Page 23

It just started with a kiss against a tree in the backyard.

Then our story takes flight in the form of colorful kites in the middle of Spruce Park, all eight of us taking advantage of the windy day. Reverend Arnold and Ms. Davis fly their kite together, a bright blue one with flapping ribbons. Trey is the dutiful one helping Cody figure his own kite out, as he can’t get it in the air to save his life. Juni’s bright pink-and-yellow one gets stuck in a tree first thing, and Pete plays the role of a hero as he recklessly climbs all the way up to free it, only to then accidentally free himself from the tree, too, tumbling to the ground with a shout. The fall looks worse than it is, Pete brushing it off, but then he limps for the rest of the afternoon, with Cody chiding him for being so foolish.

Bridger and I are in our own world, flying a kite together, red and classic, diamond-shaped, and couldn’t care less about what’s going on with the others. We take turns. I tease him when he loses control once or twice, poking him in his ribs. He does the exact opposite when I’m flying, encouraging me and applauding when I achieve an impressive height. Then he hugs me from behind, arms around me, and we’re flying the kite together.

And when I go for a sip at the drinking fountain next to the restroom, he catches me by surprise like he was hunting me, and the next thing I know, I’m against the wall making out with him.

What the hell is it with us and public restrooms?

Late afternoon, everyone ends up at Biggie’s Bites just like last Sunday, only several hours later, and I’m not in a sweaty monster costume. Instead, I’m joining them at the big table, and the sassy Mrs. Tucker is busy gushing about her son Billy’s big news: he and his husband are renewing their vows. “It’s going to be a big thing! They just announced it. I’m over the moon. And honestly, also a little sick of ‘em,” she teases. “I mean, how’ve they lasted so long and remained so dang happy? Can’t the two share some of their happiness with the rest of us? Even Nadine’s gettin’ cavities.”

“I like seeing people in love,” Juni says over her burger, eyes twinkling in that specific dreamy way only hers do. “It gives hope for the rest of us.”

Mrs. Tucker eyes Juni as if just now noticing her. “Well, you look awful cozy there with someone who isn’t Anthony.”

Juni has no idea that Mrs. Tucker thinks a certain way about her, which makes her innocent response that much funnier: “Oh, he’s having too much fun playing tonsil hockey with Bridger, and I found someone who’ll let me punish him when he’s been bad.”

Pete freezes with his burger halfway to his lips. Bridger brings his napkin to his face to hide his laughter. Cody and Trey look at each other, blinking.

Mrs. Tucker, who reflects absolutely nothing on her face for a while, calmly replies: “Well if that ain’t true love, I can’t say what is. Can I top off anyone’s Cherry Coke?”

I’m not sure if it was the mention of renewing wedding vows at Biggie’s, but back at the house when everyone’s about to part ways, a weird-ass tension builds between Trey, Cody, and their respective parents. It has something to do with Trey’s dad wanting to walk Bethie home, insisting on enjoying the evening air. “What is going on with you?” asks Trey’s father privately to his son—I’m getting something out of the fridge and overhear it—but Trey doesn’t come up with an answer before Bethie appears, and then the two are off, telling us to have a great night and not to have too much fun without them. I think that last part is directed at Juni, who is dancing in front of the TV like she’s still riding her buzz that started Friday night and never let her go.

Once they’re gone, Trey goes straight to his bedroom, leaving us all be, and after a short attempt to have fun with us, Cody asks us to excuse him before going to check on his husband. We don’t hear from them for the rest of the night.

The remaining four of us lounge around the TV, Pete and Juni cuddled up making faces at each other, and Bridger and I on the floor. Bridger’s back is against the couch. I’m sprawled out like a ragdoll with my head resting on his lap. He keeps gazing down at me and stroking my hair, making me feel pampered.

“Y’all,” says Juni, sitting on Pete’s lap, “like, I was thinking, we could just do this every weekend.”

“Could we now?” laughs Pete.

“Yes, every single weekend. Why not?” She looks at me on the floor, then at Pete. “I don’t see why we couldn’t.”

It’s me, of all people, who rolls my eyes. “Alright, let me know how that goes for you, Dream World Barbie.”

She frowns. “I’m being serious.”

Now my eye roll turns into a laugh. “Some of us have lives .”

“I have a life, too.”

“Yeah, but yours never involves looking for a job, or making money, or handling real world issues like paying rent and worryin’ about your dad’s stupid pest control business.” When she doesn’t respond, I lift my head and look at her. “What?”

Her whole face has collapsed. “I don’t like how you’re talking to me, Anthony. It isn’t nice.”

“Isn’t nice? I’m just bein’ real. Shit. Is that such an innovation for us? Bein’ real with each other?”

