Where the Stars Still Shine(15)

“I didn’t bring a suit.”

He waggles his eyebrows and pretends to leer at her. “Exactly.”

She shoulder-bumps him. “Let’s go stick our feet in the pool.”

“That works.” Nick takes her hand. “And much easier to do now that I’m not wearing socks.”

They don’t ask me if I want to join them, and I don’t follow. I stand at the kitchen island like a stone in the middle of a stream. Party noise swirls around me. Shouts and splashes from the pool in the backyard. The bone-jarring thump of the bass from the stereo. The chattering of girls, clustered like flocks of colorful birds. Explosions from the zombie-killing video game rage on the large-screen television.

Connor breaks his gaze from the video carnage to look at me. When he notices Kat and Nick are gone, he hands the game controller to the guy sitting beside him on the couch and stands. His puppy-dog eyes ask permission to approach. I pull my lower lip between my teeth, debating whether I’m ready for this. Except Connor mistakes it for coy approval and a shy grin spreads across his face. I take a gulp of warm beer as he makes his way through the crowded living room. Ready or not, here he comes.

“Hey.” He stands beside me. “Doing okay?”

“It’s kind of loud.”

Connor nods. “It always is.”

“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask. “Maybe go for a walk?”

Again with the grin, his teeth so white against his tanned skin. “Sure.”

He tops off my cup with fresh beer and pours one for himself. I hook my index finger around his pinkie as he leads me through the tight crowd, passing a group of girls who whisper-wonder who I am, and an older guy—one who doesn’t look as if he belongs at a party full of teenagers—tells me my ass looks fine, his cigarette breath fanning my face. It’s so noisy that I’m not even sure I heard him correctly, but when I glance back, he winks at me. My insides trembling, I press closer to Connor until we’re out of the house. The air is cooler, and it creeps beneath my hair, unsticking it from the back of my neck. Connor shifts his grip so all of his hand is holding all of mine. His palm is damp. “Is, um—is this okay?”

He doesn’t have Danny’s gift for sweet talk, or the bad-boy charm Matt possessed—he was the one before Danny—but Connor’s bashfulness is appealing. It’s non-aggressive. Safe.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

My brain rummages through my mental filing cabinet for small talk, selecting and discarding topics, as we walk down the sidewalk. Connor doesn’t say anything either, and the silence stretches unbearably long. I fill the space with sips of beer and, judging by the view from the corner of my eye, he does the same.

Three houses down, we reach a vacant lot.

“Here,” he says. “You can see the water a lot better from here.”

At the end of the grassy lot, Connor removes his blue plaid shirt and spreads it on the ground. Beneath it, he wears a plain white T-shirt.

“You can sit on it,” he says. “Kat will kill you if you ruin her skirt.”

He lowers himself beside me, his legs stretched out alongside mine. The white sliver moon is reflected in fractured pieces across the surface of the water. It’s so beautiful it makes my eyes glaze with tears. I don’t want to cry in front of Connor.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.” I wipe my face on my sleeve. It isn’t that I wish my mom was here to see this, because somewhere along the way she lost her wonder for the world. But it’s wrong—so wrong—that I’ve never seen this before. I mean, the moon and stars are everywhere, but I don’t remember being here. And it’s all her fault.

“So, I was thinking—”

I press my lips against his, cutting off whatever it is he’s going to say. I’m too angry to talk. And I don’t want to think.

Connor’s brain eventually realizes what his lips are doing and his arms come around me. When he kisses back, his tongue tastes of beer and orange Tic Tacs, which is more pleasant than it sounds. His hands are warm and big on the back of my shirt as he holds them there. He doesn’t try to take off my clothes. Danny would have had me out of my underwear by now. Of course, Danny would have never given me his shirt to sit on and I’d have gone home with bits of grass and sand on my ass.

“Wow,” Connor says as he exhales in the space between kisses. “That was—”

“Don’t talk.” Kissing him again, I straddle his hips. His faded jeans are soft against my thighs.

His hands hang in midair for a moment, as if he’s uncertain where to put them. He decides on my lower back, right above where my T-shirt rides up, but I can feel some of his fingers against my bare skin. Again, he doesn’t move his hands, doesn’t reach under my shirt to unhook my bra. It’s like all but his lips are frozen.

Connor baffles me. He doesn’t act like any boy I’ve ever met. I pull my mouth away from his and reach for the hem of my shirt.

“I was thinking maybe we could—” Connor’s words die an instant death as my shirt slides up over my head. His eyes flicker to my half-naked chest before he looks away. “What, um—” His gaze is fixed on something over my shoulder. Almost as if he’s talking to someone else, as if I’m not even here. “Are we—?”