“Oh, you know.” I turned back around and shrugged. “What she always does. Sage is doing Sage.”
* * *
Dove and I decided to hang out on Hardcastle’s porch, since I wasn’t allowed inside the actual dorm. And no, it wasn’t because I was a guy. Technically, girls and guys could hang out in one another’s common rooms whenever, but Hardcastle’s housemaster had banned me from entering period. “Front porch only, Mr. Carmichael,” Mrs. Collings said last spring, after catching me with Catherine Howe on the common room couch, not at all paying attention to the movie we’d been watching.
We were sitting in rocking chairs while Blake Shelton crooned through Dove’s speaker. Her chair was turned, facing mine, with her legs perched on my knees. I didn’t particularly like country music, but I’d learned to tolerate it since Nick was obsessed. His go-to playlist was twenty-four hours of Nashville’s best.
“Tell me a secret,” Dove said after the song ended. We’d dropped into a lull after spending the last half hour talking about the musical and how Taylor Swift should really go back to country (which was 100 percent Dove’s opinion; I just nodded along).
“Wait, what?” I glanced up from my phone.
Do you like country music? I’d texted a few minutes ago, fingers sort of shaking, but had yet to get a response. Not surprising. It was 9:45, so he was with Sage, and Sage’s Saturday-night itinerary didn’t factor in much time for texting.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” she’d asked earlier, like she always did. And I loved her for it, never giving up hope that one night I might say yes.
“A secret,” Dove repeated. “Let’s trade secrets.”
I locked my phone and flipped it over. “Okay, you’re on.” I summoned a smirk while trying to ignore the heat at the back of my neck. “Ladies first.”
She smiled and shook her head. “No way. I asked you first.”
I resisted rolling my eyes. I wasn’t in the mood to play this game. “Fine. I have a bottle of Jack Daniel’s hidden in my room.”
Dove giggled. “Where?”
“In my closet.” Lie. The whiskey was actually buried deep in the depths of my steamer trunk. Nick and I both had trunks, presents from Granddad and Nana Carmichael after we’d been accepted to Bexley. They were big and black, our initials embossed just underneath the locks, and heavy as hell. Nana had also been horrified to see that we’d both covered them in bumper stickers. I took Dove’s hand. “Now take it away. I’m all ears.”
She sucked in a breath. “I cheated on a Spanish test last year, by copying off Randall Washington.”
I laughed. “I don’t think you’re alone there.” Because with Bexley’s Harkness tables, I’d felt the weight of people’s gazes a hundred times as they carefully leaned closer to me. (“You know…” I once told Eva Alpert after a calculus test, my voice dripping with sarcasm, “if you need help, I’d be more than happy to tutor you.”)
“It was me!” Dove blurted after I admitted Redbone’s ’70s hit “Come and Get Your Love” was my go-to shower song (and yes, also the opening to Guardians of the Galaxy). “It’s my fault you’re banned from coming inside. I’m the one who told Mrs. Collings about you and Catherine. I was jealous.” She sighed. “I was always so jealous when you hung out with her. I thought you were so cute and funny and nice.” She giggled. “I mean, I obviously still do, but…”
I squeezed her hand and smiled, letting her know I understood. I’d dated Catherine for two weeks, and it had felt like the longest two weeks of my life. I remembered telling Nick I was going to shave my head because Catherine never stopped raking her hands through my hair. “It’s painful,” I’d said. “Care to join me in getting a buzz cut?”
I was on the verge of zoning out when Dove spoke again. “I’m glad you’re the one who asked for my number,” she whispered. “Because I never know what to say when I want a guy’s number.”
“Really?” I asked, because clingy or not, Dove McKenzie was a cute girl. She could easily go up to any guy and request a phone number.
She let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, I get nervous. My mind goes totally blank.” She smiled at me. “I bet that never happens to you though, right?”
“Actually no.” I shifted in my seat, itching to check my phone. “Once I was so nervous about asking for this one person’s number that I just didn’t.”
