Page 6 of August Lane

“My friends tried to make me ride the roller coaster. I hate it. Makes me nauseous.” He took a deep breath, and she was relieved to hear it. Earlier, he’d seemed seconds from passing out. “They were assholes about it, and I… I don’t know, I had to get away from them.”

“They don’t sound like very good friends.”

He paused, then said, “They’re my teammates,” as if that explained everything.

And to an extent, it did. Friends should be chosen, but sports in Arcadia made a lot of those choices for you: who you hung out with, how you dressed, what weird rituals you followed that no one else understood.

Her cousin Mavis, the middle hitter for the volleyball team, choked down cheese grits every Friday even though she hated them because her coach claimed they brought good luck before a game.

“Are you at least good at whatever you play?” August purposely kept the question vague so the conversation wouldn’t devolve into a ball player sob fest. She’d never cared for sports and would probably say the wrong thing.

“I don’t know.” He paused. “I think I hate it.” He sounded unsure of himself, like it was the first time he’d said the words out loud.

“You should quit,” August advised, probably with too much glee. “Do something you enjoy.”

“I’ve got a scholarship to LSU.” He announced it like a prison sentence instead of a free ride to the largest university in Louisiana. She understood. Most people in town couldn’t afford to turn down free money. “I play guitar, though. I enjoy it.”

“Well, are you good at that ?”

“Yeah.” She heard him shift against the wall. “I mean, I think so.”

“You said yes really fast. Don’t get modest now.”

He laughed again. The sound was just as good as his voice—warm and contagious, the kind that invited you in. “I’m kind of like you. I only play at church. They give me a solo sometimes, but that’s it.”

“Wow, you get solos? I’ve been banned from solos.”

“Banned?”

“By my grandmother. She’s the choir director. And before you ask, no, I didn’t deserve it. She thinks it builds character to deprive children of things they want.”

“Wow.” He paused. “She sounds—”

“Like Ebeneezer Scrooge? There’s a resemblance.

” She pictured Birdie in her Sunday best, all big brown eyes and deep dimples, swathed in pastel florals.

“I’m kidding. She’s only fifty-eight and immortally gorgeous.

” So was Jojo. Kingdoms were known to fall when her mother and grandmother stood in the same room.

They looked like the former beauty queens they were.

August, in contrast, had strong, unforgiving features that would frighten small children if she wore too much eyeliner.

“Do you write music?” she asked, trying to move the subject away from her family. She didn’t want him thinking about the fact that they hadn’t exchanged names.

“No. I mean, yeah, but not for real. Just a hobby. Do you?”

“Yes,” August admitted, even though she’d probably regret it later. But she never talked about songwriting with anyone. Secrets were lonely. “I’m moving to Nashville after graduation.”

“To be a singer? That’s so cool.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Is that why you’re here? Rehearsing in the dark?”

He’d been honest with her about what brought him there, so she felt obligated to do the same. “I was hiding from someone. A guy from school.”

“Oh. Ex-boyfriend? I’m not asking to hit on you. I have a girlfriend.”

“So did he. Only I didn’t know until it was too late.” That they were talking like this, trading secrets, felt too intimate for someone she hadn’t technically met. But she didn’t want to stop. Telling him made the shame feel like something she could eventually peel off.

“We had sex,” she said. “It’s all over school. People hate me.”

He grabbed her hand. She stiffened, then wove her fingers through his. His hand was much bigger and calloused, probably from playing his guitar.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said. “No one should treat you that way.”

August didn’t want to be pitied, but this might be worse. It was genuine kindness—easier to trust and fall for. The enormity of what she’d confessed to this stranger was starting to frighten her. “I should probably go,” she said.

“Oh? Right, yeah.” He sounded disappointed. She tried to pull her hand back, but he gripped it tighter. “Let’s walk out together.”

August moved slowly as he shuffled behind her.

The darkness lifted as they got closer to the exit, and the funhouse music was drowned out by the metal grind of carnival rides and screaming voices.

His hand loosened and fell away. She turned around, but a wall of bodies obscured her vision.

She tried to look through the crowd and spot the guy she was eager to meet properly, but no one met her eyes.

