Most days I can find something amusing to make my lips flinch up. Sometimes it will be funny enough to make me chuckle. But I miss laughing. Really laughing. Laughing to the point that my insides hurt, my chest aches, my face is exhausted from holding the smile.
For effect, Rico stands in the middle of the circle of lawn chairs and in slow motion reenacts how Isaiah and I kept him from being busted for underage drinking this summer by distracting a pair of cops with a very bad mime routine.
“I’m hiding in the bushes and if the police step back, they’d be on top of me. Beth’s just standing there,” Rico chokes out between laughs. “Her arm stiff at the shoulder and her forearm dangling back and forth like a HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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pendulum. The cop asked if she needed
medical help. He thought she was having a seizure.”
Everyone, including me, bursts into laugher.
Rico composes himself to spit out the rest.
“And she breaks her self-imposed silence and says, ‘I’m a mime, you moron. Why do you think I’ve been doing all these retarded
moves?’”
Everyone laughs harder and as our group
gasps for air Rico glances at Ryan. “Incluso el nino blanco se esta riendo.”
I’m not fluent in Spanish, but I know enough to pick out the words white boy and laughter.
My heart shivers when I catch Ryan at the tail end of a chuckle. He’s always cute, but he’s breathtaking when he laughs.
Rico lifts his beer to his lips, then tosses it across the yard. “I’m out.”
Isaiah tips the cooler. “We’re all out, man.”
“Isaiah, help me snag some of Antonio’s
stash, then we’ll hit the mota.”
Mota. Weed. The layer between my skin and muscles itches. I want a hit. More like I crave a hit—the smell surrounding me, the smoke burning my lungs, the feeling of freedom and HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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floating. Oh God, I want more than
anything to float.
Isaiah stands and Rico kicks my foot as he passes. “You’re in, right, Beth?”
It kills me to shake my head. “Curfew.”
I peek at Ryan. Does he know what mota is?
The smile falls from my lips as I flip through the stories we’ve told. Oh crap, I feel sick. The drinking. The drugs. The parties. He heard it all. My stomach sways. He knows what I am.
“Beth,” says Isaiah. He waits until I look at him. “The stuff is mild. You’ll be sober by curfew.”
“Isaiah,” Noah warns.
Isaiah would never steer me wrong. If he
says I’ll be sober in an hour, then I will be. He knows how much I long for weightlessness. A loud crashing noise comes from the house. I know these people. Ryan doesn’t. I can’t leave him defenseless. “No, I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” Rico heads into the house.
Isaiah stares at me and I don’t understand the gleam in his eye. Abruptly, he follows Rico.
In the hammock, Noah begins to kiss Echo.
The two of them will be lost in their own world for the rest of the night and Isaiah will easily HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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be gone ten minutes. The night has been
fun, but it’s also made me the rope in a strange invisible tug-of-war. Ryan sat on one side of me. Isaiah the other. It felt weird to be next to both my best friend and the guy I really like.
Why can’t Isaiah see that we’re just friends?
Friends only. I need to talk to him before I leave. I need to straighten this whole mess out.
Honestly, I just need to hear him say that he didn’t mean it and that he’s still my best friend.
Ryan stands, stretches, and walks over to the tree on the opposite side of the yard. I glance over my shoulder at the house. I’ve been careful not to rub Ryan in Isaiah’s face, but I need to make sure Ryan’s okay too. Yeah, Isaiah will be gone for a while. Rico’s a slow tripper.
I follow after Ryan. “You don’t have to
move for Noah and Echo’s sake.”
Hundreds of Christmas lights hang from the tree. His sun-kissed skin is beautiful under their glow. “I didn’t move because of them.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Then why did you?”
Ryan inclines his head and his eyes roam my body as if savoring the sight. “You’re beautiful when you laugh.”
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Warmth blazes on my cheeks and I break
eye contact. Ryan reaches out and touches me.
His fingers linger on my neckline and the whisper of his caress on my skin heats my blood.
“You should laugh more,” he says.
I swallow. “Life hasn’t given me much to
laugh about.”
“I could change that.” Ryan invades my
personal space and every part of him connects with a part of me.
I inhale and smell the delicious scent of earth after the rain. “You smell good,” I say.
His hand glides along the curve of my spine and into my hair. Chills energize my body. “So do you. You always smell like roses.”
I giggle at the thought of me smelling sweet and bite my lip to stop the girlish reaction. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
Ryan’s lips form that glorious smile with dimples and my blood tingles straight to my toes. This smile is for me and me alone.
“There are lots of things I want to say to you, Beth, and I want to be the first to say them to you.”
Intense hunger glazes his eyes. I’ve seen the HC TITLE-AUTHOR