Shuffle, Repeat(81)

My heart falls. “Oliver…”

“—and I turned it down. Instead, I’m taking woodworking classes at a studio off State Street. Dad’s not thrilled, but he’s busy trying to handle things with Mom, so he’s dealing.”

I beam up at him before breaking away. “I have to do something. Wait here.”

Leaving Oliver on the dance floor, I run up to the deejay booth, where I fling my arms around Shaun. “You look like you’re having fun,” Shaun says after he pries me off his body.

“So do you.” I shove my phone at him. “I have a deejay request.”

Shaun glances at the song scrolling across my screen. He rolls his eyes. “Who are you?”

“I know, right?” I grin at him and he grins back. He looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. He looks like how I feel.

A minute later, I’m back with Oliver on the dance floor. After kissing me again, he motions to the deejay booth. “Who’s the guy with Shaun?”

I follow his gaze. “Oh, that’s Kirk. He drove me here.”

“Cool,” says Oliver.

“Very cool,” I say, and then the next song—the one I requested—rises from the hotel’s speakers. We hear powerful drumbeats followed by power chords. In fact, it’s definitely the drummiest, power-chordiest song that has ever graced the airwaves.

“Seriously?” says Oliver with great satisfaction.

“Seriously,” I assure him as I slide my hands up his chest and over his shoulders so I can link my fingers together behind his neck. He circles his arms around me, dropping another kiss onto my lips as “When It Matters” pours out from the speakers. “Look, you just won,” I tell him. “You won the playlist.”

“I won something better than the playlist.”

“That’s super cheesy,” I say, and he grins down at me.

“But now you embrace cheesy.”

“Now I embrace you,” I clarify.

“That’s super cheesy,” he says, and then we’re swaying back and forth, like Itch and Akemi, like Shaun and Kirk, like everyone else. Because even though this moment is cheesy and weird and antiquated, it means something.

It matters.





“You know I’m not supposed to have boys in my room,” I tell Oliver, right before giving him a gentle shove toward my bed. He sits down on it, pulling me onto his lap.

“You’re also not supposed to consort with boys from rival schools,” he reminds me. “And yet here we are.”

“Consorting away.” I give him a peck on the mouth. I’d like to give him more than a peck, but we have a job to do. “I guess we’re going to have to make some exceptions to the rules.”

“Shaun will appreciate that, too.”

“I consort differently with Shaun,” I tell him.

“Well, I would hope so.” Oliver tries to start the kissing again, but I pull away and hop up.

“Later,” I promise him. “Now come on. Get up.”

He groans but allows me to pull him to his feet.

Mom and Cash are still drinking coffee in the kitchen when we make our last trip downstairs. They must hear us clomping on the steps, because Cash calls out, asking if we’re sure we don’t need any help. “I’m sure,” I answer, right before my box tumbles out of my arms and lands on the floor with a thump.

“Allow me,” says Oliver with a bad British accent. I roll my eyes but let him get my box along with the one he’s carrying. He lifts them both—his muscles doing all kinds of things under his T-shirt—and catches the way I’m eyeing him. “What?”

“Just appreciating the Oliver Flagg thing,” I tell him, and we grin at each other.

Outside, he loads both boxes into the overflowing bed of Cash’s truck, and we secure it all with a tarp. “Do you need to say good-bye to your mom?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I already did, and she’s going to come by the dorm later.”

“I hope she knows that boys are allowed in that room,” Oliver informs me, then quickly shakes his head. “Correction: not all boys. Just one.”

“Definitely just one,” I assure him. “The one who’s only going to be three hours away.”

“But who will visit a lot.” Oliver leans over for a fast kiss…and this time, it turns into a slow kiss. He pulls away long enough to glance at the house—no one’s watching—before crowding me against the truck so he can take his time.

It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been dating Oliver; when he kisses me like this—all deep and deliberate—I forget everything. I just melt.

When we break, I smile up at him. “I might let you carry everything into the dorm after all,” I tell him. “Because now my knees are weak.”

“Yeah, mine too.” He pulls Cash’s keys out of his pocket. “Ready?”

Oliver opens the driver’s-side door and I clamber aboard. I’m grateful Cash is letting us borrow his truck to move my stuff, but it’s even more unwieldy than the behemoth. Oliver swings around the car to sit in the passenger seat beside me. He hands me the keys, and as I crank the engine, he nudges my arm. “You sure you don’t want me to do that?”