Heat of the Moment

  “Well. We’re going to have champagne.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “And chocolate.”

  “Yum.”

  “And strawberries and rose petals.”

  “Yay!” See? This is going to be amazing. I imagine a super-nice hotel room, one of those posh ones that seems like it shouldn’t even be on the beach because you’re just going to mess it up with all the sand you’re bound to bring in. Rose petals will line the carpet (or maybe it will have dark bamboo flooring—I saw dark bamboo flooring in a movie once and it seemed very nice), and there will be champagne chilling in a bucket.

  Derrick will kiss me soft and slow. He’ll tell me he loves me (he’s said it before—not a lot, but some guys just aren’t that great at expressing their feelings all the time, which is fine with me), and then he’ll start undressing me, nice and slow. Our bodies will—

  “Oh, and I got us one of those Jacuzzi rooms.”

  “What?”

  “You know, those rooms that have Jacuzzis in them? They call it cuddle and bubble or something?”

  “Cuddle and bubble?”

  “Yeah, you fill up the Jacuzzi with lots of bubbles and then you cuddle.” He looks very pleased with himself. “It’s supposed to be very sexy.”

  “It sounds it,” I lie. I’m not sure if that actually does sound very sexy. I mean, it seems like if they call it cuddle and bubble, you’re supposed to have sex in the Jacuzzi. Like, they make it known that’s what’s supposed to happen. The thought of losing my virginity in a hot tub where tons of other couples have done it doesn’t sound that sexy. And how are you supposed to use a condom when you’re in the water? I’m pretty sure condoms aren’t waterproof. They never really mentioned that in health class. Probably our health teacher, Mr. Williams, had never heard of cuddle and bubble. That sounds like something that just got invented. Or maybe they only have cuddle and bubble in Florida.

  “It’s going to be great,” Derrick says. His eyes sparkle. “I’m really excited about it.”

  His phone vibrates on the towel next to him, ruining the mood. He reaches over, glances at it, then sends the call to voice mail.

  “Who was that?” I ask. Juliana! It’s got to be Juliana! Didn’t she say she was going to be on the beach? I look around for her wildly—she could be lurking anywhere.

  “No one.” He shrugs. “Just my mom. But I’m with you now. I don’t want any distractions.”

  “Weren’t you just on the phone with your mom?” I try not to sound suspicious, but let’s face it, it sounds kind of shady. It has to be Juliana. Although . . . if she was calling him, why would he lie about it? Is it because she’s in love with him, like Beckett said? Are those two having a secret affair? Is Juliana—

  “Hiii!” a voice trills. Juliana appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and plops down in the sand next to us. I’m annoyed she’s crashing but also a little bit relieved to see her. If that was her on the phone, then she wouldn’t be here just now, would she? So then who was it on the phone? Was it another girl?

  I look at Derrick suspiciously. Damn Beckett for putting this idea in my head.

  “What’s up?” Derrick asks.

  “Nada.” Juliana is wearing a very inappropriate bathing suit. Like, even more inappropriate than mine. Her top is white, and you can pretty much see through it. “You guys should come farther down the beach,” she says. “We’re building a sand castle.”

  “Isn’t that what, like, five-year-olds do?” I ask before I can stop myself. I know it’s probably not the best idea to antagonize her when I’m counting on her to keep my secret, but it comes out before I can stop myself. Why is she bothering us?

  “More like three-year-olds,” she says, giving me a smile. “But you know, when you’re on the beach, you should really try to stay busy.” She gives me a knowing grin.

  I gulp. I literally gulp. Like I’m in a cartoon or something.

  “That’s true,” I say.

  “So you guys wanna come?” Her tone sounds . . . vaguely threatening. Almost like if we don’t go, she’s going to do something. I realize that this is my life now—if I don’t tell Derrick, Juliana will always have something to hold over me. Why did she have to be on the beach at the exact moment I was with Beckett? Shouldn’t she have been in her room, sleeping it off? I decide to stay quiet and let Derrick turn her down.