“I was just saying it’d be fun.”

“To have no responsibilities? Go clubbing every weekend? Of course it’d be fun. But it ain’t realistic.”

“I-It could be,” she stammers, annoyed.

“You’re livin’ in a dream world, Juni. Real people don’t get to have dreams. We gotta grind every day for scraps of pleasure. You gotta wake up and see how life’s like for the rest of us sometimes.”

“I am awake!” she cries.

“Hey,” interjects Pete, voice firm. “There’s no need for talking like that to her. She was just saying she had fun this weekend. I’d love to do this every weekend, wouldn’t you? Sounds like a blast.”

“And you’ve known her for all of three days,” I throw back at Pete. “I wouldn’t call you an expert in Dream World Barbie’s free way of thinking.”

“Stop with the Barbie jokes,” says Juni.

“What? Now you have a problem with them? You love them.”

“When you say it in a certain way, I don’t like it.” She rises off of Pete’s lap. “You never had a problem with me before.”

I sit up. “I don’t have a problem with you now. I’m just statin’ the obvious. Everyone in this room except you needs to work for a living. We don’t have a lottery ticket nest egg to live on.”

“Lottery—What?” Pete turns to Juni questioningly. “You won a lottery or something?”

Juni looks at him, blinking, then at me, appearing bewildered.

It hits me a second too late that maybe she was enjoying Pete not looking at her the way everyone else in this town does: a rich girl who doesn’t deserve her overnight riches, who wastes it away, who has no responsibilities or worries in the world, who can do whatever she pleases without any concern for the consequences.

I guess I’m an idiot yet again, because the apology won’t leave my lips, and Juni looks like she’s trying not to cry. “I need a little air. It’s like I’m gagging on my own tongue or … something.” She stumbles as she turns away, tripping over her own heels, then sees herself out the front door.

Pete rises, goes to the door, then looks back at me. “The hell was all that about?” he asks me accusingly, then follows her out.

I stare ahead at the TV blankly, feeling guilty and stupid and angry all at once.

Bridger’s hand touches my back, rubbing me soothingly.

I peer over my shoulder, regretting he witnessed any of that. “I’m a shitty friend, I know.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I don’t know why I went into all a’ that. I think it started with Mrs. Tucker at Biggie’s. She thinks Juniper’s been ruining my life. Then with me bein’ trapped in my own mind all damned day about you guys leaving soon … and then me wonderin’ what the hell I’m gonna do after you leave.”

“After I leave?”

“I’m gonna fall the fuck apart, that’s what.” I let out a sigh and hang my head. “Sorry I’m a mess.”

“You’re not a mess.”

“Uh, yeah, I am.”

Bridger brings his arms around me, his face closer. “You and Juni are both good people. You’re just trying to figure yourself out. Maybe she is, too. It’s okay, Anthony.”

“She’s been nothin’ but nice to me.” I fall back against Bridger with my head lolled onto his shoulder. “But don’t I got a point? I can’t just play around forever.”

He hugs me tighter.

I close my eyes, feeling it. “Is this you fulfilling your duty of holdin’ me tight every day? Thought you’re only supposed to hold me after we fuck.”

“I hold you whenever I need to.”

I try to smile but can’t. “Well, I appreciate it … more than I can be trusted to say, apparently, since every time I open my mouth, I fuck somethin’ up.”

“She’ll forgive you.”

“Oh, now you know her better than me?”

“I know she cares about you.” His lips come up to my ear. “I care about you, too. You’re a tough guy not to care about.”

I wrinkle up my face. “What’s that mean?”

“Means I can’t resist holding you when you’re down. I can’t resist making sure you’re okay. I like to take care of you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it. But sometimes …” His words are whispers now, tickling my ear. “… it’s nice to let your guard down a bit and let someone else do the caring.” His hands gently run up and down my arms, calming me. “Everything will get figured out in time.”

“In a week’s time?” I ask bitterly.

“Don’t focus on how much time we’ve got or don’t got. Focus on what’s right here and now. Focus on my fingers.” He brushes them down the front of my body, then starts stroking my chest. “How do they feel?”

“Fuckin’ nice.” He grazes my nipples, then gives one of them a pinch. I grunt. “You tryin’ to turn me on or somethin’?”

“Maybe. Is it working?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Good.”

He pinches the other nipple, catching me off-guard. I gasp, let out a moan, then scowl at him over my shoulder. “The hell is this? Sexual distraction therapy?”

“Sure. Let’s call it that.”

“Bridge …”

Something nearby buzzes. Bridger lifts his head, as startled by the noise as I am, then finds his phone on the arm of the couch. He grabs it and reads a text. “Pete,” he tells me. “Says Juniper’s fine. The two of them went back to her place for the night.”

