Wing Jones(64)

When we’re out of marshmallows and the fire is starting to die, we play cards by flashlight, our marshmallow-coated fingers making the cards almost too sticky to play with. I don’t know who goes to bed first, but eventually someone does, and then someone else, until there are more people in tents than out around the dying fire. I’ve played more rounds of Egyptian Rat Screw, the card game with all the slapping, than I can count, and I’m hoarse from laughing so much.

I wave good night to Aaron and follow Eliza into our tent. I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, I’ve got too much happiness racing around inside me, too much sugar too, but as soon as I slide into my sleeping bag and close my eyes, exhaustion takes over and the waves sing me to sleep.





CHAPTER 44


There is something outside our tent. I can hear it rustling. I don’t think it’s an alligator, but oh my God, what if it is. I sit up, careful not to wake Eliza. If it is an alligator, there’s nothing she can do about it. And if it isn’t, well, there is nothing she can do about that either.

She’s curled up in her sleeping bag next to me, breathing heavily. She fell asleep almost as soon as she slid inside it. “Coach isn’t kidding about that five a.m. start,” she said.

I wonder what time it is now. I wonder what this thing outside my tent is. Maybe it’s my imagination. Or maybe my dragon or my lioness followed me all the way to South Carolina. Maybe it’s the wind. Maybe it’s a dog. Or maybe it’s an alligator.

And then someone whispers, right up against the tent, so close that I bet if I put my mouth on my side of the tent my lips would touch theirs.

“Wing! You awake?” It’s Aaron.

I unzip the tent as quietly as I can, watching Eliza the whole time. Aaron’s face is right next to the tent. He’s smiling, I can see that even in the dark.

“You gotta look at the ocean. It’s glowing.”

It’s true. Every time a wave crashes the ocean shines a bright, sparkling blue. Like there are Christmas lights strung in the surf.

“Wanna go see it up close?”

We walk way down, away from where everyone is camping, until it feels like it’s just us on the beach. Like we’ve got the whole thing to ourselves. And now we’re standing in the surf, and it’s still glowing, but Aaron isn’t even looking at the sparkling sea, he’s looking at me. More than looking. He’s staring at me. Staring like I’m a magical creature, like a unicorn or a Pegasus, and I might disappear if he looks away for even a second. I wish I were wearing something nicer than the oversized T-shirt I went to sleep in.

The wet sand beneath my toes is somehow both rough and soft at the same time, and it reminds me of Aaron’s hands, which are strong and rough but soft between the fingers. This isn’t something I should know about him; this isn’t something you know about your older brother’s best friend or about your assistant track coach. But I know it. I’ve known it for as long as I can remember. Anytime Aaron held his hand out to me to pull me up, or passed me a fork at the table, or gave me a high five, my hand was memorizing his hand, my skin was remembering his skin, even though my brain didn’t know what was happening. And now it’s all coming back to me. I take the tiniest of steps toward him.

I want to know what else my body remembers about him. All the little touches, glances, brushes, every laugh, every breath, one by one they’ve seeped into me and now I want more. I want to know what his chest feels like pressed up against my own. I want to know what those hands feel like entwined in mine, what they feel like on my skin.

He takes another step toward me and his foot sinks in the sand and he isn’t smiling and I’m not smiling, the moment feels like it is drenched in honey, everything is going so slow and everything feels so heavy, and I know it’s so much more than the humid South Carolina air. The surf crashes over my feet and it propels me forward, like the waves are pushing me toward him, and then, somehow, without me being aware of either of us taking another step, he’s right there, so close I could touch him. His skin is darker in the moonlight, and more perfect, as if he’s been carved from onyx, and my hand rises of its own volition and rests on his face, my palm on the chiseled curve where his cheek meets his jaw meets his lips and oh.

His lips are on my palm and it’s not even a kiss because his lips aren’t puckered but just resting, but still, it is as if the not-kiss is a plug and my palm is the socket and he has just sent sparks all through me. I am certain that I must be glowing. There is fire in my veins, fire that wasn’t there before, and it is lighting me up on the inside, more than lighting me up, melting me, melting my bones, because I can feel them going soft and liquid, and I’m sure I’m going to dissolve into the sand and be taken away by the sea.

We haven’t moved in a minute. Maybe more than a minute. Maybe an hour. Maybe several. Maybe all night. Time has lost all meaning. I’ve fallen into some sort of alternate reality where there is no time. Just the feeling of his mouth on my palm. Nothing else matters.

But then he moves and rests his hand on the small of my back, drawing me closer, and he brushes my hair out of my face with his other hand, but it’s a futile attempt because the rebel curl springs back exactly where it was, exactly where it wants to be, and then he smiles, I can feel the muscles move in his cheek beneath where my hand still rests. We’re standing in the surf now, because even if time stopped for him and me, it has gone on all around us and the tide has come in, and the sand that was once soft and rough is wet and our feet are sinking. I can’t even see my toes and I wiggle them to make sure they’re still there, and that slight movement is enough to make me lose my balance and I lean into Aaron, and he puts his other arm around me and my arms wrap around his neck and we aren’t smiling anymore.