  But to my surprise, he stands up and starts gathering his stuff. “Sure,” he says.

  “Sure!” I echo brightly.

  Ten minutes later we’re settled in farther down the beach, and my mood has completely soured. This part of the beach is way too busy—it’s right near the bathrooms and the food and all the vacationers.

  Two guys from our class, Maddox Hanson and Bentley Green, are throwing a football around, and it keeps whizzing over my head. It’s only a matter of time before they break someone’s nose. Maybe mine.

  Juliana stands up and starts running in between the two of them, making herself a monkey in the middle without even being asked. She laughs and twirls and jumps at the football, looking like a total asshole. Of course all the guys on the beach love it, because her boobs are bouncing around in her completely inappropriate bathing suit.

  I shade my eyes from the sun and glance over at Derrick, who’s watching Juliana as she bounces.

  “Why don’t you take a picture, it’ll last longer,” I grumble before I can stop myself. It’s a totally immature thing to say, not to mention the last time I heard someone say it I was probably, like, seven.

  “What?” Derrick asks, looking surprised.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Fine.”

  There’s a little bit of an edge to his voice that I’ve never heard before. Usually Derrick is totally cool and relaxed. Although I was just being kind of a brat. But still. He shouldn’t have been drooling over Juliana. I know it’s, like, part of a guy’s hormones to do things like that, but you’d think he’d at least try to hide it. Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with Juliana at all. Maybe it has something to do with Beckett.

  “Hey,” I say. “Are you still mad at me about yesterday? I know we didn’t get to really talk about what happened.”

  His face instantly softens. “No, I’m not mad at you.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, I know it was probably upsetting to find out Beckett gave me a ride.” And for me to lie to you, I think but don’t say. Why bring more attention to that?

  “Whatever.” Derrick shrugs. “I understand you had no choice but to come with Beckett. And it was really silly of me to assume that something was going on between you guys.”

  “Really?” I ask automatically. “Why?” Oops.

  “I don’t know. Beckett is just so . . .” He puts his hands up in the air, like there are no words to describe Beckett. “He dated Katie Wells, you know that, right?”

  “So?”

  “So that’s the kind of girl he goes for.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no! I mean, yes, Katie’s pretty. Ah, not as pretty as you, of course.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You mean I’m not good-looking enough for Beckett.”

  “No.” Derrick shakes his head emphatically. “I just mean that Beckett goes for silly girls. The kind of girls who only have two things on their minds—boys and clothes.”

  But before I probe him further, a shadow falls over my towel. I squint up into the sunlight. I can make out a dark figure against the backdrop of the sun.

  Beckett.

  My heart leaps into my throat.

  But then the figure talks.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” It’s a girl’s voice. A familiar girl’s voice. Definitely not Beckett.

  I shift on my towel so that the sun isn’t blocking my view anymore. It’s Quinn. And she doesn’t look happy.

  “Oh, hi, Quinn,” I say pleasantly.

  “Don’t ‘oh, hi, Quinn’ me,
” she says. “What the hell were you doing this morning?”

  “This morning?” Derrick frowns. “What were you doing this morning?”

  “Nothing,” I say. Oh god, oh god, oh god. Here I was, thinking I was going to get away with kissing another boy, and now Quinn is here to blow the whole thing wide open! This whole time I was worried about Juliana, when I forgot that Quinn saw me with Beckett, too. It serves me right. It’s my karma. I’m a horrible person, and this is what happens to horrible people. They get their comeuppance.

  Quinn narrows her eyes at me, then says, “Can I talk to you alone?”

  Derrick puffs out his chest. “Anything you can say to Lyla, you can say to me.”

  Well. Not anything.

  “No,” Quinn says, shaking her head emphatically. “I need to talk to her alone.”

  “Sure,” I say, hoping I don’t sound too eager. I grab my cover-up before following Quinn across the sand.

  When we’re a few feet away from Derrick, Quinn stops and turns to me like she’s ready to talk. I look over my shoulder nervously. Derrick’s lying on his towel, drumming his fingers against his stomach to the beat of his music. We should be far enough away that he can’t hear us, but I can’t be totally sure.

