Page 33 of Hearts Adrift
Brooke snorts at me and rolls her eyes. “If you’re not going to support my dream, you can just sashay away.”
“Your dream is to spread disease? How ambitious.”
“To spreadlove.” She stops in the middle of hanging a rainbow banner across the back and turns. “Keep sassing me and I’ll volunteeryouto spend a whole day in thisbox of love.”
“Think I may have you a volunteer already. Chase.”
“Chase? You kidding?” She laughs. “He’ll get so much business, either the booth alone will break our fire codes or his lips will fall off by noon.”
“Sounds like all the more reason to utilize him. We can always use the …” I hear Dad’s worried words. I shut them out “… extra money. Income’s income, right?”
“Hey, where were you last night?”
Last night.
Not the first thing I thought she’d bring up.
My face makes a face—the faciest face a face has ever made. “Huh?”
“You weren’t home.”
The thing is, I can bullshit Heather all day and night. I canbullshit my dad. But Brooke reads me like every single thought I have prints itself in bold ink across my face.
“Oh mygosh!” She stops her work entirely. “You met someone? Already? Oh, it was just a hookup? Was he hot? Wait, at the club? I thought you swore off clubbing!”
She’s going a mile a minute, reading every shift in my face. I swear it’s a superpower. “I didn’t do anyone. Uh … anything,” I quickly correct myself. “Didn’t do anything.”
“So it wasn’t clubbing? Well, if you didn’t shake it at El Amado, what’d you do? I waited up all night! We still haven’t watched that movie. I’ve waited formonths…”
“We’ll have our movie night, I swear.”
“Was it the Tylers? Did you stay up with Kent too late and crash on his couch again? No, that isn’t possible, not sinceJonahhappened. Also, Eden is a handful on agoodday. You didn’t crash at Adrian’s either. Wait … you just said … Oh, did you crash with?—No! You andChase??”
“I didn’t stay at—” Actually, that isn’t the worst alibi. “I mean … yeah, I hung out with Chase at the Easy. Until he got off. And we talked a lot. It went pretty late.”
“More than just ‘pretty late’! You never came home.” She draws so close to me, I can smell her cotton candy lip gloss. “Tell me … are you and Chase … a thing? A secret little hot thing? Are you seriously secretly rebounding with Dreamwood’s beach town island babe? Tell me.Please.”
She won’t stop until I give her an answer. And I can’t give her the real answer. I can’t tell her I crashed after our high-profile, fugitive, celebrity bungalow guest massaged my back and gave me the world’s worst case of blue balls that I quickly eradicated in the shower this morning.
What else can I tell her? I swallow. I don’t feel good about this. But … “Please don’t tell anyone,” I squeak.
The next ten excruciating seconds are spent watching Brookemake that squirmy, over-the-top groan of delight as she wriggles her body and dances all over the interior of her mononucleosis booth like she just struck gold.
She stops abruptly. “I promise I won’t tell.”
“Not even Chase,” I go on, covering my tracks. “If he finds out I told anyone, I’m done for. I’ll be … super sad. Even sadder than I am right now about the Theo thing.”
“Yeah, you look super broken up about Theo still,” she agrees, voice marinated in sarcasm.
“No one,” I insist again, committing to my role of the desperate spurned ex with a secret lover who is neither the person she thinks nor actual lover. Now who’s the actor?
No sooner does the thought run through my head that I catch sight of him again—across the way, near the entrance to the Parrot, the guy in the leather jacket and shades. He peers over a shoulder at me, then slips right into the Parrot.
I amnotcrazy. Thathasto be River, right?
What the hell is he doing here? Getting a bite to eat? In public? Is he fucking nuts?
“Finn, Finn …” sings my sister, smacking my ass with such dedication that I jump as she passes by on her way out of the booth. “I didn’t know you had it in you to be such a bad boy, sneaking around town. I think I like this side of you—late-night Finn, sassy Finn,salaciousFinn …”
