skin as he inches closer.
If she turns her head, he’ll kiss her.
She wonders if he’ll nibble her lip like Rio would.
The thought—which comes out of nowhere —suddenly makes her erupt into giggles, and she claps her hand over her mouth.
“Are you nervous?” Dean teases.
Her gaze snaps down when she feels Dean’s hand on her knee.
Beth nods, rigid.
“Don’t be.”
He’s a fraction of a hair’s width away from her lips when Beth abruptly shoots up and out of her seat, sloshing her water out so that it splashes on her bare feet.
She has no idea why—
Dean stares at her, shock etched onto his face.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Beth announces loudly. “I’ll be—I’ll be right back.”
And then she spins on her heel and disappears into the house with her heart in her throat.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she reprimands herself, running a hand down her face as she slips up the staircase leading to the forbidden second story of the house. She wants to get away from everyone, wants the privacy of the bathroom up here where nobody will be standing outside and knocking and waiting for their turn.
Why did she do that?
She needs to catch her breath.
Everything she wanted, it was within her reach. Dean told her he liked her. He admitted it, out loud, straightforward, no jokes, no code breaker needed. She’d been this close to getting her kiss, and she’d messed it up.
And why? Because at the most inopportune moment in the world she’d imagined—Rio?
Imagined kissing him?
(Imagined that he would taste like the cinnamon gum he chewed?)
What was wrong with her?
She presses her fingers to ridge between her eyebrows. Her head throbs.
At the top of the stairs, she finds herself standing at one end of a long hallway, the walls adorned with family portraits—a wedding portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis hanging as the centerpiece, Jeremy’s and his sister’s school pictures arranged chronologically in neat rows above and below it, snapshots of family vacations on white sand beaches, birthday parties with glowing candles on cake, baseball games and ballerina recitals filling in the rest of the space.
Would she have recognized the brokenness if Dean hadn’t told her?
Would someone else, if they looked at the photos on her walls?
Beth shakes her head, snapping herself out of it. Her thoughts feel like marbles dropping on a hardwood floor, scattering away from her and out of her grasp.
She needs more water—to drink, but also to splash on her face, she thinks.
(Did people really like being drunk? She finds it hard to believe. Why would anyone want to feel out of control?)
Beth tries the first door in the hall. It’s a closet. The second, though, gives her a shock. It takes her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room to figure out what’s happening, but the creak of a mattress and the wet smacking sounds should’ve tipped her off before that. She doesn’t know who it is, but two people are making out on a stranger’s bed in a forbidden part of the house, and they don’t even notice she’s interrupted them. Briefly, Beth freezes in bald shock—but when a noise escapes from the back of someone’s throat, she stumbles backwards, slamming the door shut behind her.
Her heart is still pounding in her chest when she tries the third door, which turns out to be locked. She figures it’s the bathroom, but whoever is in there doesn’t answer, even though Beth knocks twice.
She shudders. She has a feeling she knows what’s behind door number three, as well.
She just wants to sit down , she thinks with a groan. Preferably somewhere that’s not sticky.
Glancing at the other closed doors in the hallway, she considers. A big fancy house like this? Surely the master bedroom had one of those attached bathrooms. She walks to the next door and finds herself surprised when she realizes it’s already slightly ajar, a dim glow illuminating the room.
The door squeaks as she pushes it open, and then—of course, because that’s just her luck tonight—she’s confronted with Rio.
He’s sitting in a small office in an oversized leather executive’s chair, a window framing his head behind him. In front of him, Charlie, the white cat, paces back and forth on a solid oak desk, purring and nuzzling his face against one of Rio’s hands while he uses the other one to slide down his arched back and trace over his tail. Charlie chirps.
“It’s forbidden to be upstairs,” Beth announces, because just looking at the scene in front of her makes her burn.
If his face didn’t burst into her brain at the exact wrong moment, she wouldn’t be here with him at all. She’d be downstairs on a bench curled up against Dean—the boy that invited her.
“But you’re here.”