Dove’s eyebrows knitted together. “So you never got it?”
My heart quickened. “No.” I shook my head. “I did, but I didn’t directly ask for it. Instead, I convinced our class that it would be smart to make a group chat”—I shrugged—“and there you go. Mission accomplished.”
Dove giggled. “When? Your freshman year?”
I shrugged, leaving it up for interpretation. In reality, the Bexley Bunch chat had been created just over seventy-two hours ago, after I told everyone in Frontier Lit about the elusive Mr. Magnusson. “He’s never around during consultation and doesn’t respond to emails, so I think we should band together on this one, and form a gang of our own.”
But of course, the second the chat blew up (as most did), I’d marked it as Do Not Disturb. Then I’d stared at my screen until Luke finally buzzed in, a text just to me: You’re an IDIOT.
Mission accomplished.
I’d grinned while tapping a text back, but also felt a simultaneous lump forming in my throat. Shit, I thought, shivering when my phone vibrated again. What did you just do?
“Who was the girl?” Dove asked now, her face sort of crumpling when I let go of her hand.
I fiddled with the faded green-and-white rope bracelet on my wrist. “No one you’d know.” I stood from my chair and held out my hand. “Should we go for a walk?”
Dove brightened, smiling and nodding, and when she ran inside to grab a sweater, I finally got to check my phone; six new messages, but only one I wanted to read.
Nope, it said. So you better give your extra Blake Shelton ticket to someone else.
* * *
There were so many places we could’ve gone, but I took Dove to the Zen rock garden, down one of the streetlamp-lit cross-country trails. It’s been a while, I thought to myself as I spotted two pairs of initials carved into the massive sycamore tree nearby: CCC + NMD.
Dove clung to me on our way back, arms locked around my waist and face buried in my shoulder. “Why are you walking so fast?” she asked. We were all but jogging up Belmont Way, closer and closer to Hardcastle.
“Because it’s almost eleven,” I answered. Curfew for underclassmen was 11:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and midnight for seniors. So while Dove’s evening was ending, I had a whole other set of plans.
She sighed and picked up her pace, not wanting to face the wrath of Mrs. Collings. And when we made it to The Meadow, I scooped her up fireman-style and did my best to hightail it across to ensure we’d beat the clock. Her laughter rang out into the night. “Don’t you drop me, Charlie!”
The girls’ porches were packed, and from the sea of stars and stripes, it looked like Nick’s brainchild had been a raging success. Dove rose on her tiptoes and slung her arms around my neck, and I put a hand on her lower back. “Good night, Dove darling,” I said after a quick kiss. “Feel free to dream about me.”
Mrs. Collings was standing behind us. She looked the same as always: wearing a BEXLEY SWIMMING windbreaker, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back, and smiling tightly. “While I am glad to see you haven’t forgotten our arrangement,” she said to me, “it’s time for you to say goodbye to Miss McKenzie for tonight.”
I nodded, not needing to be told twice—in my mind, I was already en route to my next stop. “Of course.”
* * *
Thayer, Sage had texted me earlier, before dinner. We’re ending the night in Thayer. Feel free to crash! So I wasn’t surprised when I walked into the common room and found my friends l
ounging on the furniture. Reese, Jennie, Luke with Nina’s legs across his lap, and interestingly enough, Sage was missing. Hmm, I thought.
I groaned when I realized what they were watching: Mamma Mia. “Jesus, what are you doing to him?” I flipped on the lights and glanced at Luke. “Did you lose a bet or something?”
He opened his mouth, but the girls spoke first:
“He said it was okay!” Nina exclaimed.
“He has sisters,” Jennie said.
“Did Sage find you?” Reese asked.
I nodded, never one to be slow on the uptake. “Yup.” I watched one of her eyebrows un-arch itself. “All good.” And before any of them could inquire about Sage’s current whereabouts—I’d text her later to find out—I looked back at Luke and jerked my chin toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“What are you doing?” Jennie asked.
