Venereal Disease frowns, and his posse laughs harder. I move away from them quickly but still feel their eyes on me as I go, and it makes my face flame up. None of the texts Jay posted featured pictures, thank god, but they were detailed enough to leave little to the imagination. Since then, I’ve never felt fully clothed around anyone from my school, so that’s lots of fun.
Music from some unidentifiable source blares through the crowd. Everyone’s in shorts and hoodies, although some girls are clinging to their bikini tops, trying to force summer into existence. I weave in between swaying bodies and rocks topped with couples making out, my eyes peeling through the moon and flame-licked darkness for Luca. I tip my cup into my mouth, swallowing a few gulps of the mostly flat brew.
“Tastes like piss this year,” Luca says from behind me, startling me into snorting some beer up my nose. I cough and spew while he slaps my back.
“Dammit, Luca.” I wipe my mouth. “And also, yeah. But all beer tastes like piss.”
“Not good beer.”
“What the hell do you know about good beer?”
“Macon’s all into microbrewing now. He’s been cooking shit in his kitchen for the past few weeks.”
“Cooking shit? Is he brewing beer or running a meth lab?”
“You know Macon. Always enterprising.”
I laugh. I do know Macon. He’s five years older than us and is sort of a jack-of-all-trades. He made straight A’s in school, can figure out anything if you give him about an hour of silence, and has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit because he’s a wealth of useless information. He also never went to college, even though Emmy begged him to. Instead, he married his high school sweetheart, Janelle, and stayed in Cape Katie, helping his mom run LuMac’s and raise his equally enterprising little brother. He and Luca have already started selling a few of Luca’s weird creations around town, but after Luca graduates, LuMac Designs will launch full force.
Every time I think about it, a little pang of loneliness shoots through me. I’ve never been without Luca. Not for longer than a couple of weeks, at least. The thought of leaving him—?and leaving him here, both of us knowing I’m counting on him to make sure Maggie doesn’t fall off the edge of the planet—?has always ?filled me with a lot of relief and a lot more guilt and a hell of a lot more fear. Every time I’d start freaking out about it, doubting that I could leave, that I should leave, he’d make this really annoying game-show buzzer sound.
“Mraaaa! Wrong answer! Try again!” he’d yell.
“Jesus, Luca,” I’d say, covering my ears.
“Gray, you and I both know you need to get out of this town. Me? I’m good here. I’m happy. I’m not a college boy. But you? You need that concert hall, and you need your own damn life, so Mraaaa! Shut up about it.”
And so I would shut up for about a week, and Mom would even cook a meal or two and buy me a new top or something. I’d get comfortable and start snuggling into a little normal and then—?BAM!—?Mom would do something wildly alarming, like drive to the duplex we lived in two duplexes ago and bang on the door because her key didn’t work until the current resident called the cops on her ass.
“Did you find a piano?” Luca asks now.
“Yeah. Luckily. Though it’s a bigger piece of junk than mine was.”
“Where?”
“The Book Nook. Patrick Eisley has an old upright in the storage room that used to be his dad’s or uncle’s or someone’s. Who cares? It’s got eighty-eight keys. I got in a couple hours of practice this afternoon.”
He puffs out his cheeks with held-in air before letting it out with a little pfft sound. A sure sign he’s holding back opinions.
“I know,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You wanted to.”
“Gray, I always want to when it comes to Maggie. You know I love her, but—?”
“This is a party, Luca.”
“So what you’re saying is, shut up and party?”
“Basically.”
“I can do that.” He nudges my shoulder playfully before he mumbles, “For now.”
We both drink and watch our peers drink, most of them getting more and more sloshed by the mouthful and spilling half the contents of their cups into the sand.
“Oh, finally,” he says.
“What?”
“Kimber’s here.” He tosses back the rest of his beer and drags a hand through his hair about five times, a sure sign he’s gearing up for some grade-A flirting.
“Kimber Morello?”
“Yeah.”
“Since when do you like Kimber Morello?”
“Since she came into the diner earlier in this little short skirt and a halter top.”
I pull a face. For all his chivalry, Luca is still such a guy. But he could do worse than Kimber. She’s an honest-to-god nice person and one of the few who didn’t smirk at me whenever I passed her in the halls after the whole sexting debacle. Plus, she’s cute as a damn button, with this stick-straight black hair I’d kill for, and she’s a hell of a photographer. This past year when I was Martha Ireland’s assistant, Kimber was her intern. Her black-and-white candids were off-the-charts amazing.
“I thought you liked Eva,” I say, drawing out the vowels in her name. Kimber spots Luca from across the bonfire and tilts her head at him, a clear invitation to join her.
“I said she was pretty—?there’s a difference.”
“Please. You were practically drooling when you told me about her.”
He snorts. “Whatever. Besides, I’ve got no shot, trust me.”
“Why not?”
He waves me off and takes a step toward Kimber, but I grab his arm. “Why don’t you have a shot?”
He raises his brows at me, and I let go of his arm, swallowing some beer to cover up my interest.
“I just don’t,” he says. “If you’re so curious about it, you should ask her yourself. She’s around here somewhere.”
“What happened to ‘showing her the way it’s done’?” I ask, hooking finger quotes around my words.
“Oh, she’s got it under control. But check on her for me, will you? Mom’ll have my ass if Eva gets trashed.” Luca snags one of my hands, pulling it toward his mouth like he’s trying to bite me.
I jab my forefinger into his bottom lip.
“Hey! Damn, Gray! I might need that later.” He rubs at his lip and pouts.
“Then don’t put my finger in your mouth next time.”
He laughs and shakes his head, before his expression softens. “I’m glad you’re back.”
Quick as heat lightning over the ocean, my throat thickens. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.”
He huffs a little through his nose but nods. We both know glad isn’t exactly the word for it.
Kimber calls Luca’s name, and he waves at her. “I got to go. And you need to have some fun. Go get drunk. Practice safe sex.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He shoves my shoulder a little but plants a kiss on the top of my head.
And then he’s gone, his arm slung over Kimber’s shoulders, a laugh already on his lips as they stroll off down the beach.