One True Loves(13)

Sam had a six-pack.

What?

Olive and I watched as he bounced slowly, preparing to take flight. And then he was in the air.

He landed with the familiar thwack of a belly flop.

Someone yelled, “Ohhhhh, duuude. That had to hurt.” And then Sam’s head popped up from the water, laughing. He shook the water from his ears and saw me.

He smiled and then started to swim to the edge as a second guy jumped in right after him.

I was suddenly nervous. If Sam came up to me, wet and half-naked, what did I want to happen?

“Another beer?” Olive asked me, holding her cup out to show me it was empty.

I nodded, assuming she would go get them.

But instead she said, “Be a doll,” and handed me her cup.

I laughed at her. “You are so annoying.”

She smiled. “I know.”

I walked up to the keg outside and pumped out enough for one cup before it sputtered out.

“Oh, man!” I heard from behind me.

I turned around.

Jesse Lerner was standing six inches from me in a T-shirt, jeans, and leather sandals. He was smiling in a way that seemed confident but vaguely shy, like he knew how handsome he was and it embarrassed him. “You drained the last of the keg,” he said.

It was the first time Jesse had ever said a complete sentence to me, the first time I’d heard a subject followed by a predicate come out of his mouth aimed for my ears.

The only thing that was weird about it was how not weird it was. In an instant, Jesse went from someone I saw from afar to someone I felt like I’d been talking to my entire life. I wasn’t intimidated, as I always imagined I’d be. I wasn’t even nervous. It was like spending years training for a race and finally getting to race it.

“You snooze, you lose,” I said, teasing.

“Rules say if you take the last beer you have to chug it,” he said.

And then, from the crowd, came the word that no teenager holding a Solo cup ever wants to hear.

“Cops!”

Jesse’s head whipped around, looking to confirm that the threat was real, that it wasn’t just a bad joke.

In the far corner of the yard, where the driveway ended, you could just make out the blue and red lights across the grass.

And then there was a whoop.

I looked around, trying to find Olive, but she’d already taken off into the back woods, catching my eye and pointing for me to do the same.

I dropped the cups on the ground, spilling my beer on my feet. And then I felt a hand on my wrist. Jesse was pulling me with him, off in the opposite direction of everyone else. We weren’t going toward the woods in the back; we were headed for the bushes that separated the house from the one next to it.

Everyone was scrambling. What had previously been the controlled type of chaos that rages through a high school kegger became unruly disorder, teenagers running in every direction. It was the closest I’d come to seeing anarchy.

When Jesse and I got to the bushes, he guided me into them first. They were dense and thorny. I could feel the skin on my bare arms and ankles chafing against the tiny sharp blades in every direction.

But the bushes were big enough that Jesse could crawl in next to me and they were dark enough that I felt safe from the police officers. We were far enough away from everyone else that it started to feel quiet—if the background noise of a police siren and heavy running footsteps can ever really be described as quiet.

I could sense Jesse’s body right next to me, could feel his arm as it grazed mine.

“Ow!” he said in a stage whisper.

“What?” I whispered back.

“I think I cut my lip on a thorn.”

A harsh stream of light cascaded over the bushes we were hiding in and I found myself frozen still.

I could hear my own breath, feel my heart beating against the bone of my chest. I was terrified; there was no doubt about it. I was drunk by this point. Not plastered, by any means, but well past a buzz. There was real danger in getting caught: not only my parents’ disappointment, but also the actual threat of being arrested.

That being said, it was impossible to deny the tingle of excitement running through me. It was a rush, to be stifling my own breath as I felt the shadow of a police officer grow closer and closer. It was thrilling to feel adrenaline run through me.

After some time, the coast started to clear. There were no more heavy footsteps, no more flashlights. We heard cars driving away, chattering stop. My ankles had started to itch considerably and I knew I’d been bitten by something or somethings. It was, after all, May in Massachusetts—which meant that every bug in the air was out for blood.

I wasn’t sure when to speak up, when to break the silence.

On the one hand, it seemed like it was safe to come out of the bushes. On the other hand, you never want to be wrong about that.

I heard Jesse whisper my name.

“Emma?” he said softly. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t even know that he knew my name and there he was, saying it as if it were his to say.

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe a little scraped up but other than that, I’m good. You?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good, too.”

He was quiet for a moment longer and then he said, “I think it’s safe. Are you able to crawl out?”

The way he said it made me think that maybe he’d crawled into the bushes before, that maybe this wasn’t the first time Jesse had been at a party he wasn’t supposed to be at, doing things he wasn’t supposed to be doing.