Beth doesn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, she steps up next to the long, built-in bookcase that takes up the entire wall, scanning over the titles. It’s nothing interesting—but there’s an entire shelf of souvenir trinkets that catches her eye, paper weights and pill boxes and crystal animal figurines neatly arranged but covered in dust. Neglected by Mr. Lewis—not unlike his wife, she thinks.
She lifts a small bronze turtle figurine and wipes it off with the edge of her skirt. It reminds her of Annie’s collection. Ever since she discovered the Ninja Turtles, she’s been obsessed.
“Of all places,” Rio says, drawing Beth’s attention back to him.
“ I’m looking for a bathroom,” she declares, setting the paper weight back on the shelf, although her interest in the task has waned. She feels rooted to the spot.
Waiting for him to offer his own explanation, she raises a brow. He doesn’t react.
“What are you doing?”
Rio shrugs, scratching Charlie’s chin.
“Raiding the liquor cabinet?” Beth suggests.
“Why? You wanna drink some more?” he challenges.
She wonders if Rio can tell she’s drunk.
Her lips thin into a line as she slides her hand against the wood grain, moving to the next section of the bookcase, closer to him. She tilts a book like she’s going to pull it from the shelf, then pushes it back into place before tilting it again, back and forth.
“What are you doin’ here, Elizabeth?”
“I already told you.”
“I don’t mean here,” he says, gesturing to the room. “I mean here. ” He spins his pointer in the air. Charlie’s head bobs, eyes following the tip of Rio’s finger. “This ain’t your scene.”
“Yes it is.”
Rio scoffs.
“You don’t know me.”
“I think I do.”
Beth feels her pulse thrumming through her.
“Whatever.”
“Try me,” Rio challenges. When she looks at him in confusion, he arches a brow. “Two Truths and a Lie.”
She thinks of Dean, sitting, waiting for her on that bench.
“No,” she says, but she doesn’t move.
“What, think I’ll beat you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then c’mon.”
The cat rolls onto his back, exposing his tummy to Rio. He absentmindedly runs his fingers through Charlie’s glossy white hair. Any other cat would bite, Beth thinks, but Charlie merely purrs.
“There’s something in it for you if you win.”
Beth eyes him suspiciously, lightly scratching a nail into the wood of the shelf.
“What is it?” she asks after a long enough pause to look nonchalant.
Rio grins like he knew that would grab her, and it’s soft again. Normal. Something inside of her uncoils.
“It’s a surprise.”
Beth considers.
“Well… what do you get if you win?”
Rio’s eyes flick over her dress and for a moment she feels exposed, nearly naked with her bare knobbly knees on display, but when his eyes settle, they’re locked with hers.
“You, me—we kick it next weekend.”
Her stomach turns, uneasy, and maybe it’s the alcohol, but for once—for once she wants to believe him. Believe it’s not a joke.
But something makes her want to test it.
“I’ll have Annie.”
Rio levels her with an unimpressed look and Beth’s shoulders sag. Then he says: “So bring her.”
She sucks in a breath.
“We can’t go to a party, then,” she points out.
“I don’t want to take you to a party, Elizabeth.”
She bites the inside of her cheek. So it probably wasn’t a date, then. That’s where he took all the girls, so if he didn’t want to take her—
(A small voice protests in the back of her head: this is what he’s chosen as his reward. That means something.)
“Game on?”
Beth shrugs as if the whole thing is beneath her, but she nods, persuaded. Rio chuckles.
“Okay…” She racks her brain, thinking of how she can trick him.
(There was no way she was going to let him win easily. If he lost and he really wanted to hang out with her that badly… well. Maybe he’d muster up the decency to ask her out properly.)
“I’m a copy editor for the yearbook.”
Rio stares at her, impassive, giving no hint as to whether he believes her or not. Clearly he wasn’t going to let her win easily, either. Well. Fine then.
“My favorite scene in Pride and Prejudice is the second proposal scene,” she says. “Also known as the proper proposal.”
He blinks and a glow spreads through her. She thinks she might have him on this one.
“And… I use apple shampoo.”
