Page 14 of Love at Full Tilt

Starshatter Hotel, Fableland

Orlando, FL

At Starshatter Hotel, you can truly get away from it all. Hang from the stars and leave your cares behind.

—Fableland’s “Escape Life” national ad campaign

My bed looks like a shiny, star-covered oasis of comfort as we push through the door of our hotel room.

It’s a quarter to midnight, and it feels like we haven’t sat down in at least five hours. My calves burn from overuse and despite Tess’s meticulously coordinated sunblock rotation, the sting of a light sunburn stretches across my shoulders.

I flop face-first onto one of the beds with a loud groan. “I know we teased you about your itinerary, but I think we really did see every inch of that park.”

“Of course we did. I’m a master.” Tess pulls out her phone. “I can’t wait to see Carter try to do better tomorrow. And fail. ” Her fingers flick at the screen as she scrolls. “Oh shit. Issy, did you just get that email too?”

Issy nods furiously, and they grab on to each other and bounce up and down on the other bed, their faces split by huge grins.

I pick up my own phone and stare at the blank screen. “What email?”

Issy stills. “The stuff we ordered for our dorm room shipped.”

“Oh?” Normally, Tess texts me pictures of everything she buys. Including soap and tampons. She needs the strangest forms of validation.

Tess’s eyes brighten, like pieces of polished mahogany. “We got matching comforters and towels and stuff.”

“Not matching, ” Issy clarifies. “Coordinating. Different geometric patterns in the same color schemes.” She pulls up images to show me.

They’re really pretty. One set has chevron stripes in aqua and white, the other a checkered pattern in different shades of blue.

“Your room’s going to look awesome.” I force as much enthusiasm as I can into my voice, but my insides twist as if someone’s wringing them out. They’re doing things without me. Already. And there’s still two months before they leave.

“Right?” Tess nods. “We did it the minute we got our roommate confirmation.”

So, less than a week ago. While I was sitting at home doing nothing.

I look back at my own phone, as if there’s tons of important stuff waiting for my attention, and the two of them take that as a cue to return to squealing.

I blink away the burn in my eyes. I’m happy for them.

I’m sure it will make college so much less terrifying having your best friend beside you. But I won’t be there too.

And if I don’t win this contest, I won’t have any adventures of my own.

My phone rings. The sound scrapes claws down my back. My mother.

It’s practically midnight, and I’ve been so distracted by finding the clues and Mason and everything else that I forgot to answer her texts.

I close my eyes and push a long breath between my teeth as I sit up on the bed. My free hand clenches into a fist. I’m not ready for this call.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Lia, sweetie, I’ve been waiting all day to hear from you.

” Her voice teeters on the cusp of shrieky.

No doubt she’s pacing the living room, counting silently or cataloging every white object around her to ground herself like her therapist taught her.

There’ve been so many times I’ve had to do it with her that I almost start now out of habit.

“Sorry. We lost track of time.”

“Are you okay?”

“Of course. I’m just wiped from the day.”

“Did you girls have fun?” She still sounds on edge. She’s probably gripping the arm of the recliner.

“Tons of fun.”

In the background, Dad’s rough voice bursts through. “No boys?”

“Did you hear your father?”

“Yep.”

“And, no boys?”

“Of course.”

Lying to my parents makes me hot and out of sorts, like I’m losing my balance on a tightrope.

It’s probably because of those “we’re so very disappointed in you” speeches I got as a kid.

Anger is the flick of a match. It’s a spark.

Quick and fizzling, then it’s gone. Disappointment, though—it lingers.

Like a virus. Infecting everything else.

But if I admit to spending half the day with a guy they’ve never met, they’ll be on the next plane down here to drag me home.

Mom would pilot it herself if necessary.

The only reason I was ever able to date in the first place was because my two high school boyfriends were sons of my parents’ closest friends, and we were rarely left alone.

It’s a damned miracle I lost my virginity to Dan junior year.

We told my parents we were looking for a piece of our chemistry homework in Dan’s car, so we’d had to be quick about it.

I bet you can guess how magical and romantic that was.

My mother taps what I imagine is her sudoku pen against the end table. “And you’re eating, right?”

“Three meals a day plus tons of water.”

I yawn. It starts out genuine, but I stretch it into something more exaggerated, opening my mouth so wide my eyes water. I feel like a jerk, but I know if my mom keeps going, her list of worries will carve a hole into what has, overall, been a really funday.

“Sweetie, get some sleep. Maybe take it easy tomorrow. You don’t have to spend the entire day at the park. Then you could check in more.”

I strangle the comforter between my fingers, counting backward from ten.

