This Is Where the World Ends(20)

Piper and I squish into a seat and she takes out her iPod and hands me an earbud. There’s another thing I like about Piper: she has great music. I trust people with great music.

“Hey, Pipes!” someone calls from the back of the bus. “Do you know that Wes has one of your bras in his backpack?”

A lot of girls hate Piper, probably because she leaves her bras lying around in backpacks. There was something about her going out with a senior during our freshman year, and then she cheated on him with another senior, and by the end of the year she’d had sex with half the senior class, which wasn’t true. Piper’s hymen is more intact than mine is, probably. But Piper is very pretty and she’s also very aware of it, and people just don’t seem to like her very much.

But I like her.

And people like me.

The boys start using her bra as a slingshot, and I think about telling them that bras are freaking expensive, but Piper just keeps playing a game on her phone, and I figure that if she doesn’t care, I don’t need to worry, either. Under Piper’s amazing playlist, the game plinks away.

“Hey, Pipes,” I say a few miles later. “How’s Wes?”

“Stupid,” she says. “Like usual. We went camping last week, though. Having sex in a tent? Not fun.”

Okay, so maybe not quite as intact as mine.

She sighs and takes out her earbud and twists it around her finger. “And then he told me that he just wants to be friends with benefits. Who even says that? ‘Friends with benefits’? He can’t just say ‘hook up’ like a normal person? He’s a tool. And now my mom wants to get me on the pill, but her gyno is such a freak, you know? And she doesn’t want me to go anywhere else.”

I didn’t, really, because my parents would never have let me go camping with Micah, let alone Ander.

“Not fun?” I asked. “Not at all?”

“Well, more fun than this is going to be.”

I elbow her, harder than I probably need to. “Stop stomping on my dreams,” I say. “This is going to be fabulous. Ander in a skintight uniform all over another hot guy? Um, yes.”

She puts the earbud back in. “Just wait.”

Oh.

Okay, I see.

Wrestling is really gross. And . . . a little terrifying? All I can really see is a tangle of arms and butting heads, and Piper is laughing at my expression as I lean back as far as I can. The sweat is flying. My body is practically between the legs of the guy behind me, but he doesn’t really seem to mind.

Ander is on top, on the bottom, on the ground, on his knees, back on his feet, slammed on the ground again, clawing back up. Ander is strong, muscles, clenched arms flashing in a way that I thought would be hot but actually makes me wonder if I want to cuddle with him at all, if it’s totally completely one hundred percent safe. He’s brutal, hands around sweat-slicked shoulders, arms around neck—is he supposed to do that? Do people die at these things? Are there ever any audience casualties?

“Oh my god oh my god ohmygod,” I say, as the other guy rams his shoulder into Ander’s chest and they go flying, literally flying, and hit the floor so hard I feel it in the risers. Piper looks bored.

“I told you,” she said. “I said we should go to Starbucks, but nope.”

The ref does the whole floor-slapping thing and then everyone (not us) is cheering, so I guess that means it’s over. I catch sight of Ander’s face when he finally peels it off the ground, and I know it’s over.

He’s not going to state. He’s not getting his scholarship.

He stumbles toward the risers like he barely remembers he has feet. He rips off his helmet and his blond angel hair is plastered tight to his scalp. I’m moving before I know why, running down the rickety stairs and calling his name.

He stumbles right into my arms, and he clutches the back of my (favorite, now sweaty) dress and his hot, hot tears bleed through the fabric and right into my heart. He smells rancid, but I hug him tight around his perfectly narrow hips and tell him that it’ll be all right, all right, all right. All right?

“All right,” he answers. All right.

And then he kisses me.

I am drowning in saltwater, burning tears and hotter sweat, and the crowd—which had been so terribly quiet after he lost, all three fan buses of people gone dead silent—erupts, howls.

We are the center of the universe.

Then he breaks off and rests his head on my shoulder for a moment before he pulls his soaked shirt over his head and walks off to the locker room. I am wet where his saturated skin brushed me, but I don’t care. My fingers are still on my lips, my lips on fire, and the crowd is still cheering for us, and Piper laughs from the sidelines and squirts me with a water bottle. I watch Ander go and imagine him in charcoal: bone and muscle and salt and sweat. I memorize him walking away, head bent and shoulders curved and vulnerability radiating like angel wings.

“I love you, Ander Cameron,” I whisper, trying them on my tongue.

They taste like ice. They melt in my mouth and disappear. Stomach butterflies and air.

I thought they would taste more like peppers and chocolate and pop rocks, like putting a Mento in your mouth and washing it down with Diet Coke. I thought it would be bubbles and breath and heat and spinning.

But they’re words, little moments, and they pass.

That’s okay. That’s what moments do. And I want to remember moments, bright and perfect, because you’re allowed to do that. You’re allowed to Photoshop. You’re allowed to crop things like the way Ander held me too tightly, how he held my wrists instead of my hands, how it never occurred to him that I didn’t want our first kiss to be like that.