My eyebrows arch before I can censor my face. “Fetish?”
He grins. “You know what I’m saying.” A dimple appears beside his mouth. “You’re the prettiest one I’ve ever been able to call mine.”
“Mine”? Does he think I’m his? His own personal fetish come to life? I pull my hand away from his, even though I worry that it’s rude, because I can’t help it. I manage a bland smile, then stand, rubbing my stomach.
“I’m not feeling very well. I think I need some water.”
It’s not entirely untrue. I’ve had a queasy sort of stomachache all night, the kind of stomachache that’s brought on by a screaming conscience: in this case, screaming that Michael is a D-bag. An oblivious, probably harmless D-bag, but a D-bag still.
I take one last look out the patio doors at the Gin Rangers, surrounded by a thick swarm of bodies, and the sparkle of the lake behind them, then take off down the long hallway leading deeper into the house. As I move, the din of conversation crackles into fragments:
“Did you hear that Betsy…”
“…told her ‘fuck that’…”
“…latched arms and then we tried to…”
“…amazing tits.”
I smell barbeque, drifting inside on a summer breeze. Shoulders bump mine as I search the bodies pressed around me for one of my friends. I don’t see them, or even anyone I know.
The Gin Rangers launch into “Magic Mountain” and I turn back toward the sunroom. Maybe I should go back outside. My feet are killing me from the two hours before I followed Michael inside, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—not to mention the reason I sneaked out past my bitchy stepmother, asleep in the living room recliner, earlier tonight.
“Where are you going?” she’d snapped, when I thought I’d gotten to the front door safely.
I jumped, glancing back.
“Your dad’s asleep.”
“…I know,” I whispered.
“That dress makes you look like rain forest Barbie. Go on, though.” She waved her arm. “Give me some peace.”
Manda’s always like that: acting like I put her out, even though I try my best to tip-toe in her presence. She’s a gymnastics instructor, and ever since I quit taking her classes when I was ten, I’ve been pretty sure she hates me.
As I look back toward the Gin Rangers, distracted by the thought of Manda telling Dad about tonight, Michael catches my eye and starts to stand.
I turn on my heel and book it down the hallway. After passing half a dozen doors, I try one, opening it to an empty bedroom. I step inside, noting the antique, oak bedroom set and two oil paintings I recognize as the work of Mary Nelson Sinclair, one of my dad’s artist friends.
A minute or two later, I think I hear Michael’s voice in the hallway.
The room I’m in has two closed doors: one small, like a closet door, and one larger, like a bathroom door. I wrap my hand around the knob of what I think is the bathroom door, hoping to hide out until my date gets distracted, then slip outside, listen to the Gin Rangers while I text my non-high friend Lucy, and head home. It’s running away, but it’s justified, I think, as I pull the door open.
A second later, the sight before my eyes hits me like a boot to the gut. Standing before me, in a doorway directly opposite the one I’m in, across a bathroom done in shades of green, is Dash.
Real Dash.
Dash whom I haven’t laid eyes on in nearly a year.
His hair is shorter, body bigger, face more chiseled—but it’s him. His pants hang down around his hair-dusted shins, exposing rumpled boxer-briefs, which gather close around his package.
My gaze is on him for no more than half a second before his hazel eyes pop open wider, and one of his arms jerks up toward his face.
“Ammy?” His mouth opens. “What the fuck?”
“Oh my God!”
His eyes peel even wider, then he whirls around and steps into the room from whence he came. It’s a slightly larger bedroom, done in some dark color I can’t process because my own wide eyes are glued to Dash’s back: the pert ass wrapped in gray cotton, his wider-with-age shoulders clothed in what looks to be a light blue t-shirt.
“Dash?” From the back, I see his head hang lower.
My heart races as adrenaline floods me, making my skin tingle and burn. It’s then that my senses process perfume. And something else. A scent that makes me think of flesh, hear the echo of moans.
Sex.
I’m smelling sex.
Dash turns to face me more fully, his big hands jerking his pants up. He fastens them, then lifts his head, revealing eyes that remain slightly widened, and totally unreadable. “What are you doing here?”
It’s all I can do to stand beside him. It’s a miracle I choke out, “Gin Rangers.”
Dash is here! He’s here, he’s here!
All his features twist up in what looks like pain.
“Lamb goes to our school, you know,” I babble. “My—your sister—she’s having a thing with him this summer. So he invited her. And all our friends.”
Dash takes a slow step in my direction. For a long moment, he’s quiet while his gaze laps up and down me, followed by the slightest little furrow of his dark brows. “Are you drinking, Amelia?” His voice is husky. Low.
All this time, and that’s what he asks me? Am I drinking?
“Have you been?” Dash told me one time that his favorite was the Irish Car Bomb, and though I doubt he had one of those here, I know that when he’s out, he always goes for whiskey.
I inhale again, because I’ve barely got my breath. The shock I felt on seeing him is morphing into panicked agitation: that he’ll disappear again. That…I don’t know what. And yet—even as I yearn to grab onto him, hold on, I also want to lash out. I feel my upper lip curl. “You smell like a bottle of Jameson.”
My voice sounds high.
My throat feels tight.
“Who are you with?” I can’t resist asking, even though I hate myself for being such a ninny.
I watch as his face locks down, masking any feelings I might read on his familiar features. “Who brought you here?” he asks me grimly.
“Why do you care?” Fury simmers in me. Disappointment masquerading as pure rage. “Dash, what the hell? Do you know how many letters got returned to me? I emailed all year. You left and you…you just left.” I fold my arms, fisting both my shaking hands.
His face flickers, and I can see emotion in the hard line of his brows, in the tightness of his jaw. “Am, why don’t you let me take you home. You don’t belong here at this time of night.”
I look him up and down again, stunned silent by his firm, authoritative tone, by the strangely patriarchal formality of his words. I realize that he seems in motion even though he’s still. Because I’m in motion, I notice. My breaths are hard and heavy as I take him in. “I don’t understand. Dash… Where did you come from?”