Page 41

Nonsensical

Sixteen Years Old, Virginia

The morning after Beck’s graduation party, I woke up in a tent, in a field, sick with shame and also sick . My memory was hazy, my head throbbed, and my throat convulsed with the need to throw up. Crawling woozily to unzip the flap, I got my head outside before I retched rancid peach liquid into the dirt.

A hand squeezed my shoulder, then gathered my hair from where it fell around my clammy face.

Macy, bless her.

“Shit, Amelia,” a groggy voice said. “Are you okay?”

Not Macy.

Beck.

“No,” I said pitifully, crying over the puke. “I’m dying. Already dead, maybe.”

He laughed, shifting to kneel beside me. Adoringly he said, “Baby.”

“I think I need to throw up again.”

He slipped the elastic from my wrist so he could secure my hair in a ponytail, then rubbed my back while I emptied the contents of my stomach like the Boone’s Farm rookie I was. When it was over, he gave me tissues he found in my bag, then made me sip water until I was no longer green.

Feeling infinitesimally better, I collapsed on top of my sleeping bag, sweaty and stinky. I flung an arm over my face to block the light. Beck lay beside me, running his fingers over my palm until my breathing evened out.

“Did you sleep in here all night?” I asked, eyes closed.

“Yeah. I came in, like, fifteen minutes after you walked away.”

It was hard to believe that only fifteen minutes had passed between my temper tantrum and conking out. The night before seemed a thousand lifetimes ago. “I thought you were Macy,” I told him. “I assumed you wouldn’t want to be near me after the way I acted.”

“Lia. I’m not gonna hold a drunken outburst against you. You were…dealing.”

I pried my eyes open, tilting my head so I could see his freckled face. “I know you don’t like Taryn—not like that. I’m insecure. And kind of an asshole.”

“You’re not an asshole.”

“Well, Taryn must think I’m out of my mind.”

“Who cares what Taryn thinks?”

I didn’t—not really. “What do you think?”

His fingers trailed over mine, along my palm, my wrist. “I think I don’t like fighting with you. I could’ve handled last night better. You’ve got no reason to feel insecure with me, though.” There was tension in his jaw and doubt in his eyes when he asked, “Lia, don’t you trust me?”

“I always have.”

“Do you trust us?”

I mulled over his question. If I trusted him but not us , where was the problem?

With me.

The problem was with me.

It took me a second to work up the nerve to voice this new realization. “I don’t know who I am without you. We’ve been Beckett and Amelia for as long as I’ve been alive. We’ve had two years of high school together, but now you’re leaving and I have to learn how to get by on my own and…I’m feeling very lost.”

“You think I’m not?” he asked quietly.

“Maybe you are. But you’re the one who gets to leave.”

“And you’re being left behind…kind of like a deployment.” His expression clouded over and, with such sadness, he said, “We could take a break.”

A strangled gasp escaped me. “Like, break up ?”

“I guess, yeah. Until we figure our shit out. I don’t know…maybe some space would make things easier for you.”

“Is that what you want? To break up?”

“Fuck no. But if that’s what you need, I’ll figure it out.”

His suggestion was nonsensical—absolutely bananas. The notion of being without him physically and emotionally was intolerable. I would never choose life without him.

“I don’t want to take a break,” I told him. “That’s the opposite of what I want.”

His shoulders fell from his ears, his face relaxing into its usual good humor. “Then I’ll sneak you to CVU with me. How about that?”

“I wish you could.”

He leaned in, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. When he drew back, he said, “You smell like puke.”

I laughed, which made the tent spin. I squeezed my eyes closed and, in the darkness, let go of another confession: “I had plans to have sex with you last night.”

He barked out a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Until…you know.”

“Until I fucked it up?”

“More like until I got sloshed.”

He floated his fingers over my hand again. “Our first time shouldn’t be in a tent.”

“That’s what Macy said!”

He laughed and laughed, then walked me to the 4Runner and let me sit in the passenger seat with all the air conditioner vents aimed at my face while he tore down our tent, cleaned up our mess, and packed the SUV.

Even suffering through a hangover, I felt so happy, so lucky, to exist in the world with Beck.