Page 18 of Lost and Found

After prom and convincing Merritt that what she’d seen had meant nothing, that if any feelings were involved, they’d been one-sided, it’d been easy to forget it wasn’t the whole truth.

We finished out that school year avoiding the upperclassmen, busied ourselves with summer plans, then went through senior year with him out of sight and, allegedly, out of mind. I’d heard he was working and taking his prerequisites over in Gandon and otherwise avoided him as a subject as much as possible.

“I know where I recognize you from,” Ravi interrupts, coughing one last time and gesturing Silas’s way with his freshly opened beer. “That picture in your room.”

Silas cuts him a meaningful glare. I beam. I’m pretty sure it’s the weed, but I feel luminous, the bubbly feeling in my stomach turning thick and drippy. A lava lamp in a dark room. “You have a picture ofmeon your bedside table?” I say, a teasing lilt in the words. “Do you kiss it good night?”

“It’s on my dresser. Yards and yards away from my bed. And it’s of me and mysister,” he argues. “From prom. You just so happen to be in it, too.”

“Uh-huh,” I say.

He uses the railing to pop the cap off a beer. “Honest,” he says.

“I’m sure you were once.”

“Still am,” he declares. “Can’t you do that trick, still? Where you get people to share their secrets with you?” He bumps his bottle against my thigh, and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop a grin.

“It’s not atrick, it’s just my face.”

“That good, huh?”

I slip the beer from his grasp and take a gulp, licking a stray bead of it off my bottom lip. “You tell me.”

“All right, well, I think I’ll just go now,” Ravi interjects. “It was nice to meet you—?”

“Bea,” I say, neck warming when I realize I’d forgotten he was here.

Silas’s eyes haven’t strayed from my face. “Yeah. I’ll be there in a bit,” he tells Ravi.

We each take one more hit of the joint before Ravi stubs it out and walks down the porch, half-empty six-pack in hand.

I clear my throat a few moments later. “So . . .” I start.

“So,” Silas says.

“How are you at this party?” I ask.

His head turns in the direction Ravi headed. “Renting a house with four other guys who went through the academy, too. We’re just down the street. Easier to find rentals around here by the university.” His gaze swings back to his feet. “We all just finished out and were celebrating a little tonight. Ravi and I were walking back from the liquor store and he saw someone he knew, so we stopped and bullshitted with him before he had to go. We were just polishing off the joint when you surprised the hell out of me.”

I laugh through my nose. “You didn’t look surprised to see me at all.”

He pats the spot beside him on the railing, and I oblige. “I’d spotted you through the window already,” he admits, nodding that way. I look through it now and see Shane quickly avert his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’rewiththat guy?” Silas says.

I’m playing with fire, but I can’t bring myself to care. “Why not?”

He snorts. His chin dips, big head rolling to the side. “You mean the guy that’s like if oral thrush was a person?” he says, brow screwing up with exaggerated disgust.

I belt out a sound that might not qualify as a laugh, then crush my lips together and shove his shoulder with mine. “What doesthatmean?”

His nose scrunches. “Gross, inconvenient, annoying—”

“Silas!”

“—but, ultimately, not that serious.”

I give up on trying not to laugh. “Maybe his appeal has nothing to do with his looks, you brat.”