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  Except this time, he had reason to be jealous. Brody was toying with me.

  Kennedy told me quietly, “Come on back.”

  “I will.”

  He paused a moment more, seemingly weighing the idea of insisting that I come back with him now. But he didn’t press it. He walked out of the pavilion.

  My feelings were a confused tangle, but Brody and I were casual acquaintances indulging a passing flirtation. I knew how this would play out. We would make a little joke about Kennedy and part ways.

  “What did I tell you earlier?” Brody asked. “If you’re going to break rules, you need to make sure you can get away with it.” He stepped toward me. He glanced out the doorway as if to gauge how clearly someone standing outside could see him. Satisfied, he braced one forearm against the wall above my head, exactly how I’d seen Will standing with Tia in the hall at school on Friday. He slid my camera bag strap off my shoulder and set the bag on the tile floor again. He leaned down.

  My body knew what he was doing before my brain did. I was still puzzling through his motives. I’d felt guilty enough about flirting, and letting him touch me inappropriately. This was worse. Actually kissing, when I had a boyfriend and he had a girlfriend, was officially cheating. Every bit of this spun through my mind as I closed my eyes and lifted my chin. My lips met his.

  His mouth was warm and soft. He kissed me gently, his lips brushing along mine, pressing. When I’d pictured making out with Brody—and I had—he’d come at me forcefully, like an athlete battling to win a game. It surprised me that this tough-guy football player could be so tender.

  But admittedly, I didn’t have a lot of knowhow for a senior in high school. I’d kissed Kennedy, of course, and Noah, and Quinn when he wanted us to be seen, and a few guys before that when they’d brought me home from a date. I’d never had a long, intense session of experimenting with a boy’s mouth, though, the kind I’d seen in movies and read about in books, the kind Tia and Kaye had with their boyfriends every weekend.

  Afraid I would mess it up and Brody would figure out how naive I was, I let him take the lead. The tip of his tongue teased my lips apart. He swept inside. For long minutes he held my chin cupped in his hand and kissed me harder, deeper. I kissed him back. Finally he kissed his way across my jawline to the side of my neck. I shivered.

  His thumb brushed my nipple again.

  That’s when everything changed for me. A current of electricity shot from my breast straight down to my crotch and pulsed there. He’d been toying with me before. I’d teased him back. Now he knew I wanted him, and so did I. In that one slight touch, every longing rushed back to me for boys who didn’t like me as much as I liked them, every regret that other girls had boyfriends who were into them while mine weren’t. Brody supplied me with more heat through the pad of his thumb than I’d experienced in my lifetime.

  I set my hands on his hips, which were hard as rocks underneath his bathing suit, and pulled him closer.

  “Mm,” he said against my neck. The syllable sent tingles down my arms. He lifted his mouth. His breath felt so good in my ear that I could hardly stand it—and that was before he touched the tip of his tongue to my earlobe. I gasped.

  He slid his entire hand across my bikini top to cup my breast. Then one finger slid underneath the fabric. I shuddered.

  “Okay,” he said, backing up again and chuckling uncomfortably. “That’s as much as we can get away with here.”

  I stood there stunned for a moment, trying to make sense of what he’d said, as if it hadn’t been in English. He was backing off because Kennedy had already checked on me. Since there was no door, we couldn’t lock Kennedy out. If he didn’t catch us, someone else would. It was a public beach. Right.

  I just hadn’t thought ahead to how this tryst with Brody would end. We’d fooled around because the school had made us curious about each other. And now he would go back to Grace, and I would go back to Kennedy.

  Only, I didn’t want to go back to Kennedy. I wanted to stay here with Brody. He was brilliantly lit now, the sun slanting over the planes of his athletic body. The darkness in the pavilion had lifted. Either my eyes had adjusted or the sun had sunk lower to peek directly into the windows. Or maybe my pupils were dilated, which happened to people who were sexually aroused. My knowledge of eleventh-grade anatomy had returned with a vengeance.

  “Are you taking your camera back to your car?” Brody asked.

