He tips his head down, bringing his face even closer to mine. “It would ruin a lot more than my night.”
“Why?” I lean into him until my breast brushes ever-so-slightly against his chest. “Because you actually like me, after all?”
“Of course, I like you,” he says in a soft, uncertain voice.
“That was really convincing,” I whisper as I lean even closer, watching the muscle twitch in his jaw with breathless wonder.
“Your Evie’s best friend.”
“We’re not talking about Evie. We’re talking about you. Do you like me, Derrick?” I whisper, my nipples pulling into tight points for reasons that have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the fact that my breasts are both touching his chest now and he hasn’t made a move to pull away. “Because I think you’re…pretty all right.”
“Pretty all right,” he mutters. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I mean, when you’re not being a condescending stick in the mud, you’re cool.”
“It’s not being a stick in the mud to keep a drunk person out of deep, freezing-cold water.”
“I’m not drunk, I’m lightly buzzed. And I’m not a little girl anymore, either. I don’t need you to protect me or boss me around,” I say, adding in a voice that sounds way more confident than I feel, “Unless you want to boss me around in the water while we’re skinny dipping.”
“What?” he rumbles in an ominously deep voice, but we’re too far down this road for me to turn back now.
“You ever been skinny dipping?” I ask, trying to pretend that my heart isn’t about to burst from my chest. “Or is that too much fun for a nose-to-the-grindstone guy like you?”
He releases my arm and takes a swift step back. “If you need to pee, pee. If not, head back to the party.”
I swallow the panicked lump rising in my throat as the inner voice starts screeching that we’ve made a massive mistake.
But then he wouldn’t have stood chest-to-chest with me for so long if he didn’t feel something, too.
Holding tight to that fact, I roll my shoulders back and say, “I believe I said I’d only be taking orders from you if we were in the water. Are we in the water? Did I miss something?”
He thrusts an arm toward the field behind me. “Go back to the party. Now. I’m not going to play these games with you, Harlow. I’m not interested.”
“Really? Then why were your lips inches from mine for five minutes?”
“It wasn’t five minutes,” he snaps.
“That isn’t an answer,” I shoot back, his lack of outright denial making my heart swoop like a kid on a swing, soaring toward the sky. “And I meant what I said, Derrick. I’m eighteen. I’m not a child. I’m a woman, legally and in every other sense of the word. And I know what I want.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t always get what you want, brat,” he says, with enough heat to make the words sting like a hot poker slipped between my ribs.
“Brat?” I sputter.
“Yeah, and a spoiled one.” He props his hands on his hips and turns his back to me, gazing out over the still quarry water. “Pee and start walking. You have three minutes before I throw you over my shoulder and carry you back to the party. Who’s giving you a ride home?”
“Leslie’s probably leaving with her ex, so I’m not sure I have one,” I say, the back of my nose beginning to sting and my heart tumbling off the swing to scrape both knees on the concrete. I stuff my foot back into my shoe and snatch my sweatshirt from the ground with shaking hands.
“Then I’ll give you one. Now, hurry up. I don’t want my friends to think I’m some sick fuck who needs to be watched around young girls.”
The disgust in his tone is enough to send tears slipping down my cheeks. He says something else—something hurtful I’m sure—but I’m already running through the woods, dashing back toward the field so fast the low-hanging limbs smack me in the face before I can dodge them.
But that’s fine.
I’ll take a face covered in red welts over a Car Ride of Shame with Derrick. The thought alone is enough to make me want to get sucked into a black hole at the center of the universe, never to be seen again.
I’m so mortified, so ashamed, that I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I emerge on the opposite side of the bonfire, not far from Derrick’s friends and the senior boys playing horseshoes.
Swiping at my cheeks and sniffing hard, I tuck my chin to my chest, praying I’ll be able to make it back to Leslie’s car before she leaves. Surely, if I explain what I’ve just been through, she’ll give me a ride home before she and Greg dash off to bang each other’s brains out.