  “Wanna go to the snack bar?” I ask Quinn. “I could use a soda.”

  “Not really.”

  I roll my eyes. “We’re going.” Quinn’s always been stubborn. If she got it into her head that she didn’t want to do something, she would stick to that decision no matter what. So when I was friends with Quinn, I used to back down whenever we had an argument. I knew there was no winning with her, so I would just let her have her way. Why bang my head against the wall if she was just going to win anyway?

  But Quinn and I aren’t friends anymore.

  And I can’t have her spouting off in front of Derrick about Beckett. Not that I want to keep the Beckett thing a secret. In fact, I think I’m going to tell him. Derrick. Tonight. For sure. It’s the right thing to do. And I can’t live with this whole Juliana thing hanging over my head.

  Besides, if I tell Derrick tonight when we’re all cozy and romantic, he’s not going to care as much. He’ll see that he’s the one I want to sleep with, not stupid Beckett.

  A flash of me and Beckett kissing in a Jacuzzi tub enters my mind.

  My back is pushed up against the side of the tub, the steam rising out of the water in clouds. He’s kissing me, his hands in my hair, his mouth hot and wanting. He leans in and whispers in my ear, “Lyla, you are so beautiful.”

  No, no, no, no! Must banish all sex fantasies out of my mind! Hormonal sex fantasies are not allowed here! Unless they involve Derrick.

  I try to picture the same scene, only with Derrick. Somehow it’s not as good.

  “Hello!” Quinn’s saying. She’s walked a few feet ahead of me toward the snack bar. “Are you coming or not?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming.” I put my cover-up on as we walk. It’s one thing to be wearing an inappropriate swimsuit on the privacy of my own towel. It’s quite another to be walking all around the beach in it.

  We walk to the snack bar in silence, Quinn always a few steps ahead of me, pushing sand angrily with her feet.

  When it’s our turn to order, a good-looking guy wearing a crisp white T-shirt leans down and looks through the order window.

  “Hey, ladies,” he says.

  I give him a smile. “Hey,” I say.

  “What can I getcha?”

  “Just a soda,” Quinn says, her voice hard. God, what is her problem? She doesn’t have to be rude to the guy. He’s just being friendly.

  His face crumples a little bit, like he’s not used to being talked to so harshly. “Don’t mind her,” I say to him. “She’s kind of . . . uptight.”

  “No, I’m not!” Quinn says.

  “We’ll also have a bag of chips and a soft pretzel,” I say. My stomach grumbles. Derrick and I stopped for pancakes before the beach, but I guess pancakes and doughnuts and orange juice aren’t exactly the kind of fuel that’s going to get you through the whole day. It makes sense. Aren’t nutritionists always talking about junk carbs? Hmm. It’s probably not going to help that I just ordered up some more.

  “So listen,” Quinn says while the guy goes to get my food. “I just wanted to tell you to please stop following me.”

  I hate that she’s saying please. Sometimes saying please is polite. Other times it’s what people say when they want to say something they know you’re not going to like and they want to pretend they’re being polite. “I wasn’t following you. Beckett said you might be in trouble, so I wanted to make sure you were okay. Excuse me for caring about you.”

  “Oh, right, like you just care about me sooo much,” Quinn says. She rolls her icy-blue eyes toward the sky.

  “I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Really? Then why did you let me leave the room like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I was going out to try and find a random guy to hook up with!”

  “I’m not your keeper, Quinn,” I say. “I tried to say something, but you—”

  “That’ll be sixteen dollars,” the hottie says, returning to the window with my stuff. He pushes a fountain soda with no top and a bag of chips and a pretzel across the window.

  “Sixteen dollars?” I repeat incredulously. “For a bag of chips and a soda?”

  “Well, and the pretzel,” he says helpfully, like this makes it any better. He’s decidedly less cute now that he’s trying to rip me off.

  I reach into the tiny pocket of my cover-up and pull out a crumpled ten-dollar bill. It’s all the money I brought. I left my debit card back at the room, because I didn’t want to end up losing it.