  “Yes,” I said, kneeling to pick up my expensive, beloved camera that I had completely forgotten about.

  “I’ll wait here a minute and walk back on the beach so as not to arouse suspicion.” He said this in imitation of a spy movie, but he lacked Kennedy’s dry sarcasm. With Brody, I was never sure whether he was kidding.

  “Okey-doke,” I said like a dork. “See you around.” Which was worse. I hurried out to the parking lot, unfolding Brody’s shades and slipping them on as I went.

  “Hey,” Brody called behind me, but I’d had enough. I needed to get over my obsession with him. Spending time with him wouldn’t help. The more I knew about him, the more I realized he was not the guy of my dreams.

  He was better.

  And he wasn’t mine.

  8

  I CROSSED THE PARKING LOT, less steamy now that the sun had relented. As I walked, I felt strangely taller, with bigger breasts. I returned my camera to the trunk of Granddad’s car, then pulled out my second cooler full of water bottles and lugged it toward the beach.

  Along the path, I stopped short and set the cooler down when I saw Will. He lay with his knees bent on a concrete bench that wasn’t long enough for him. His body was dappled in shade from the palm trees and scraggly vines that liked to grow in sand. Where the sun found a way through the foliage to him, his skin glowed with sweat. The dog lay beside him. Presumably she would have gone for help if she’d smelled death. But Will was so still.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, alarmed.

  He opened one eye to peer at me over his shades. “Yeah, just hot.” He eased up to sitting, his stomach muscles bunching into hard knots. Like Brody, this boy knew his way around a sit-up.

  I refrained from commenting, I’ll say.

  He asked, “Does your eye feel better?”

  “I’d forgotten about my eye,” I said truthfully, “so it must be okay.” Actually, now that he mentioned it, it still stung a little when I blinked.

  He asked, “How about the rest of you? Kennedy said he found you and Brody taking your Superlatives picture at the pavilion.”

  “Was he mad?” I asked quickly.

  “He didn’t sound particularly mad,” Will said. “I just wondered, because you were gone a long time. And I know how being voted something like Perfect Couple can mess with your head.”

  With a sigh, I sat down beside him and handed him a thermos of water from the cooler, my head spinning all the while about what to say. I was so confused. My lips still tingled from kissing Brody, and a fresh chill washed over me every time I thought about what had happened. Will had become good enough friends with Brody that he might be able to give me some insight—if I could phrase the question in a way that didn’t expose me as Brody’s wannabe girlfriend.

  I asked, “Did you know Brody got knocked out in football practice?” Brody had said his mom would make him quit if he got another concussion. That was the secret. The fact that he’d gotten hurt in the first place was public knowledge. But I hadn’t heard this until he told me, and I felt offended that the public had been keeping me in the dark.

  Will was in the process of swallowing half the thermos of water in one long pull. Still drinking, he opened one eye and gave me a small nod. He wiped the wet bottle across his forehead. “Before school started, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he was okay.”

  “I guess. Football players may be used to that kind of thing, but as a non–football player, I’m shocked that people get knocked out, the doctor okays them to play, and they’re back at pra
ctice the next day. Aren’t you?”

  “No,” Will said, “I play hockey. So, you’re worried about Brody?”

  “I’m more surprised that the class voted Brody and me Perfect Couple and then nobody thinks to tell me that my phantom boyfriend got knocked unconscious in football practice.”

  Will’s brows knit behind his sunglasses. “That happened at least a week before the election.”

  “Yeah.” I supposed I was just fishing for Will to confirm some connection between Brody and me that wasn’t even there. “Who did you vote for?”

  “Nobody,” he said. “The election was the first day of school. I couldn’t remember anybody’s last name except Tia’s. And, of course, Sawyer had made an impression by then too.”

  Of course. “Well, knowing us a little better now, would you put Brody and me together?”

  “The way you look and act at school, no. But I’ll say this. Brody likes pretty girls. Today, you definitely fit into that category. Not that you weren’t pretty before, but now, wow. I don’t want to get in trouble with my girlfriend, but you look beautiful.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, Will.”

