Golden Boys (Golden Boys, #1)(17)

Heath leans over to inspect the charm. “A twig?”

“Sapling,” Gabe replies with a laugh.

Reese cuts in. “Right, so on each charm I etched something personal. Don’t read too deeply into it, or anything, it’s just something that reminds me of you.”

I give him a sharp glance, because I know there’s a lot of meaning behind them. Maybe he was able to find the perfect emblem for Heath, after all.

“God, this is like therapy,” Gabe finally says, before launching into the fears I know all about from our chats this week. A big city, crowded planes, an unclear job description, and so on. But then his tone shifts, just slightly. It’s softer, more vulnerable, so much that I feel myself leaning into the pull of his story.

“I’ll miss you guys. We’ll have our group chat, and we can all FaceTime, but it won’t be the same. And I’ll miss this.” He gestures to our picnic spread. “This is our last summer, and we’ll be thousands of miles away from each other.”

This is a new fear. And I think it’s one we all are feeling right about now.

“That’s it.” he says, and though I know there are more worried thoughts rattling around in his brain, we all let it go. In the lull, I check my phone just long enough to send a heart emoji to Gabe. Reese clears his throat, and I see that he’s pulled out the next bracelet: mine.

“Here you go, Sal.” Reese tosses it to me, and I put it on immediately. It looks even more spectacular in the bright sunlight. “What are you most freaked about?”

“Can I choose Dare?” I ask, but he just rolls his eyes.

Can I tell them I don’t know if I want to go to college? If I don’t go, then what the heck has all of this been for? Near-perfect grades, sleepless nights, hours and hours spent on projects and studying and flash cards and essays. It was all to get into a good college, right?

“Sal?” Gabe asks, but I still can’t figure out what to say. All my rehearsed fears go out the window.

I decide then that I can’t bring this up with them. What if this is just a weird phase and my brain’s all jumbled? What if they don’t take me seriously and I eventually flip on this, proving them right?

Student council president, honors society, peer counselor. There are only so many things we can do to stand out at our tiny school. What if they start to resent me for putting in so much work and taking opportunities from them?

I clear my throat. “I guess I’m worried I’ll make a bad impression.”

“Not to minimize that fear,” Heath starts, “but are you sure that’s it? You always make a good first impression. It’s kind of your thing.”

He adjusts an imaginary bow tie to get the point across.

Gabe narrows his eyes. “Yeah, there’s something else going on.”

“Are you … turning Republican?” Reese jokes, and I dart a glare toward him.

I laugh, breaking the tension. “No, I can safely say I have not flipped values in the last twenty-four hours.”

“But something has happened, right?” Gabe looks at me hard when he says it, and I have to fight to keep eye contact. I don’t know what my face is giving away. Everything? Probably.

But I’m not ready.

“Nothing’s happened.” I drop a dramatic eye roll, covering up the weird tension thrumming throughout my body. I want to talk freely about my fears and the pressures that are being put on me, but I also want to keep them inside. To resolve them myself.

“I’m going to run to the restroom,” I say. “Anyone need anything while I’m in there?”

“I’ll take some of the snacks back inside,” Gabe says. “After we hear Heath’s deepest, darkest fears, we should head out.”

On the walk inside, I feel Gabe’s eyes on me. He doesn’t ask anything, though, and that makes me feel better. He puts his hand on my shoulder when we reach the edge of his backyard.

“Really, it’s okay,” I say. “I’m going to crush this DC internship, just like you’ll do with your volunteer thing in Boston. It’s going to be a good summer, I know it.”

“It will,” he says.

I’m still not sure what’s going on in my own brain, but I know one thing: I don’t need their help with this.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HEATH

Though the other boys have gone, we still sit across from each other. It seems so far for us, and there’s a part of me that wants to inch closer. If this feels far apart, how will we last being on separate continents?

Reese tosses the bracelet my way, and as it hits the grass by my blanket, it snaps me out of my throughs.

“Finally!” I say with a hint of a laugh in my voice. “Every time you pulled one out, I was hoping it’d be mine.”

“You’re that eager to get your worries off your chest?”

“That? Oh, no. I don’t want y’all to worry about me.”

I inspect the yellow-tinted copper charm. Etched into it is a flame. But no, it’s more than just a flame—it’s got kindling at the bottom with logs blocking the fire’s path.

“You want to know something that worries me?” Reese asks. “Something I didn’t tell everyone? There’s a lot of deeper meaning in all these charms. I felt weird telling that to the others, but as silly as these bracelets are, they mean a lot to me.”