“I’m so glad you did,” I say.
He touches my silver necklace, which is hanging down between us.
“And like, I get it, you know?” I say. “I know how horrible being used feels. I really want you to know it was never that for me, and I’m so sorry that Adonis guy treated you like that.”
“Mm-hmm. One very shitty example among, like, a million of them.”
“He was hot, though.”
“Oh, you noticed?”
“Definitely,” I say. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I was jealous.”
“You’re more my type. Plus, importantly, you’re not an asshole.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “Hey, do you remember the first time you met me?”
“It’s sort of hard to forget.”
I was running late for camp, and I burst into my cabin to unload my stuff before rushing to orientation. I accidentally burst in on Ruben, who had returned to his cabin in order to get his inhaler. He shrieked and then threw a pillow at me, and told me to never do that again. He later told me he freaked out because he’d watched Friday the 13th just before coming to camp.
“What was your first impression of me?” he asks.
I think back. I can actually still picture it so clearly. Me, rushing to my cabin, and then my blood going cold when I realized I’d just burst in on a boy I’d never met. Even at my first sight of him, I knew Ruben was someone I wanted to like me.
“I remember thinking you were special,” I say. “I knew right away you were going to be a big deal at camp, you just had that vibe.”
“That’s nice,” he says softly.
“Do you remember the first time you saw me?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“I remember thinking: how am I going to stay chill sharing a cabin with a guy this hot?”
I can barely contain my smile.
“And now?” I ask, kissing the spot below his ear.
“I think I handled myself okay.”
“Me, too.”
I’m so drunk, but I still can’t help but dwell on it. Has Ruben liked me for longer than I thought? And how long have I liked him? What I drunkenly admitted was true; I was jealous of the guy he was flirting with at Angel’s party. I’ve always felt intensely about Ruben, but the ease with which this has become something more makes me think that there has always been something romantic in those feelings.
Maybe I just wasn’t ready to accept them until now.
“Hey,” he says. “Have you ever thought about us as…”
I fill in the blank for him. “Boyfriends?”
“Yeah.”
“Definitely.”
His eyebrows lift. “And?”
“Well, I have no intention of stopping seeing you like this, so it feels a little inevitable.”
“Same.”
“So like…” I laugh. “Yeah.”
He chews his lip. “Being boyfriends would be cool, though. Just saying.”
“It would be,” I say, keeping my voice low and measured.
“We don’t have to or anything,” he says. “But for the record, if you asked me, I’d say yes.”
“If you asked me, I’d say yes, too. For the record.”
That hangs between us.
“That settles it, then,” he says, grinning. “We both want it, so one of us just needs to ask the other.”
“Yeah. Do you want it to be me, or do you want to do it?”
His eyes light up. “What if we ask at the same time? Or is that really cheesy? It is, oh god, I’m drunk, ignore me.”
He covers his face with his hand.
“Hey, Ruben,” I say.
He moves his fingers, so he’s peeking out. “Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me something?”
The smile he gives me kind of makes my life.
What he asks next totally does.
FIFTEEN
RUBEN
I’m sitting in Penny’s hotel room in Prague, getting my hair trimmed and styled for tonight’s concert, when Mom’s message comes through.
Interesting article on how heavy metals in tap water can kill the good gut bacteria and cause breakouts. Worth looking into re. your skin issues?
“Skin issues?” Penny reads over my shoulder in disbelief. “What skin issues?”
Zach, who’s already had his hair blown out into his precisely messy and windswept style and is sitting against the wall with a notebook, slams his hand on the carpeted floor with a thud. “Seriously?” he asks. He doesn’t need any context, apparently.
Angel and Jon, both sprawled on top of Penny’s made bed waiting for their own cuts, groan in unison, while Angel performs a convincing mime of wringing someone’s neck. It seems they don’t need any, either.
Penny, who has zero context and very clearly needs it, lowers her scissors. “Am I missing something?” she asks.
I exit the offending message and shove my phone back in my pocket. “It’s just my mom. Apparently there was some sort of article about how we’re stressed out on tour and that’s why the Berlin thing happened, and it said my breakout is more evidence.”
She’d sent it to me a couple of days ago, and, of course, I couldn’t help but scan it. It’d been super harsh, too, zooming in until the handful of pimples on my forehead and chin were pixelated as hell and taking up most of the screen. That’s what I get for swapping my rigorous, stage-makeup-melting cleansing routine for make-out sessions with Zach, I guess.
“What, these two little things?” Penny asks, coming around to view my face with a critical eye. “That’s not because you’re stressed, or because you’re drinking tap water. It’s because you’re a teenage boy.”
“Well, in Veronica’s defense, we also happen to be stressed,” Angel says, bicycling his legs in midair while he lies on his back. “We aren’t allowed downtime anymore, in case you haven’t heard.”
“‘In Veronica’s defense,’” Zach repeats, slapping the notebook on his legs for emphasis. “Not a sentence I was ever hoping to hear.”
“Hey, that’s your mother-in-law now,” Jon jokes. “Show some respect.”
“Oh, I’ll show her respect,” Zach grumbles. “I’ve even been writing a song for her.”