“Guy stuff,” I answered as Nina slipped her legs off Luke’s lap. “Something to get—”
He was wearing my clothes. I hadn’t noticed it at first, with Nina draped all over him, but Luke was wearing my clothes. I’d recognize the T-shirt anywhere: blue with an American flag and reading BACK-TO-BACK WORLD WAR CHAMPS. My brother, a World War II aficionado, had given them out as Christmas presents last year. Red sweatbands were on his head and wrists, leftover from some half-assed Halloween costume a few years back. I suddenly wished I hadn’t turned the lights on; it was a thousand degrees and I felt sort of dizzy. Get it together, I blinked. Ignore it.
“So what is this guy stuff, pray tell?” Luke asked once we were outside, cutting across the freshman grove toward Darby Road. I released a deep breath. Without the underclassmen around, Bexley was quieter, calmer, more relaxed. It was easier to breathe.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I didn’t have anything specific in mind. I just said that to get you out of there. You should not be spending your Saturday night watching Mamma Mia…”
“It was actually Mamma Mia 2.”
“Is there a difference?”
Luke laughed, and our shoulders brushed—I hadn’t realized how close we were walking. “You’d be surprised,” he said as I put a couple of feet between us.
I nodded, but before I could say anything, my stomach rumbled. Dinner tonight felt like days ago.
“Time for a midnight snack?” Luke suggested.
“More like a midnight dinner.” I motioned for us to turn left. “I’ve been craving a steak all day.” At home, Dad always grilled steak on Saturday nights.
“How do you like it?”
“Rare, obviously.”
“Good, because that’s the only way I do it.”
“You can grill?”
“In my sleep.”
I laughed. “I never would’ve expected that.”
“Why?” he asked, a slight edge to his voice. “Because I look fourteen?”
I was glad it was dark because I felt myself go red. It was true; Luke didn’t look like a senior, but that wasn’t it. “No.” I shook my head. “It’s because I don’t know anyone our age who can actually cook.” I cleared my throat. “I mean, I haven’t even mastered pasta yet.”
I saw Luke shrug as we passed under a streetlight. “I was very food-motivated when I was younger,” he said, “while you probably wanted to be a NASCAR driver or something.”
I sighed. “It was one Halloween.”
He smirked. “Are there pictures?”
“Try a whole album.” I rolled my eyes. Mom was obsessed with making photo albums; there had to be at least twenty in our basement.
Luke let out an impressed whistle, and we brushed shoulders again, having somehow moved back together. My legs went a little weak, so I couldn’t step away this time.
“I wish we could build a fire,” I randomly said, and straightened one of my rope bracelets. “It’s a great night for s’mores.” I thought of Nick, and the summer bonfires we loved to build. Always on the beach, with plenty of marshmallows and chocolate packed in the Yeti.
Luke laughed. “But that’s a ‘major school rule violation,’ is it not?”
I elbowed him. “You didn’t actually read the handbook…” The Bexley School Student Handbook. We all owned a copy. Mine was currently a paperweight.
Luke was quiet, maybe a little embarrassed, and then, “Too bad I left my browning torch at home. It’s for crème brûlée, but I use it to toast marshmallows in the kitchen sometimes.”
My mouth watered. “Have your mom overnight it, then. Along with the cute little pots. I love crème brûlée.”
“I’m assuming you mean the ramekins?”
I smirked at him, but sort of shuddered inside. “Sure.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “We could rob a casino.”
“I think that might involve too many moving parts for tonight,” I said, still looking at him. He was wearing his contacts right now, instead of the glasses Sage referred to as his hipster specs.
I like the glasses better, I wanted to tell him.
“We went to the dance earlier,” he said. “I thought my glasses would probably fog up, so I unearthed my contacts. I almost never wear them.”
“Smart,” I said, but my pulse pitched. How did he literally just read my mind?
Luke nodded.
“So, uh, how was it?” I kicked a stray rock. “The dance?”
