was trying to take the picture, I had somehow said the wrong thing.
“I’m not…” I said, struggling to explain. “I mean, I didn’t come over for that.”
He stared at me. “What did you come over for?”
It was rough, the way he asked it, and it left me feeling so stupid and small that all I wanted was to curl up from the shame of it. How foolish had I been to show up here? How presumptuous, how silly, to believe this boy would want to invite me into his world? Ricky’s dancing, his teasing, all of that felt a million miles away. I wanted nothing more than to bolt out of his house and never come back.
But then I remembered, with a clawing at my stomach, the accusation Maritza had leveled at me by the river:
You’ve always been afraid to put yourself out there, even when you want something badly.
I steadied myself. Whatever happened, I wasn’t going to lose this chance at friendship because I was too chickenshit to put myself out there.
“I’m not trying to help you, or whatever,” I said slowly. “I mean, I’ve never even—I’ve never even kissed anyone, or dated, so how would I be helpful to talk to? My friends wanted to come to your party so they could meet new people, and I—I didn’t want to come, but then … Look, I don’t really know how to do this, okay? I don’t hang out with anyone other than Maritza and JaKory, but last night I met you and … and you seemed like someone I wanted to know. And I haven’t wanted that in a long time. Okay? That’s it. That’s why I’m here.”
Silence. Neither one of us had touched our sandwich. I wanted to look away from him, to be anywhere but in this vulnerable moment, but I forced myself to hold his gaze.
“Should I go?” I asked.
Ricky looked hard at me. The music blared in the silence between us.
On impulse, I reached for his phone and turned up the music. James Brown’s “I Got You” roared through the kitchen, and I began to dance without thinking. I threw in as many moves as I could remember from my friends’ Celine Dion choreography days, but mostly I was just making shit up, letting myself be a complete fool. I even grabbed Magic Dan’s cape off the table and whirled it around like a dance partner.
At first Ricky looked embarrassed for me, and I almost stopped. But then he started to laugh.
“All right,” he said, nodding along. “All right.”
Before I knew it, he was dancing with me. His moves were smooth at first, but then he devolved into goofiness, matching my energy. We danced until the end of the song, and when James Brown screamed the last “Hey!” I did a kind of crazy pirouette and landed in a heap on the floor, the song’s final note ringing in my ears.
Ricky pressed pause as the next song started up. He was all smiles when he looked over at me.
“Okay,” he said, like he’d finally made up his mind about me. “That was definitely unexpected.”
I grinned.
He stood watching me for another moment, and then a smirk took over his face. “Let’s go out to the deck. I’m gonna show you something.”
* * *
The deck was bright and burning compared to the coolness of the house. I hovered by the screen door while Ricky stepped his way over to a mess of scattered beer cans. I couldn’t help but answer his mischievous look with a smile.
“Last night you said you didn’t know what shotgunning was,” Ricky said, looking pointedly at me. He walked over to an open box of beer cans and fished two of them out. “I’m gonna fix that.”
He was grinning again, like he liked being a bad influence and knew it was exactly what I needed.
A wave of nervousness swept over me. “Right now?”
“You got anything better to do?”
I rubbed my neck. “I mean, I was looking forward to that sandwich…”
He rolled his eyes. “Come over here.”
I went and stood next to him. He held out a beer, and I hesitated.
“Is it gonna make me drunk?”
“A little tipsy, maybe, but not drunk. You’d have to have a few of these for that to happen.”
I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. I’d never drunk a beer before, but I’d also never wanted a beer before, and this seemed like a safe place to try it.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Ricky said. “And