  “You’re not hanging around the right people.”

  “Okay.” I laughed.

  “Seriously, you’re not. I think you and I are a lot alike. You’re good at school. You get used to praise from teachers and your parents about your academics. Sometimes you forget about the rest of your life.”

  I took a long drink from my own thermos of water. “Yeah.”

  “Then you get elected Perfect Couple, and you realize that other people see you as something more than a walking, talking brain. Or, something different. That’s how I felt when I was voted Biggest Flirt. I mean, hello? I was so worried about what my parents would think. I wanted a title that said ‘Achievement.’ ” He spanned his hands in front of us, like framing his title in lights on a movie marquee. “Not . . . I don’t know.”

  I framed my own movie title. “ ‘Social Life.’ ”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t known for that at my old school. So I understand if you’re kind of . . .” He trailed off, afraid of offending me.

  I helped him out. “Obsessed with it.”

  Clearly that was the word he’d been too polite to use first. “Obsessed,” he repeated. “I’ll tell you, Brody was thrilled about getting paired with you.”

  “He was?”

  “Yeah. And today . . .” Will gestured to me. His hand stopped in midair, roughly on a parallel with my stomach. I wasn’t sure what he meant by this until he said, “Brody was happy to see you. And he was even happier to see you looking like you do today.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I know this is none of my business, but he has a girlfriend.”

  I took another sip of water and said slowly, “I know.”

  “I don’t think Brody takes any of this seriously,” Will said. “Not the elections, not dating. You take it very seriously, like I do. That was my whole problem at first with Tia.”

  “I get it.”

  He drained the rest of his water and handed the thermos back to me.

  “Here.” I dug another bottle out of the ice for him and pointed toward the pavilion. “Go lie down in there, where it’s actually cool. I’ll tell Tia where you went.”

  “Thanks.” He stood and turned down the sandy path. The dog jerked to her feet in one motion and followed him.

  “No, thank you.” As I watched Will go, I heard my own nonsensical words. No, thank you for telling me the guy I have a crush on has no real interest in anybody, including me.

  Except that Will had compared Brody and me to Tia and himself.

  And he and Tia were now together.

  Did I have a chance with Brody?

  No, that was ridiculous. To accept that interpretation of what he’d said, I would have to ignore his whole exposition on Brody already has a girlfriend and it isn’t you.

  Frustrated with myself, I stomped back to the towels, kicking up more sand than necessary, and threw myself down next to Tia.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked with her eyes closed. She didn’t even look over to see who’d collapsed next to her. Tia was laid back, and I envied her.

  “This is not what’s wrong,” I said, “but I sent Will to the pavilion because he was melting.”

  “He claims he’s normal and Floridians are made of asbestos. What’s wrong with you? Does your eye still hurt? Will said you had a real problem with your contact and Brody came to your rescue while Kennedy just sat there.”

  “My eye is better.” Then I said flatly, “And I went to the pavilion and made out a little bit with Brody.”

  Instantly she rolled over on her side. Her dark eyes were wide. “You don’t make out a little bit. The definition of ‘making out’— Where’s my phone?” She felt underneath her towel. “Without even looking it up, I can tell you that ‘making out’ means you’re hot and heavy. You can’t do it halfway.”

  I told her solemnly, “So I made out with Brody.”

  “You’re turning into me,” she breathed, pretending to be horrified.

  “No. You’ve made out with random people, and Sawyer. But you never had a boyfriend before Will, so you were never cheating. I’m a cheater.” Honestly, I didn’t care about this as much as I should have.

  She shrugged as best she could while lying on one arm. “Brody’s a cheater too.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking down the beach for him. He’d stopped about halfway from the pavilion with his back to me and his hands on his hips. Grace, Cathy, and Ellen walked toward him, presumably victorious after their foray for beer. Ellen staggered a little.

  Tia still watched me. “Will told me he was going to warn you about Brody.”

  “He did, after it was too late.” I looked around us to make sure nobody had plopped down near us on the towels. Then I admitted, “Brody felt me up a little.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” Tia cried.