Rio shakes his head and laughs—loud, full bodied. Startled, Charlie flips up and scurries off the desk, nearly pushing off large, thick book that Beth just now notices lies open to Rio’s left. Rio catches it at the last second, flipping it closed so Beth can see a diagonal line of crescent moon divets in the pages.
A dictionary, she’s pretty sure.
“What’s so funny?”
“‘I don’t wear it because it violates the dress code,’” Rio parrots back to her, all high-pitched and breathless, pushing off the desk so the chair rolls backwards.
Beth’s eyes narrow. That’s not—that’s not how she sounds when she talks to him.
“What are you talking about?”
“You love pretending to care about the rules, huh?”
When Rio comes around from the other side of the desk, Beth swallows.
“I don’t—”
“You didn’t bat an eye when I talked about raiding the liquor cabinet. You’re up here, even though it’s the forbidden zone—and you just told three lies in a game where the rules are in the name.”
He takes a step toward her.
Beth feels her heart rate spike.
“You were copy editor last year. This year, you’re the index editor.”
Beth takes a step back. “How do you—“
“‘Cause you broke that rule too, remember? You slipped up and told me I was on the debate spread ‘cause you saw the picture of my medal and asked about it.” He mimics zipping his lips—his perfectly pink lips. Beth wets hers. “Made me promise to keep it a secret.”
Oh. Right. It’d been a blip of a conversation months ago, and that’s when she’d learned that he’d made it to Regionals last year, before they were friends. She’d been expecting him to bring it up at every opportunity—teasing her about her slip-up, bragging about his big win—but he hadn’t. She’d forgotten she’d even told him but—
Apparently he’d remembered.
“You like the second proposal, but it ain’t your favorite scene,” he says at the same time that he takes another step towards her.
Beth forces herself to stand steady.
“No?”
“Nah. It’s when Elizabeth walks through all that mud to go visit her sick sister, and she gets her dress all dirty and Darcy likes her anyway—no. He likes her because of it.”
Okay, she definitely didn’t tell him that.
Before she can say anything, though, he says (like he knew she was about to ask), “C’mon, you remember. You were cheesin’ hard the whole class period, all pleased and shit. Ms. Tibbets used your paper as a model for an A? ‘Perfect use of text evidence to support a thesis.’ You wrote twice as much for that paragraph as the others.”
“Well. It’s a good scene, so…” Cheeks hot, she traces a circle into the wood grain and notices a blank spot in the lineup of books—a hollow between an atlas and a thesaurus.
(Definitely a dictionary on the shelf, then. She wonders who was right about “proclivity.”)
“It’s a’ight. But the best scene is when she’s at Pemberley.”
“What, when she realizes she could’ve been loaded if she’d just accepted his proposal?”
She scoffs. Of course he’d like the moment where she realized she was wrong all along.
Shaking his head sharply, Rio takes another step.
“No. When she spies him with his sister and figures out they’re exactly... the... same.”
She can hear the blood rushing in her ears.
“A respectable choice,” Beth allows quietly, but she finds that when Rio closes the gap between them so that he’s standing right in front of her, her eyes drop to the ground, noticing the way the tips of his Converse align perfectly with the edge of her flip flops.
“And you wear vanilla shampoo most of the time,” Rio says softly, and he reaches for a strand of hair that’s fallen out of her ponytail, tugging on it so that her eyes snap to his. “But every now and then you wear something different. Not apple, though.”
“Watermelon,” she supplies. When she runs out of her stock, she uses Annie’s L’Oreal Kids until she can convince her mom to go to the grocery store.
“Watermelon,” he repeats, and he’s still got the strand of her hair twisting between his fingers so that she can feel the weight of his hand on her shoulder. Her stomach somersaults. “You impressed?”
“Who knew you were so obsessed with me?” she teases instead of answering, hoping to break the tension that feels like a ramrod wire zipping down her spine.
For a second, Rio doesn’t react, and Beth opens her mouth to reel it back—to explain it was a joke—only by that point, Rio’s laughing.
