Page 50 of The Summer of ’98

Leroy looked conflicted but I couldn’t imagine not going. It was worth the risk. Aside from the fact I would get to see Aerosmith live, we’d be in a hotel, two hours out of town, with no parental supervision. I hated to go against parental authority in most situations, not to mention how much trouble I would be in if I got caught, but it was something I wouldn’t get to do again anytime soon.

Noah leaned forward and fixed me with question. “Aren’t you eighteen? You’re grown. What’s your mom’s deal?”

“Noah—” Leroy shook his head.

“All right,” I said, not wanting to linger on the fact that I don’t have the same freedoms as most eighteen-year-olds. “We’ll just tell Eleanor that my mom was fine with it.”

“Perfect!” Cass slapped her hands on the tabletop with excitement. “We’ll leave at lunch. I’m packed and good to go. My stuff is by the door.”

“You knew that we would go?” Leroy arched a brow at her.

“No. But I was hopeful. And if you’d said no, I would have just gone to Eric’s and asked him. Now hurry up and finish eating,” Cass gave me a tap on the back of the hand. “I’ll help you pack once you’re done.”

“Cass,” Noah pushed his seat back and stood. “Can we talk for a second?”

She stared up at the boy she adored. I didn’t think what they had was love, but I believed she felt it in one of the many forms it came in. Leroy and I watched them leave the room together and when I looked at him, his stare was narrow and calculating. “This is going to go really well or so badly.”

Cass hadn’t had the chance to tell me what happened after we’d dropped her off at Tony’s yesterday. But I was desperate to find out. Which is why, a few hours later, when I heard her come out of his bedroom, I peered out of mine.

“Cass,” she looked up from the floor, the biggest smile that I’d ever seen on her cheerful face. “Come,” I waved her over, and she skipped into the room, collapsing onto the bed.

Leroy was downstairs on the phone with his mom. He’d asked his dad for permission first, but he’d told us to clear it with Eleanor. He was doing that while Cass caught me up with the details.

“You have such good taste in clothes.” She admired a pair of overalls. I was packing up my bag with a couple of outfits so that I’d have options.

“Thanks, but don’t keep me waiting. What happened at Tony’s? What happened just now?”

She bit on her lip and her chest expanded. “Okay, okay, so after you dropped me off, I stormed straight inside. I’d been hyping myself up for the moment, so I was one hundred percent ready to throw down. Anyway, he was gaming with his friend, and I started shouting ‘you slept with Nadia, you are such a hoochie and I hate you.’ That sort of thing.”

I nodded along.

“He told me that it was none of my business and I had no right to talk to him like that, yadda yadda yadda. So, I said, ‘Noah,’” Cass stood up and directed her words at the empty space in the room, reenacting with passion, “‘You will not touch me, fuck me, or speak to me ever again unless you commit. Just us. I don’t want to share you anymore, and if you can’t get on board, we are done.’”

I clapped, fast and loud, but her expression fell, and so did the raise in her shoulders.

“Then he told me he wasn’t interested in exclusivity and I was just depriving myself of a good thing because I wanted to have childish labels. That I was the one with hang-ups apparently.”

I could have gone into his room and smacked him right across the face. “What did he want to talk about just now?”

That was when she regained her excitement, sitting down on the bed so fast that the mattress bounced, and my bag shook. “He apologized for it all. He said he was scared but he doesn’t want to lose me, and he agreed to be exclusive. Noah Lahey is my boyfriend.”

As far as I was concerned, I still believed that Cass could do so much better. But her happiness was radiant, washing over her in waves that glittered under the sun that was Cass. There was no hiding how much this meant to her. “That’s a turnaround! I’m so happy for you.”

“I know.” She shook her head when I held up a pair of black leather pants. “Those are tight, but it’s too hot. We can go on double dates now.”

“We sort of are tonight,” I said. “A concert could be a date.”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Double-date night!”

Leroy appeared at the doorway. He folded his arms across his chest with a small smile and leaned on the doorframe. “We’ve booked a room. It’s a double—two queen beds between the four of us.”

“Perfect, me and Ellie can share. You and Noah take the other,” Cass grinned as she jumped up from the bed. She gave his chest a condescending pat as she walked past him and out of the room.

“I’m not sharing a bed with Noah,” Leroy shouted over his shoulder. “I don’t even want to share a room with the two of you!”

“Why don’t we get our own?” I asked and walked toward him. “I could help with the cost?”

He wrapped an arm around my waist so that he could pull me into him. “It’s not about cost, Ellie. I do appreciate the offer, though,” he pressed a kiss on my forehead. “The hotels in the area were booked up. The one we did manage to find is almost a half hour from the concert and had a cancellation when we called.”

---