I sigh. “Probably for the best.”

He makes a face. “Also told me to punch you in the arm for being a dick.” He sets his phone back down. “Too bad. I’d rather dick you in the butt for being in my arms.”

“Dick me in the—?” I pull away and turn around. “The hell?”

He chuckles. “What? Don’t want me to dick you in the butt?”

“Stop sayin’ it like that.”

“Dick. You. In. Your. Cute. Bubble.” He comes in close. “Butt.”

He flattens me to the ground and crawls over me, grinning. When I’m about to tell him to get off me, his fingers dig into my sides, and instead of shouting, I start laughing uncontrollably. He tickles me without mercy for ten excruciating seconds before his lips suddenly find mine, and everything goes from being chaotic to being totally fucking intimate and sweet.

I guess that’s a brain-resetting trick of his. It works. His lips dive into my neck next, and then there’s nothing I can do to fight off him—or the desire that’s now taking me over from head to toe.

“I got an idea,” I whisper in his ear. “Let’s go upstairs to the guestroom and fuck on Pete’s bed.”

His eyes go wide. “You crazy?”

But five seconds later, we’re tearing up the stairs. And on that guestroom bed, our clothes fly off—everywhere. Bridger learned his lesson and doesn’t fold a damned bit of it.

And after we screw our brains out, I’m left naked, gasping for breath in his arms, as the pair of us lie on that bed staring up at the ceiling, as happy as can be, our spirits floating across it like kites of a different kind.

“This feels so wrong,” he groans. “Sweating up Pete’s bed like this. So fucking wrong.”

“I know,” I answer, giddy.

He turns to me. “Hey, you wanna go on my jog with me in the morning? It’s my sacred time, so … it’s kind of a big deal that I’m inviting you. Just so you know.”

“Just so I know what?”

“How much I think of you.” He kisses my cheek, then pauses. “Is that too much? To say something like that? I can pull back with the cutesy sentimental shit … if we really are just two dudes who fuck around and nothing more.”

Every time he says that, echoing whatever nonsense I said just a day or two ago, I find myself cringing inside. Those stupid words cheapen whatever it is we have. We’re so much more than guys who just have sex. He knows it. And I sure as hell know it.

“Yeah,” I answer him. “I’ll go on that mornin’ jog with you.”

He lets out a breath of relief. “Thanks.”

“And don’t you dare pull back with the cutesy sentimental shit,” I go on. I put a kiss on his soft, chiseled cheek and, with a smirk, add: “ Babe .”

His body goes rigid.

Did he even realize that’s what he called me in the hotel room before falling asleep? Does he remember it now?

I grin to myself, proud, then give him an energetic pat on the chest before sliding off the bed and get dressed. “C’mon, hot stuff. Let’s go downstairs and have a snack. Fuckin’ starved, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t sleep on an empty stomach.”

Bridger blinks, at a loss for words.

He’s so fuckin’ cute when he doesn’t know what to say for once .

It’s just as well that my snack of choice is Pop-Tarts, because while they’re toasting up, Cody and Trey come out of their room in a better mood, Cody exclaiming, “Hell yeah, I love Pop-Tarts!” After Bridger tells them that Pete and Juni left together—omitting the reason for them leaving—the four of us spend the next half hour hanging out in the kitchen. “I’m fine now, I promise,” Trey insists, pulling each bite off his Pop-Tart and blowing on it so he doesn’t burn his mouth. “I have made the conscious decision that, should my nightmare be realized and either my dad or Bethie pops the question, I’ll be fine with it. Let them marry. I will not stand in the way of their love.”

Cody smiles with his mouthful. “That’s his decision tonight at this exact moment. It might change when it actually happens.”

“If,” Trey barks back, for a second furious, then turning sweet again as he pops his next bite into his mouth.

Waking up curled into Bridger’s arms is a fucking dream.

Every night I’m by his side, I wake up completely refreshed, my head screwed on right, my eyes alert, and my feelings bubbling up with possibilities for the day.

I’ve never been a morning person. Not once in my life.

Bridger makes it possible.

To be honest, I thought waking up crazy early on a Monday morning would be the worst part.

Nope, not by far.

The worst part is the bastard putting me through the ringer with his ridiculously strict jogging routine. “I need a break!” I rasp at him, out of breath after barely two blocks. “Please! Fuck!”

Even when we’re stopped, he’s jogging in place next to me, a fountain of infinite energy. “Keep your heart rate up,” he tells me, all chipper and cheery.

“How’d I get this outta shape??”

“Go at your own pace. It’s a jog, not a race.”

“The hell’s your secret? You jog like you got triple-A batteries up your ass!”