  “Oh, you can’t get felt up halfway either?” I asked quickly. “Then Brody felt me up a lot. Don’t tell Kaye. Grace is sure to ask her what she knows. Kaye can’t spill it if she doesn’t have the info.”

  Tia propped herself up on one elbow. “Can I just ask what the fuck you think you’re doing?”

  I gasped. “Are you judging me?”

  “Of course I’m not judging you!” Tia exclaimed. “I’m just wondering what’s gotten into you. The day of the elections, I told you to go after Brody, and you just reminded me you already had Kennedy. Today you’re setting up clandestine meetings and letting Brody grope your bosom.”

  I laughed so hard at her phrasing that I sucked in some sand and spent the next minute spitting it out and wiping it off my tongue. Continuing to giggle didn’t help this process.

  Finally I sighed and said, “This whole election has shaken me out of my comfort zone. I thought all I wanted was to spend a little time with Kennedy, and take pictures, then sit at home by myself and tweak them on the computer. But if this is supposed to be the most exciting time of my life, I’m wasting mine. The rest of the United States comes to Florida for adventure. I actually live here and I don’t have any fun at all.”

  “You started taking pictures because it was fun,” she pointed out.

  “True.” Tia and I hadn’t worked through any of my problems, but I felt better talking to her. She was so upbeat about everything. My mood had improved. I sat up on my towel, half expecting the beach to hold wondrous surprises for me after all.

  Cathy was still walking and Ellen was still staggering in our direction, but Grace had stopped where Brody stood. His head blocked her face from view. I couldn’t tell what they were saying or how intense it was. All I saw was that he had one hand on either side of her bikini bottoms. And the pavilion where we’d just spent a very interesting half hour together was in his direct line of sight. That’s how much our meeting had meant to him.

  “Fuck everybody,” I murmured to Tia, “and t
hat’s not a quote from Sawyer. Catch you later. I’m going swimming.” I jumped up, ran across the sand, and plunged into the water, swimming way out and diving deep. This had been my coping mechanism for countless school gatherings and birthday parties when interacting with others became too much for me. None of that—really nothing about me—had changed just because I’d made out with Brody.

  I floated on my back in the warm ocean. Here on the Gulf, the waves weren’t high like they were on the Atlantic coast. Occasionally a big one would crash over my face and I’d snort salt water, but mostly the tide rocked me, lifting my head and then my toes like I was a strand of seaweed or a kid’s floating toy.

  After a while, I turned on my stomach and did the dead man’s float—or dead chick’s float, in this case—and tried to return to the me I’d been this morning before the race, the one who wanted nothing more than to dot i’s and cross t’s with nobody bothering her. That me wouldn’t mind when Brody had his hands on Grace’s bikini. That me would accept Brody returning to Grace as the natural order of things. That me would know his kiss with me had been an impulse, like his four speeding tickets last year, and another ticket for toilet papering the football coach’s yard. My stomach hurt.

  I felt something flutter against my stomach. This time I wasn’t fooled. It was no fish brushing against me. A boy had crept up on me and thought it was funny to pretend to support me as I levitated in the water. I knew it wasn’t Brody, who didn’t do anything halfway. He would have wrapped his whole arm around my waist and scooped me up. This touch, so light I could barely feel it, was Kennedy.

  I surfaced, letting the water stream down my face, careful not to rub my eyes. Kennedy smiled smugly in front of me like he’d really surprised me that time! I laughed drolly just to keep the peace.

  I wouldn’t have felt so indifferent about him last week. One interlude with Brody had ruined my relationship with Kennedy—without Kennedy even finding out!—and I wasn’t sure I cared.

  “Do you want to leave?” Kennedy asked.

  Together? I almost asked in an astonished voice. But I wasn’t going to prolong my argument with Kennedy when Brody was all over Grace. I hadn’t glanced toward the beach since I entered the water, but I imagined Brody had taken her into the pavilion. That was a euphemism all Brody’s love interests could use, the Brody’s Fling Club. Did he take you to the pavilion?