  “I guess I’ll put the chips back,” I say sadly.

  The hottie removes them from where they’re sitting on the window ledge, then pushes some buttons on the cash register. Good-bye, fried carb goodness. I barely knew you.

  “Twelve dollars,” he says.

  I sigh. “I guess I’ll put the pretzel back.”

  He looks at me, aghast. “You can’t put the pretzel back! I’ve already served it.”

  “Not really.” I look at it, sitting there on the counter, its salty softness taunting me. “It’s just sitting there.”

  “Once I take it out of the warmer, I can’t put it back in. Health regulations.”

  “Fine, then I’ll put the soda back.”

  “But I already poured it!”

  “Oh, for the love of god,” Quinn says. She drops a ten-dollar bill on the counter in front of me. “Here. Take it.”

  “Thank you,” I say politely.

  The guy at the window shakes his head, like he can’t believe how much tomfoolery he has to put up with. I can’t believe I ever thought he was cute. Or nice.

  He gives me eight dollars change, which I hand to Quinn.

  She shoves it into her bag without looking at me.

  I head for one of the picnic tables in the corner and set my food down. “Would you like a bite of pretzel?” I ask once we’re sitting down.

  “No.”

  “So what, exactly, do you want to say to me now?” I ask. “You already told me to leave you alone. So I’m leaving you alone. I won’t chase you down at any other random guys’ houses.” I rip off a piece of pretzel and pop it into my mouth. So. Good. I wish I had some mustard, though. I glance around, but I don’t see a condiment station. Probably against health regulations.

  “Good,” Quinn says.

  “Where’d you meet that guy anyway? He was seriously hot.”

  “At a club.”

  “Really?” I raise my eyebrows. I know I saw how Quinn was dressed last night, and I know that this morning when I found her at that guy’s house it was pretty obvious what they were up to, but still. I was halfway expecting that maybe the guy she hooked up with was someone she knew already—a friend of her sister’s from college, or
someone she met at camp. Not just some random she met in a club.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I dunno. Just doesn’t seem like something you’d do.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know me anymore.”

  “Apparently not.” I shrug and take another piece of pretzel. “You don’t know me either.”

  “Yeah, since you were cheating on your boyfriend.”

  “I was not cheating on him! I told you, Beckett came to my room and told me you were in trouble.”

  “And since when are you such good friends with Beckett?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Does Derrick know?”

  “Obviously not.”

  She shakes her head, like she can’t believe Derrick doesn’t know. She has a tiny bit of sunburn on her nose, making her freckles stand out and softening the hard look she’s giving me. “Well, whatever. I don’t have time to get caught up in your drama.”

  “My drama? You’re the one who hooked up with some random guy.”

  She bites her lip, then opens her mouth to say something smart, but then a shadow crosses over her face. She shuts her mouth and stares down at the ground.

  “Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s really none of my business.” It isn’t. And besides, judge not lest ye be judged or whatever.

  “Did you get the email?” Quinn asks softly.

  “The one we sent to ourselves? Yeah.” I take another bite out of my pretzel. Why is she bringing up the email? And then I remember what she wrote in her email. Before graduation, I will . . . do something crazy.

  Was her “something crazy” that guy? The one she slept with? That seems risky and a little reckless.

  “Are you going to do what it says?” Quinn asks. “Learn to trust?”

  A moment passes between us. The kind of moment where you know if you say the right thing, you could end up healing a lot of old wounds. The kind of moment that’s hard to come by, the kind of moment you hope you’re going to get in a situation like this. It feels like a tennis ball balancing on the net, not sure which way to drop, and it’s up to me to tell it what to do.

  “Quinn . . . ,” I start. But my throat gets choked up. What am I supposed to say to her? What do you say to someone who was like a sister to you? Who you shared everything with? And how can someone you were so close to just be gone from your life, suddenly, like it’s nothing? I grope around in my head for the right words to say, something that could do something, anything, to bridge the huge gap that now exists between us.