“That’s the whole point of us coming down here. To compete in this contest and see the parks. If we were going to hang around and sleep, we could do that in my room.”

“I know, sweetie. I know. You’re really far away, though. It’s hard for me not to be certain all the time you’re safe.”

My hand hurts from how tightly it’s fisted around the cotton constellations. “I’ll give you a call in the morning, okay?”

“Okay. And maybe in the afternoon, too? And a few times in the evening?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t spend all day at the park checking in with my mother. Who knows how much more difficult the clues will be going forward? I need to be able to give them my full attention.

My right flip-flop is hanging off my toe, ready to be shed. I kick it across the room so hard it slams into the balcony’s sliding glass doors. Tess and Issy jump.

“What was that?” Mom asks, her voice tense.

“Just Tess,” I lie.

“Is she okay?”

Okay. Okay. Okay. I hear the word so much it’s grown fangs. I need her to stop.

“Yep. Just looking through her suitcase.”

“Hold on, honey, your dad wants to talk to you.” There’s shuffling as they exchange the phone, and then I hear my father clearing his throat. “Lia.”

“Dad.”

“This is a little late to hear from you.” I catch the subtext beneath what he says— too late for your mother to handle.

“Sorry.” I hate apologizing for living my life like a normal eighteen-year-old, but it comes out all the same. Because as much as I don’t want to check in endlessly, I also don’t want them to be worried about me. “We were having fun.”

“I know. And I want you to keep doing that. So, what if you check in at meals? Things will be calmer for you then, and your m— we —will get to hear from you more often.”

It’s reasonable. My dad is trying to compromise. To give my mother and me each what we need. But it still feels like shards of glass tear at my insides when I agree.

We say a quick good-night, and I hang up before Mom can get back on the line.

She would have continued with the warnings and I…

can’t. I don’t want those things to burrow under my skin and affect how I see the world.

I know it can be dangerous and unpredictable and unkind, but if I focus on the possibility of car accidents and school shootings and everything else I can’t control, I’d never leave my house. That’s not how I want to live.

Issy peers over at me as I drop my phone beside me on the bed. Worry tugs at her face, but she knows better than to ask if I’m okay. “You get in a fight with your shoe?”

“I think I won.”

She cracks a grin. “Come sit.” Hooking her arm through mine, she pulls me beside her so the three of us are crammed hip to hip on the other bed. “You never told us what happened with Mason while we were on that ride.”

“It was…I don’t know…good?”

“You should have seen how fast he followed you after Safety Harnessgate,” Tess declares.

“Really?”

She flashes a salacious grin. “It was like Oliver chasing Elorra when the pirates captured her.”

Issy beams. “Nothing was going to stand in his way.”

I shrug, trying to feign nonchalance. What they’re saying doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.

Since sixth grade, when Tess declared herself in lust-love with Taylor Swift and I couldn’t decide if I would marry Captain America or Oliver Cray and Issy wanted Cap and Bucky to realize their feelings for each other, the three of us would sit cross-legged in the middle of Issy’s king-size bed every Friday night and eat popcorn mixed with Reese’s Pieces and confess our secrets.

It’s where I first told them, the summer before senior year, that sometimes I think girls are more than pretty, and where Tess first cried about her parents’ divorce, and Issy confessed how bad the sex with her sophomore-year boyfriend had been.

For seven years, we’ve never deviated from this ritual, no matter what else between us has changed.

But the thought of talking about Mason makes my throat swell until it’s hard to breathe.

As if telling them anything more will make it too real.

Make Mason and me something we aren’t and can’t be.

“He’s…really sweet. That’s all. We walked over to Casterman’s Carousel to get the code, and he bought us that Dudley cookie bar.” I fall back on the bed.

“This sounds like a date,” Tess quips.

“There was no date.”

“Maybe not yet.”

“Not ever.”

“We’ll see.”

“Tess.” I shake my head at her. My hands are fists on my thighs. “There’s nowhere for this… thing with Mason to go unless I win, so I can’t want it. I can’t get attached. I don’t need more pressure put on this contest.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I already can’t breathe.”

“Lia.” Issy scoots close to me, and I sit up and rest my head on her shoulder. She has a calmness about her that always soothes me. Like the eye of the storm to Tess’s hurricane. “It’ll be okay.”

“I need to focus on me and this scavenger hunt,” I insist. “I need a future that’s mine to plan.”

Just then a loud trumpet sound erupts from my phone.

Day two’s first clue has arrived.

It’s a perfect reminder of why we’re here and what’s at stake. As I grab my phone and gather my research notes on the bed, I tell myself one last time that this whole day with Mason was no different from that blade of grass he showed me.

Shiny and perfect on the outside, with nothing substantialbeneath.