She spun around, searching, but only spotted Richard and his friends holding cozy-covered beer cans.

“There she is!” Richard grinned and slung his arm over his friend’s shoulders. The guy was Black and wore a ball cap jammed over his short, curly afro.

“Come here, August,” Richard slurred. “My boy’s a virgin, and his girl won’t put out. He’s never even had his dick sucked. Told him you’d do him a solid.” Richard pointed to a porta-potty. “Even found y’all the perfect spot.”

August tried to ignore him and walk away, but Richard kept talking, yelling her name along with more lies about the amazing things she could do with her mouth.

He’d said the same thing when he kissed her: that her lips were amazing, and he’d never felt that way when he kissed a girl before. Like I’m floating.

August stalked to where they were standing. She ignored everyone else, including the mute virgin buddy he was using as an armrest. “I don’t do pity fucks anymore,” she said. “Sixty seconds of heaven isn’t worth it.”

Richard’s face iced over. Someone behind him coughed a laugh into their hand, and soon they were surrounded by snickering. He glanced at his friends and sneered, “Slut.”

August laughed. It felt good. Or at least better than crying.

She looked to his right, to the supposed friend he’d made the butt of his joke, prepared to tell him that the company he kept was the real reason his girlfriend wouldn’t sleep with him.

But the guy wasn’t laughing like the others.

He was staring at her like he’d seen a ghost.

“Come on, Luke.” Richard slapped his back. “This bitch is boring.”

They drifted away. Luke didn’t move. He opened his mouth but closed it quickly, like he’d forgotten how it worked. When he finally spoke, his voice was deep and winding, the same one she’d stupidly handed all her secrets to.

“August Lane?”

In third grade, kids had called him Cowboy Luke.

He couldn’t remember the name of the boy who started it, only that he was thin and white, with a face full of so many freckles, they looked like brown splotches on his cheeks from a distance.

The boy had leaned over, took a dramatic sniff, and loudly declared that Luke Randall smelled like horse shit.

“You tryin’ to be a cowboy?” he’d asked, with a sneer that implied it was an unforgivable sin.

The freckled kid moved away, but the nickname stuck, even after Luke’s mother sold off all their livestock and started using the barn for storage.

At his predominately white school, Black boys were supposed to be cool and urban like the rappers everyone listened to, not country and dusty from working on two hundred acres of farmland surrounded by dirt roads.

It took a while, but after a few years of excelling in every sport the school district offered, coupled with a meticulous hygiene routine, Luke left the cowboy behind him.

He had better nicknames now: Lightning, because he was the fastest running back in the district.

Ups, because he could jump higher than a basketball center who was half a foot taller.

Sometimes he overheard girls calling him Funshine, like the yellow Care Bear from the eighties.

He still hadn’t quite figured out why, but their tone made it clear it was a compliment, which was the most important thing.

Luke was well liked. People laughed with him instead of at him. So once word spread around school that he was a virgin, he felt he had to remedy that condition immediately.

His girlfriend agreed, which wasn’t surprising, because as last year’s MVP on their district champion volleyball team, Jessica Ryder valued winning above everything.

She would have done something drastic if he hadn’t suggested having sex.

Like dump him. Or make up a different rumor to counter the first because, as she put it, “I won’t be the loser who can’t get a virgin to fuck me. ”

They’d been dating for only three months.

Jessica’s family had moved to Arcadia during his freshman year when her father, a burly man with a Lionel Richie mustache, started working with the county sheriff’s department.

Her mother, a Mariah Carey look-alike, was a homemaker who sold Mary Kay products for spending money.

Jessica was a mixture of the two: stunning, tall, and slender, with loose curls that had all the boys mesmerized.

She played volleyball and basketball, and quickly joined Luke’s group of friends, a cluster of Black athletes who’d played in the same sports programs since kindergarten.

For years, she’d dated blond, blue-eyed Wesley Harris, the star pitcher of their baseball team, until their senior year when he dumped her for a freshman at Rhodes College.

Jessica had pivoted to Luke almost instantly.

Later, she told him her friends had hassled her about dating him forever.

“They said we’d look cute,” she said while gesturing to their similar golden-brown skin tones. “A perfect match.”