Page 52 of For You & No One Else (Say Everything 3)

“Of course. Love you back.” Andi flicked her hand in a shoo motion. “Now go find awkward boy. Tell him I said thanks for the invite, too.”

Eliza nodded and then grabbed a napkin to wipe her mouth. She wanted no trace of chocolate from the cookie or Lip Smackers on her face. She left Andi in the kitchen and made her way to the great room. She didn’t want to have to check each of the game rooms. Plus, based on the look on Beckham’s face when she’d last seen him, he was done with games for the night. She ran across Khuyen in the living room. He was back on the couch with Kevin and a few people she hadn’t met yet. She asked him if he’d seen Beckham.

“Not lately, but I know he hasn’t left. Maybe check the back porch. He likes to go out there sometimes,” Khuyen said.

“Thanks.” Eliza headed to the back of the house where the long screened-in porch faced the bayou. She couldn’t see outside because the windows just reflected the light of the party back at her. She pushed open the back door and went outside, the cooler air enveloping her and offering relief from the stuffy air inside. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the low light of the porch. On the far right, there was a small group of people hanging out in rocking chairs and vaping under a dim yellow porch light, but when she turned to look to the other darkened end, she found Beckham.

He was leaning back in an old wooden chair, feet propped up on the lower rung of the porch railing, only the moonlight breaking the darkness. He hadn’t seen her come out, and for a moment, she simply watched him. He had a pensive look on his face and seemed to be staring out into the black waters of the bayou. To see someone sitting alone with nothing in their hands—no phone, no book, nothing to take their attention—was an anomaly, but Beckham seemed more than a little occupied by his own thoughts.

Part of her wanted to leave him to it. This was sure to be an awkward conversation, but she couldn’t bring herself to take the easy road. They needed to clear the air and move on.

After a fortifying breath—which smelled of all the green things growing in the bayou—she headed his way. When she was about six feet from him, the moonlight sent her shadow over him and he looked up. He dropped his feet to the porch floor and his jaw ticked. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said, turning her back to the railing and leaning against it. Mosquitoes buzzed against the screen behind her. “I’d wondered if you’d left.”

“Not yet,” he said. “I like to stick around in case anyone needs a designated driver.”

She glanced at the two glasses next to his chair. She’d assumed he’d been drinking vodka sodas. “Should you be a designated driver?”

“What?” He noticed where she was looking and then shook his head. “Oh, that. It’s club soda and lime. I don’t drink.”

“Oh.”

“Anymore.” He glanced up, weight in that one word.

Oh.He didn’t need to spell it out. She slid that piece into her Beckham puzzle, but there were still too many missing pieces to make sense of anything. “Gotcha.”

“Will told me he asked for your number,” Beckham said, looking out to the water again.

She was a little thrown by the non sequitur. “He did. He seems nice.”

Beckham nodded almost to himself. “He is. Good guy.”

“Good.” She fiddled with the sleeve of her pajamas. “Guess this experiment worked. I got a date out of your party. You were right.”

He smirked and glanced over briefly. “I usually am.”

She snorted but was happy to see a glimmer of the normal Beckham coming through instead of all the awkwardness that had risen up between them. “So…”

“Look, I’m sorry about the Spin the Bottle thing,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, like, make a scene or whatever.”

She tried to read his expression, but he was giving her nothing. “Why did you then?”

“I don’t know.” He put his hands to his face and rubbed like he was too tired to think.

She crossed her arms. “You don’t know.”

He dropped his hands into his lap and looked her way. “Yeah. I just…couldn’t kiss you.”

The words hit her like little shards of glass, cutting deeper than they should. “Right.” She forced a tight, no-big-deal smile. “It’s fine. You had the right to not want to. That was in the rules.”

He frowned, dropping his gaze to the wooden slats of the porch floor.

“To be honest,” she went on, unable to stop talking, “it’s not the first time in Spin the Bottle a boy realized he didn’t want to kiss me. This time was far less traumatic. My seventh-grade crush made gagging sounds when the bottle landed on me. Said he’d rather kiss his dog. So thanks for not doingthat.”

His head turned sharply, his eyes flaring. “What?”

Her face burned with the memory. Why the hell was she sharing this?Shut up.But she couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut. “Just one of those things. I went through a really awkward phase in middle school. A little too chubby compared to the other girls, a little too hairy, a lot too brown for the lily-white popular group at my Catholic school.”

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