“Damn, ma, you’re vicious when you lose. You gonna be this mean when we kick it?”
She shifts her weight, shrugs her shoulder. She grins. “I could be... persuaded to be nicer.”
He raises a brow, interest caught. “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”
“I want my prize.”
Rio cackles.
“This ain’t Little League, darlin’. You don’t get a trophy just for playing.”
“But you already have it,” she points out. She doesn’t know when he picked it out or for what purpose, but she’s desperate to know what it is. “So you may as well give it to me.”
“No.”
“Come on—I’ll let you win our next argument!”
“Nah, I like beating you fair and square.”
“I’ll bake you cookies—your favorites. I’m very good.”
Rio grins, dropping his hand from her shoulder to gesture between them. “Oh, this is a negotiation, huh?”
“I want to know what it was!”
“I’ll give it to you next weekend,” he promises.
She blinks her lashes at him, widening her eyes with a pout. “Or... you could be nice and just give it to me now.”
For a second, she catches Rio staring at her lips before he blinks and snaps out of it.
“Jesus, you play dirty.”
Beth grins wickedly, breaking character. “Come on—at least tell me what it is.”
“You’ll find out when we kick it. Let’s call it... incentive.”
“But I want to know now. ”
Rio shrugs, bottom lip jutting out. “Well, then, let’s go.”
Beth freezes. “What?”
“If you want to hang out so bad, let’s bounce. Get outta here.”
In the hallway, she hears a door open and click shut again. A nervous giggle. The squeak of a floorboard underneath forbidden feet. The sounds from the rest of the house.
Downstairs, Dean is waiting for her.
“I can’t do that.”
“And why's that?”
“I—I came here with someone else.”
A shadow flickers over Rio’s face. “So?”
“So I can’t—just leave with—with another guy.”
“Why not?” he asks, brows furrowed in confusion like he doesn't understand.
And maybe he really doesn’t, Beth thinks when she realizes that it’s not a rhetorical question—that he’s staring at her like he’s waiting for an explanation.
(Is this what he does to his girlfriends? Is that how he flies through so many? The second he’s bored of them—the second someone else captures his attention—he just leaves?)
“Because—it wouldn’t be decent.”
“You serious right now?”
“There’s a right way to do things.”
“And that’s lying?”
“What are you—? I’m not lying—”
“Yeah, you are. And not just to him. To yourself. Pretending you’re the type of girl that hangs out at parties—”
“Like every girl you’ve ever dated, you mean?”
Rio scowls. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s normal—” she insists, agitation coursing through her veins. “Everyone goes to parties—”
“Not you.”
Her face flushes.
Why was he so determined to make her feel like she didn’t belong?
“Why are you here?” he asks for the third time.
“Why do you care!”
“Because I know the only reason that guy likes you”—he points toward the door, to the world that exists outside their bubble—“is ‘cause he thinks you’re someone you’re not.”
The words land like mines, burrowing under her skin and exploding in a white hot heat of shame. Her eyes sting. Stepping back, she moves away from him. Rio’s fingers twitch.
“I know I’m not—cool—like Dylan or those other girls,” Beth says, enunciating the words very carefully so Rio can’t detect the way her voice wobbles, “but is it so impossible to believe that someone might like me?”
Rio rolls his shoulders, jaw locked.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Why? Because you’re so honest? Because you always say exactly what you mean?”
Honest to a fault, she reminds herself. If he liked you, you’d know.
“Don’t—”
“Everything okay in here?”
Beth and Rio both turn sharply towards the door to see a tall boy peeking in, a freckled girl hovering behind his shoulder. Probably a couple searching for one of the empty bedrooms.
“It sounded like fighting, so we just…” The boy’s words peter out and he looks uncomfortable.
Rio glances at Beth as if waiting for her to answer. She nods, swiping a finger under her eye.
“Everything’s fine. I was just about to head back downstairs.”
The boy and girl exchange a look of uncertainty, but they don’t press. They step aside for Beth to pass. She can feel Rio staring at her back.
“Elizabeth,” he tries.
But she pretends she doesn’t hear him.