Page 34 of That Summer Feeling

I didn’t look.

Allison watched the whole thing from the sidelines. Whenever I felt like I didn’t have enough energy to keep going, the heat of her stare fueled me. She hated every moment of this, and she deserved to hate it, because she’d hurt Stevie.

At my most tired, when even Allison’s ire wasn’t enough to keep me going, I watched the way the light caught Stevie. Disco-ball prisms sparkled like jewels against her glistening skin. She made me afraid to blink, because to miss even a single second was to miss something revelatory. I would dance with her until the music stopped. Even then, if she wanted to keep going, I’d create music for us.

When the band played a slow song—the first of the night—she made a move to leave the floor. I pressed my hand on her shoulder to stop her, then turned my palm over in offering.

“May I?” I asked.

Her smile faded faster than I expected. “Not Mason?”

Even his name sounded wrong in that moment. Insulting, almost. “No. You and me.”

Her puzzled expression did not budge. No breakthrough of understanding, and certainly not one of interest.

In a rush to explain myself, I added, “We need to make Allison jealous. I kind of made it seem like you and I had something going on when I talked to her earlier. This will help sell it.”

At that, Stevie backed up and turned on her heel. Her pace increased with every step until she was practically running, rushing out the barn doors and into the night. Her cowboy boots stomped so hard that dirt clouds puffed up around her every step.

“Stevie, wait,” I called out, chasing after her.

When we were far enough away from the event hall that the thrum of the live music sounded more like a memory than reality, and the air nipped at our skin, making both of us shiver, Stevie stopped moving.

“I’m sorry. I never should have said that,” I told her. I was desperate for her to turn around and look at me. “She was just making you doubt yourself, and that really pissed me off. I wanted her to feel bad for trying to ruin your trip. Now I see that I look like an asshole, inserting myself into your love life. That was really inappropriate of me.”

Stevie finally turned around. She stared at me in that way only she could. Open-mouthed. Unflinching. Fighting against the chill that had her teeth chattering.

“Do you want me to go tell her I was lying?” I asked, trying to find a way to fix the mess I’d made. “That would make me want to die, but I’d do it for you.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t have to be a distraction prop in my love life. Thank you, though.”

That wasn’t what I felt like I was. Until Stevie stormed off, I’d felt with complete certainty that I was doing the right thing. In reality, I’d not only made the wrong choice, I’d cheapened myself to Stevie in the process.

“I just wanted to help you as much as you’ve helped me,” I told her, fighting back tears. She’d probably think I was crying to weaponize my emotions against her. That’s how Ethan felt. Like I cried to make him feel worse, when in reality, my tear ducts operated separately from the rest of me. They just turned on, faulty faucets in my eyeballs incapable of being repaired.

“I’m pretty positive slow dancing with you won’t help me one bit,” she said. Her honesty had no malice to it. The truth stung anyway.

“I also just wanted to,” I admitted. “Dance with you.” The words sparked against the dark, charging the space between us.

Stevie sighed. “This is why I told you it wasn’t a good idea for us to spend this much time together.”

Allison had a real flair for timing. I had to give her that. She came outside at that exact moment and said, “What’s going on?”

A perfect question, really. As perfect as her bangs.

“Nothing,” Stevie told her, clipped. She was caught in what I guessed would be her worst nightmare, because I’d upset her, but so had Allison, for much longer and in far worse ways, and she couldn’t appear completely fine to either of us, because we both knew too much.

Allison, sensing the vulnerability, walked up to Stevie and put a hand on her neck, forcing an intimacy between them that made me roll my eyes. “Please just listen to me,” she whispered.

I wanted to evaporate. Turn to dust.

That was exactly what Allison hoped I’d feel, I realized, watching her behave as if I weren’t right there in my Camp Carl Cove T-shirt, tears rimming my eyes, clearly an active part of this moment. I’d run away from them last time. I needed to stay put this round. I couldn’t abandon Stevie, even though we’d just been fighting.

No, not fighting. We’d been doingsomething. I owed it to both of us to stick around and find out what that something was.

“Stop it,” Stevie said to Allison, the barest hint of hurt cutting through the blunt force of her request. She looked at me then—a quick glance where her eyes went saucer wide and her lips folded together—before returning to her usual gravity-holding expression.

I held my hand out to Stevie, taking a page from Allison’s handbook and ignoring Allison’s entire existence in the process. “Let’s go inside,” I said. “Dance with me.”