New Girl in Town

Chapter 23

"Really?"

I nod. "It's got something to do with the brain chemicals."

"Ooh, Lili the Scientist," Jennie says. "Let's do it!"

"You want me to stare at you?"

"Am I that bad to look at?" she asks, batting her eyes in a way that tells me there's not a shred of insecurity behind it.

"You're ridiculous and you know it."

She pouts, which makes her even cuter, and she probably knows that, too. "I want to get high!"

"Okay. Fine." I square my shoulders and hold the pool's edge so I'm steadier. I take a breath, looking at her.

She stares back, and suddenly I'm cursing myself for suggesting this silly game, because now she's the one bobbing back and forth, in and out of my space. If I reach out, I could hook my arm around her waist. I could slide my fingers up her back, tangle with the red strings of her bikini, and ...

Maybe there is something to the whole staring-makes-you-high thing, because my head's spinning, but maybe that's just her.

Her eyes are that golden-warm that makes you fall into them, swirling in the heat until you can't imagine anything cold ever again. They shift darker against the red of her suit and the damp slick of her hair, but in the light, they shift to honey with flecks of something deeper that you want to spend your life chasing.

I could spend my life chasing her. Devotedly. Doggedly.

But she could spend her life running. I might never catch up with her. That's what's so scary about it.

"What are you thinking?" I whisper, because I have to ask. I need to know.

She licks her lips, and I can't help it, my eyes dip down and they stay for too long. She has to notice. I'm close to not caring.

She wouldn't act like this if she didn't feel it too. She wouldn't.

"I..." she starts to say.

A beach ball comes sailing out of nowhere, hitting me hard in the head, laughter breaking through the silence.

"Kai!" Jennie shouts as I startle away from the ball, caught so off guard that I suck in water. I surface, coughing and sputtering.

"Shit, Lisa, are you okay?" Rosie asks, hurrying over.

"Fine," I choke out, but I take her offered hand and let her pull me out of the water. I plop myself down on the edge of the pool and cough into my fist, my throat burning, the tang of chlorine thick in my mouth.

"Poor thing," Jennie says, patting my thigh.

"I'm fine," I say, eyes sliding back up to Kai. "I'm gonna dry off."

I get up and stalk past him to the stack of towels, hoping he'll leave me alone. So of course he comes right up to me as I hear Jennie ask Rosie if she has any weed.

"Look what you did." Kai thrusts his arm out at me. It's puckered with a nasty rash that oozes. I rear back from it.

"Ew," I say, wrapping myself in a towel. "Get away from me with that."

"This is your fault."

"Didn't you treat it with that lotion stuff?" I ask him.

He rolls his eyes. "I didn't have time to pick any up."

"Oh my God," Jennie exclaims behind us. "What happened?"

Kai's eyes get big and pitiful.

"The poison oak got me, babe," he says, all pathetically, and my stomach turns as she falls for his bullshit and hurries over. "I did the lotion thing like you told me," he lies. "But I must've been in a worse patch of it when Lisa made us hide in the gully."