Page 12 of Want You Back

“Was the whole night miserable?” Colt asked from the passenger seat. He’d seen and heard the whole damn thing, same as Lulu and I’d had to wait while he gave Betsey a fifteen-minute goodnight.

“Not all of it.” I was lying so hard it was a wonder my tuxedo didn’t start smoking. I’d agreed to go to prom for Colt and Colt alone, and watching him and Betsey had been torture. Hell, I’d sign up to break in horses before doing another prom.

“It’s way early yet.” Colt stretched in the passenger seat, looking in no hurry to get home. All his football buddies were probably either getting lucky or drunk or both. But he was here with me. Good for something.

“I liberated a bottle of Jack from the liquor cabinet,” I shared, keeping my voice carefully indifferent. “You wanna go look at some stars?”

“Hell yeah.” He slapped his thigh, and I hightailed out of Lulu’s driveway in a spray of gravel. I headed out toward the overlook before veering north. Overlook would be full of kids partying and making out. I wanted the middle of nowhere.

And Colt, but that went without saying.

I blasted my music, listening to the pop band Colt said he hated but knew all the lyrics better than me. Maybe he listened only for me, and selfishly, I liked that. I took us way out on a dirt road off one of the smaller roads on the state land. Technically, we weren’t supposed to be here after dark, but I didn’t see a ranger. We arranged ourselves on the tailgate, staring up at the night sky. It was a clear night, crisp late spring, the sort of weather Colorado poets wrote about, and the sky hung inky black with millions of stars. I’d miss this when I was gone. I was still leaving, but I’d miss the stars.

And Colt.

“To us.” I unscrewed the cap on the bottle of Jack. I’d neglected to bring a shot glass, but Colt and I had shared before. Our first beer. The first time we’d snuck whiskey. I took a long slug of Jack before passing the bottle to Colt.

“To us.” Colt took a swallow and then shuddered. We passed the bottle a few more times until warmth bloomed in my cheeks and chest. Colt scooted into the truck bed and stretched his legs out. “You might as well get comfortable, Mav. I’m not about to let you drive wasted.”

His dad might be gone five or six years now, but Colt would always be a sheriff’s kid. Squeaky clean. The kind of kid mamas dreamed about. The kind I wasn’t.

“I’m not even tipsy yet.” I scooted backward anyway.Get comfortable.Ha. Impossible with Colt around. Easier to see the stars this way, though, lying on our backs, gazing up at the heavens. I hadn’t wanted to run my battery down, so I’d shut off the music, but the last tune lingered in my brain. “At least the music at prom was decent.”

“Yeah.” Colt stretched his arms out, shoulders rubbing against mine, familiar and electric. “You’re a good dancer. I think the girls had fun.”

I snorted. “I feel bad for Lulu. At least Betsey got the kiss she was angling for.”

“What are you on about?” Colt rolled toward me, propping himself up on an elbow. “Betsey wanted to show me the summer rodeo schedule. That’s what took so long.”

“You didn’t kiss her?” I narrowed my gaze. Even in the dark, I’d be able to tell if he was lying.

“No.” Colt let out a groan and flopped backward. “I don’t know if I like her like that. It’s…hard.”

“Is it?” I cackled at his unintended innuendo, although the thought of Colt and hard in the same sentence was dangerous territory indeed.

“I’m serious, Mav.” Colt addressed the sky rather than looking at me directly. “How do you know if you’d like to kiss someone?”

And now we’d left dangerous terrain for deadly. I’d wanted to kiss Colt Jennings for at least three years. I’d seen a movie with a gay kiss and had instantly known I wanted to kiss my best friend, but I’d also known it was never happening. How did I know? How did I ever exist without knowing was the better question.

“I’ll tell you when it happens,” I said lightly. And it would happen. Somewhere not here. Someone not Colt. A brick hit the bottom of my stomach, a sick weight. I shifted against the truck bed.

“You’ve never…?” Colt returned to his side, peering down at me like I was some sort of scientific oddity being shown in Mr. Humpert’s biology class.

“Around here?” I scoffed. “Who do you think I’m kissing, Colt?”

“Dunno.” He continued to stare at me, dark eyes way too intense and me way too buzzed for this conversation. “But you’ve wanted to, right?”

Only every damn minute. Especially this one as I watched him take another pull from the bottle of Jack.

“You’re past tipsy now.” I grabbed the bottle from him, took my own sip. My throat burned and my lips tingled. And the iron lock I kept on certain topics around Colt loosened. “When you want to kiss someone, you think about them all the time. How they smell. How they talk. Their laugh. Their hands?—”

Colt made a skeptical noise. “Their hands?”

“Yeah, Colt. Hands are sexy. Deal.” I made a dismissive gesture before flopping back down in the truck bed, head heavy and lips apparently not done yapping. “Anyway, you just want to be near them all the time, even if you can’t touch. Maybe you start to want them so much your stomach hurts.”

“And then what?” Colt loomed over me, eyes as wide as if I’d handed him one of the gold nuggets these hills had failed to yield for centuries.

“What do you mean?”

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