When we finally separated long enough to draw a breath, I blurted, “I love you.” Gradually, he’d snuck inside me, imbedding and making a home for himself beneath my flesh and bone.
He was a crescendo, an ever-increasing note, and there was no end in sight.
Like a switch had flicked, Everett’s body turned from relaxed to concrete beneath me.
I smiled. “You don’t need to say it.” I’d known he probably wouldn’t, no matter what he might’ve felt. “I just wanted you to know.”
After an excruciating minute of feeling my heart pinch while I struggled to maintain eye contact, he swallowed, nodding.
We helped each other dress and cleaned up with a beach towel that was in the trunk.
“How’re we going to clean that?”
Everett tossed it into the small bush behind the car. “We don’t.” He stepped forward, pulling at my dress until it hung right. With a kiss to my brow, he slammed the trunk and moved to the passenger side door. “We need to get you home.”
“What did you tell Dale you were doing with his car?” I asked when we left the parking lot.
“Really want me to answer that?” He turned down some backstreets, then veered left onto one that connected to our cul-de-sac.
No, I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want anything to rid the euphoric feeling that’d taken over. That’d made the globs of orange swaying from the streetlights and passing homes seem more than ordinary.
We made sure all the lights inside were out, and then he left me with a brief but reeling kiss before I exited the car. I fished my key from the rose bush by the mailbox and walked inside feeling sober and drunk at the same time. Feeling lighter than air.
“But he’s still not your boyfriend,” Adela said, skirting a rogue soccer ball some kid was kicking down the sidewalk.
His mom chased after him, and I licked the bubblegum ice cream from the side of my waffle cone. “No.” I sighed, licking my lips. “And to make matters worse, I’m pretty sure I told him I loved him.” It sucked. What we’d done together in the car that night played on repeat nonstop. Impossible to ignore even though I was starting to desperately need to.
Adela stopped, and I winced when I saw her shocked expression. “Bad, huh?”
She started walking again, tossing her half-eaten tub of cookie-dough ice cream into a trash can. “That depends. What did he say?”
“Uh, well,” I hemmed.
“Well?” She all but screeched.
“Well…” My shoulders slumped as the admission barreled free. “Nothing.”
Adela was stunned into silence, and I tore off a chunk of my ice-cream cone to keep from snapping or screaming.
“Stevie…” she started.
“I blame the beach. And the vodka. Definitely the vodka.” I made my feet move faster as the businesses changed to houses, my Chucks scuffing against the cracked concrete.
“Wait,” she said, catching up. “It’s okay, you know.”
“That I’m in love with my brother’s best friend?” I scoffed, tossing my cone into someone’s trash at the curb, then brushing my sticky hands over my cutoffs. “Or that I let him touch me all over before admitting I was in love with him, only for him to say nothing?”
Adela pursed her lips, her shoulders rising to hug her ears. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not as if you can help how you feel.” She grinned. “It’s a stupid rule. I’ve been crushing on Hendrix for years.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s different, Del.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But have you seen Everett since?”
“No, he’s either been at the garage or working on that damn bus. And if he’s working on the bus, he’s never alone.”
“You don’t think he wants to talk to you?”
The sound of the ocean, the passing cars, and the kids playing outside blurred with my muffled thoughts as the sun beat a harsh tempo over my skin.
“Trust me,” I said as we rounded the corner, then crossed the road. “If he wanted to talk to me, he’d have found a way by now.”
We cut through an alleyway, emerging onto my street, which was three streets away from Adela’s. “Will you be okay?” She stopped two houses up from mine.
I knew she wasn’t referring to Everett not saying he loved me. No, she was asking because they were leaving soon. With or without a new drummer. But I knew. I think I’d always known, even before they purchased the bus, that he wouldn’t stay.
“I’ll have to be,” I said, quiet as I gazed at Everett’s house.