Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,43

I slip my shoes off and squat down next to him, sitting down carefully on the old wooden dock.

“You rang?” I say quietly, because my voice feels riotous in the dark stillness of the night.

“I wrote, actually.”

I spread my hands out in front of me. “And here I am.”

There’s a long beat of silence as we both fidget our feet in the water, our eyes firmly fixed on where they’re submerged. My eyes have finally adjusted to the dark, and I sneak a glance up at Asher, who sucks in a long breath, like he’s about to confess to something horrible. After all we’ve done to each other, it has to be truly awful to have him this nervous.

“I want to call a cease-fire.”

I don’t say anything. I’m not sure I heard him correctly. Maybe I did stumble down the stairs, and this is me, in an unconscious otherworld where Asher isn’t Asher. Maybe I’m dead. Or this is a dream.

“A truce,” he clarifies.

“I know what a cease-fire is. I’m not an idiot.”

“I would never call you an idiot.” Asher sounds annoyed. Maybe he’s as tired as I am.

“Why?”

“Because we could be doing better things with our evil-genius-style skills, Sid.”

Asher never calls me Sid. Unless you count the night he was drunk—the night he kissed me. It sends a warm fuzzy ball into my stomach that makes me uncomfortable and a little nauseous. “What do you propose?”

“I propose we combine forces against a common enemy.”

The only other people around are our parents, and I don’t see it going over well if we turn our attention to them. “I can’t sabotage my mom’s shampoo, I still need my parents to help pay for college. And my shampoo,” I say. “That crap’s expensive.” I hold a lock of hair in my fingers. “I have to buy sulfate-free shampoo, and special conditioner, and these special extra-soft towels, just to keep this hair in check,” I say matter-of-factly, stopping myself from the nervous ramble that is waiting just behind my lips.

“Nadine,” Asher murmurs, and I turn to look at him, not sure I heard him correctly. “We call a truce on all of our crap with each other. And we focus on making Nadine’s summer without us so much worse than it ever was with us there.”

“That’s…” I think about it for a minute—let it marinate in my brain a little. It’s immature. So childish. “… super spiteful,” I scold, and his face drops a little. I turn my eyes to the water and then back at him. “I like it.”

He smiles and I can’t help but do the same. “So you’re in?” His voice is hopeful and surprised.

“I’m in.”

Asher

“Should we talk details?” Sidney asks. “Is this a permanent cease-fire? Or for certain hours? Or just when we’re together on a mission?”

I snort at the word mission. I guess I’m not the only one in my own imaginary one-person army around here.

“And are we talking all summer, or just until Nadine is thoroughly punished?” I’m not sure Sidney has taken a breath yet. Or blinked. “And what is the goal with her, anyway? Do you think we should—”

Here we go. “Sidney?”

“Asher?”

My name holds the same amount of disdain as usual, except it’s coming from right next to me, as opposed to our usual sparring distance, so it stings a little more.

“It’s been ten seconds since I suggested this. We don’t need a detailed strategy just yet. Can you calm your control-freak brain for two seconds?”

She narrows her eyes at me, but it seems like she’s having to try a lot harder than usual to look annoyed with me. Maybe it’s all in my head. “You’ll appreciate my attention to detail now that we’re on the same side.”

I hold my crossed fingers up in the air between us and she rolls her eyes. “I’m counting on it. Otherwise, what else can you really offer?”

“Whatever,” she mutters. “You’ll be sor—”

I laugh as she stumbles on the last word. “Go ahead,” I challenge. “Finish it.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry you said it?”

She shrugs. “Sorry I forgot already. Being on the same side might take some getting used to.” She looks at me with a truly puzzled look on her face. “What am I supposed to do with all of the extra time I’d usually spend”—she looks around like she’s searching the night air for the word she needs—“plotting?”

I was going to say torturing. “I don’t know, I guess we just plot together? And we do normal summer stuff? Like we used