Golden Boys (Golden Boys, #1)(5)

And I don’t even know if I have them, after all this.

“Here’s what I know: Aunt Jeanie left Ohio for Daytona when she was really young. She owns an arcade on the boardwalk that sounds pretty cool. We don’t talk much, but she always makes sure to call me on my birthday, when she always ends up complaining about the first wave of spring breakers making their way to her arcade.” I laugh as I say, “I guess we’ll be complaining about drunk frat bros together this year.”

We hit another bump, and I flinch as Reese’s slight body gets tossed around in the passenger seat. He never complains, but it’s got to bother him. But it’s hard to find the cash to replace the shocks, especially when most of the money from my part-time job has been going to groceries.

“It sounds fun, though,” he finally says. “I know it feels like you’re being shipped there while your parents sort out the divorce, but you’ll have fun. I mean, it’s the beach. It’s not here, at least.”

“Yeah, true.”

I didn’t get any choice in the summer move, and the guys know that. They don’t know how tight money’s been for us, though. They don’t know that I’m going to be working the boardwalk, right next to Diana, serving beer to college kids all summer, and holding on to every penny in case it helps us keep the house.

It might be fun, but it’s not a vacation.

We pull up to a stop sign, and a growing squeal comes from the brakes. I cringe with the sound, and I start to worry about how I’ll even make the drive to Florida with it in this state.

I silently pray for Reese not to bring it up, to point out our obvious differences. Our friendship is so good, so stable, but where will we be once he’s back from Paris, and I’m back from Florida?





CHAPTER FIVE

SAL

We’re cutting it really close. How I ended my intimate hangout with Gabe was kind of bizarre, and it’s left me with an icky feeling. Our time apart really only lasted about twenty minutes, though, while I took a shower and got dressed in one of my many crisp white button-ups in record time. Then I was on the road, stopping by his house to pick him up on the way to the school.

I have Gabe lug the giant cooler from the trunk of my car as I set off to unlock the front doors of our high school. In summer evenings, there’s never anyone in the office, and it’s always a bit unsettling to see the halls so empty.

“This cooler is heavy,” he says as we walk inside the lobby, so I take one handle and we split the load, though it’s about to get a whole lot heavier. Soft emergency lighting illuminates the halls, but it’s nothing compared to the fluorescents that we normally see.

“The perks of having your mom as the vice principal,” Gabe says.

“The only perk,” I snap back. “And I would say free ice from the kitchen’s ice maker is hardly a perk.”

“She can order from the kitchen’s food catalog, though. Remember that time in middle school when you had, like, hundreds of rectangle pizzas in your freezer?”

My stomach turns. “Don’t remind me. I ate those for an entire summer. I went through an entire bottle of ranch every week. It was not my finest moment.”

Gabe stops suddenly, and I’m pulled back by the handle of the cooler.

The steps down into our cafeteria-slash-auditorium are just off to our right, but I avoid looking. I feel the anxiety rising in my chest.

“We can’t be late,” I say, wiping my brow with the back of my hand. “Come on—the back of the kitchen is this way.”

Sweat prickles at my skin, and I feel an itch to bail on all this.

“Or we could walk through the front,” he says coolly.

He takes the cooler from me and jerks his head toward the cafeteria. I know he’s testing me, so I lead the way. Each step I take echoes through the halls, and maybe it’s just my brain short-circuiting, but I can smell the fried chicken they served that day.

There are no tables in the cafeteria right now, which makes sense—why would they keep them out all summer when they have no bodies to fill them? I tell myself not to look, but I do. There’s an unassuming corner, just by the auditorium stage, where student council sets up all their lunch events: prom ticket sales, fundraisers.

Fundraisers like the one we threw on the last day of school.

Being the student treasurer, I was there to take donations. Reese was next to me, because he was the one who brought up the idea in one of our last meetings—an end-of-year fundraising drive for The Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth. We’re not the most progressive school, but there was unanimous support from the rest of the student council. It was an early celebration of Pride Month, a way to show support for queer students, and everyone thought our school was ready for it.

We weren’t.

A tear slips down my cheek, and it’s only then that I realize how rigid my body’s gone. Shoulders pulled in so tightly it hurts, stilted breath. So much sweat. Gabe wraps me up in a hug from behind, and I flinch.

“It’s okay. He graduated.”

“He absolutely did,” I say. “He walked across the stage at graduation, decked with honors’ cords, and got hugs from every single teacher. And no one gave one shit about what he put me through every single year. No one cared about what he said that day. Not even Mom.”