“Maybe I do.” He grins at me, and I hate how that triples how handsome he looks. Then he winks and continues on without any complaint. Of course he does. The guy is built for this.

I’m built for wheezing on the curbs of streets.

By the time we get back to the house—apparently cutting his usual morning jog in half—it’s still earlier than I’ve ever woken up in the past five years that I can remember. I don’t think I’ve seen a proper early morning since I was in high school racing to make it to my first class in time for the bell.

It’s while in the shower that Bridger notices I’m still off. “Just go and talk to her,” he tells me. “If it’s eating at you.”

“Why’re you always noticing every little thing on my face?” I scrub too vigorously under my arms, scowling. “It’s annoying.”

“It’s my way of caring about you.” He slides the soap down my back—and slips it between my cheeks.

I shoot him a look over my shoulder. “Does your way of carin’ about me include washin’ my ass crack?”

“Definitely.”

“The shit I’m learnin’ about you …” I mutter, shaking my head with a chuckle, but the more he rubs down there, the less I can ignore it, and soon my eyes are rocking back. His soft lips find my neck. The soap is replaced with his smooth fingers.

I swear, something needs to be done, because the horny pair of us can’t keep our damned hands to ourselves.

It’s the afternoon when I come up to the front of Happy Trails.

Juni is sitting in one of our fold-out chairs, curled up with her knees tucked inside an oversized t-shirt. She’s got glasses on that I’ve never seen her wear before, and she’s reading a book.

Okay.

I come up next to her and sit on the curb right where the path crumbles into the gravel of the parking lot. Neither of us say a word. I pick something out of my lips. It’s a hair. Then I scratch at a spot on my arm. And I bat away a gnat from my face.

Finally I can’t stand it. “Didn’t know you wear glasses.”

“I don’t,” says Juni, sighing the words. “They’re fake.”

“Oh.” We fall into silence again. I bat away the same gnat from my face. I scratch at the same spot, convinced a mosquito bit me during my morning torture session with Bridge—oh, sorry, I mean morning jog. I listen to distant traffic in town.

Then Juni says, “I think you were right.”

I look up at her. “Huh? When?”

“I’ve been … stumbling around a bit in life. Like … in a dream for a while now, or something.”

I sigh. “You didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

“Hear me out.” She lowers her book. “Even before the lottery. I feel like I never really figured out what it was I wanted to do with my life. Did you know at one point, I wanted to open a salon?”

“A salon? Like, for nails?”

“Manicures and pedicures, but also makeup . Oh, I love makeup. I’d love to sit there and just … paint someone’s face on top of their face. That’s basically what makeup is, right?”

I blink. “You lost me.”

She slips her legs out of her shirt, drawing my eyes, and then she turns to face me. “I wondered something, Anthony. Something really serious. I wondered … what I might be like right now … if I hadn’t won that lottery. And I wonder what it would’ve been like, had I gone to that bachelor auction without a blank check.”

I shrug at her. “You wouldn’t have been able to buy me.”

“Exactly. And what have I done with my money since? Other than waste it on … on fake glasses and makeup and things I keep losing in that mess of an apartment?” She turns to me. “Anthony. I know I won a lottery, but … but in truth … what I won was you.”

I meet her eyes.

“You,” she repeats, facing me fully now, her eyes wide with wonder. “I didn’t win money. I won you: the truest friend I’ve ever had, who saw me for what I really am, a once-in-a-lifetime friend to the end. Anthony … you’re the lottery I won.”

“Fuck,” I breathe out, hand to my chest.

“I know, right?” She laughs at my reaction, then turns serious again. “The question is … what do I do now? With the money. With my life. With this wakeup call you just gave me.” Her face melts into a smile. “I guess I’m trying to thank you. For being a dick to me last night and saying those things. That was so sweet of you.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“It was sweet because you’re still the voice of reason. Even if my head’s in the clouds. And a military boy’s tied down to my bed with a vibrating butt plug.” She smiles at me with happy tears in her eyes. “Do you realize you’re the most reliable person in my life? I can always rely on you to be real with me. I need that.”

I swallow. “What was that about a butt plug …?”

She’s out of her chair and drops onto the curb by my side to hug me tightly. “I love you so much, Anthony. Thanks for being my lottery.” She pulls back. “And I promise, I’ll do something real nice and good with my money. Other than spend it on another pink pussycat curling iron. I still couldn’t find the dang thing ,” she hisses at me, sad about it.

That’s when the door behind us opens, and Pete’s weary face pokes out. “I broke free ‘cause I had to pee. You didn’t tie me down tight enough.” Then he spots me, startled. “Oh, uh, hey, dude.”