He thought for a second. “Slippery.”
“Sounds about right.”
“But,” he added, “Sage is an amazing dancer.”
“Yeah, she is.” I tried to sound casual. Because instead of picturing Sage shaking it, I found myself wondering what Luke looked like on the dance floor, if he was stiff and awkward, or loose and smooth. My chest tightened. Dove, I told myself, and inhaled a breath, trying to recall her sugar-cookie scent. No such luck—there was never any such luck.
We walked in silence for the final stretch, but Luke groaned when we arrived at the Miller Athletic Center. “No way.” He shook his head. “I do not want to play you one-on-one in basketball. Let’s get something to eat.”
I laughed and reached into my pocket for my keys. The field house was locked up tight for the night, but I was lucky enough to have acquired a campus master key. A family friend had given it to me. “I’m not telling you where I got it,” I remembered Leni saying, with her usual wink. “But it’s yours now.” I put the key in the lock and twisted it. “We aren’t playing basketball,” I told Luke. “I want to show you something.”
* * *
Next to the second-floor equipment room was a locked door, and inside was a staircase that led up to an attic of sorts. Said attic was used as a storage room for extra uniforms and equipment, old trophies, and an assortment of other random crap. And just above the attic was the roof, stars were visible through a couple of skylights. “I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” I said once we reached the top of the stairs. I switched on my iPhone flashlight, on the hunt for a ladder.
“No, I don’t have acrophobia,” Luke replied. “So I’m game.”
I smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of a smart-ass?”
“Not today.”
I laughed and dragged the ladder over to where he was standing, right underneath a skylight. “After you.” I gestured when it was in place. “It should be unlocked.” I waited for him to disappear through the skylight before climbing up myself.
The MAC’s roof was the best view on campus. The field house was set close to the woods, so all the illuminated buildings and streetlights were specks in the distance, letting the night sky shine for all it was worth. “Wow,” Luke breathed. “This is incredible.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” I agreed, pulling off my quarter-zip to use as a pillow before stretching out in a good stargazing position. Part of me wished Nick were here to point out Hercules
and Cassiopeia and Orion. Maybe Luke would pay closer attention than I did. But then again, Nick had no idea about my rooftop visits, and neither did anyone else. And I liked it that way. This place was an escape—people could always find me in my room, but they could never find me here.
Luke dropped down next to me. “But not as cool as that giant orgy on the turf.”
“So they did do it.” I smirked. I wasn’t the only one with secret keys and combinations. I’d never witnessed it, but from what Sage said, all hell broke loose. (“There’s screaming, squealing, running, and so many bare-naked butts!” she’d told me.)
He laughed. “I’m guessing you and Flamingo weren’t there?”
“Stop it.” I knocked his foot with mine. “It’s Dove.”
“Like the chocolate? Or the soap?”
I snapped my fingers. “You know, I actually haven’t asked.”
Luke laughed again, and I did too. “How did you even find out how to get up here?” he asked a minute later, when we’d pulled ourselves together, our breathing in tune again.
“Family friend.” I turned my head so I could look at him, and a chill ran up my spine when I did—he was already looking at me. I swallowed hard. “Leni Hardcastle.”
“Same…?”
“Yes, same Hardcastle.”
He nodded. “Okay, proceed.”
“She graduated with Kitsey,” I continued. “And apparently she used to really get around when she was here, which she loves to talk about after a couple vodka tonics.”
“What’s the story behind this place?” Luke asked. “Did she lose her virginity up here or something?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it.
He groaned. “My research did not prepare me for this!”
“So you did read the handbook!” I joked.
Luke shook his head. “How many girls have you brought here?”
In response, I literally froze, unable to say or do anything.
And he could tell. “Oh crap, I’m sorry. That was…”
“No, don’t worry about it.” I hoped my voice was calm. “It’s fine. I’ve actually”—I bit the inside of my cheek—“never brought anyone up here before.”
If We Were Us Page 5
