He rubbed his stubbled chin, thinking. “I didn’t get suspended.”
“Hey, there you go! A two-day streak.” I offered up a high-five and got a resounding smack on the palm. I hissed a breath and shook my stinging hand. “Easy, tiger.”
Ronan almost smiled. “Your turn. Something good.”
“Hmm, don’t know that it’s good so much as doomed and hopeless but…” I heaved a sigh. “There’s a guy.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t say who, so don’t ask.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Of course, you weren’t,” I said. “That’s one of your most endearing characteristics. Anyway, there’s a guy and I don’t want there to be a guy. Not one that I might…”
“Want to fuck?”
“That’s a given.”
“Care about?”
“Exactly. And I can’t care about anyone. Bad for me, worse for them.” I stared into the flames that clung to ashen wood while the breeze tried to blow them out. “It’s stupid. And too soon. I didn’t come here to immediately have my every waking thought hijacked by someone I’ve only known for a few days.”
Ronan’s eyes widened.
“No, it’s not Miller,” I said, laughing. “And I hate to break your heart, but it’s not you either.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that the guy in question is not my type, to put it mildly. An All-American good boy. Warm, gooey, everyone loves him. He’s the human equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“So?”
“So? It doesn’t make sense. And yet I can’t stop thinking about him and feeling guilty, because…I may have said some things I shouldn’t have.”
Ronan took a pull of beer. “I’m shocked.”
“Oh, shut up. But yes, I stirred up some shit for him that I had no business stirring. I even gave him my number in the event he wants to talk. To me. As if I could actually help somehow.” I shook my head with a dry laugh. “It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“I’m not one hundred percent positive that he and I are on the same page, if you catch my drift. I need to leave it alone. Leave him alone.”
Ronan rolled his eyes and chucked a rock into the fire.
“You disagree?”
“If you care about him—”
“Let’s not go that far.”
“—then tell him.”
“That proves difficult, since he specifically asked that I never speak to him again. And even if by some miracle he were gay, nothing good can come of something with me. Except for sex. I can do meaningless sex.” I glanced at him. “That’s not an offer, by the way.”
Ronan didn’t crack a smile.
I took a sip from my flask, wishing the bite of vodka would kill that soft feeling in my stomach that had been living there since the day I met River.
The fire flared suddenly as Ronan spewed lighter fluid over the charred embers. “Is that what they stole from you in Alaska?”
“What…?”
“You said nothing good could come of you being with that guy. Is that what they taught you? That you’re no good?”
The doctors at the sanitarium had discussed the conversion therapy more than I ever wanted to discuss it, with convoluted terms and jargon and analysis. Ronan cut it down to its most essential element.
“Yes,” I said. “But it began earlier with my parents. And it’s more complicated—”
“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” Ronan snapped. “Whoever made you think that, no matter when it started, it’s bullshit.”
He drained his beer and got up for another. He came back with two and stood over me, his expression softer than I’d ever seen it. He offered one of the beers to me.
I took it and put the flask away.
The next night, Miller, Ronan, and I strolled the Boardwalk on one of our nightly prowls. The three of us garnered stares—mostly due to my fabulous wardrobe—and I knew whispers and rumors about us filtered back to the school. But none of us gave a shit what anyone thought. Least of all me.
Okay, least of all Ronan.
But I gave a shit about him. That afternoon, Ronan had come to the Shack with bruises peeking out from under his sleeves and a shiner over one eye. When Miller and I asked what happened, he snarled at us to mind our own fucking business.
Later, Miller left us to hang out with Violet and—finally—tell her how he felt about her. Ronan and I went back to the Shack.
“Is it true that Violet has a thing for River?” I asked Ronan with Academy Award-levels of casual.
He shrugged. “They’re going to Homecoming together unless something happens tonight.”
I nodded.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “What?”
I blinked, pure innocence. “What-what?”
“You’re quiet.”
“It happens.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
I laughed. “Can’t a man contemplate the mysteries of the universe in peace?”
Ronan snorted but left it alone. Unconsciously, he rubbed his upper arm where a bruise lay dark against a tattoo of a black and white owl with orange eyes. I was itching to ask him who’d hurt him, but I had to leave that alone too.
A few hours later, Miller came trudging back.
“Well? How did it go?”
The bonfire cast light and shadows over his hardened expression. “About as bad as humanly possible.”
His boss at the arcade had given him three beach chairs to replace our rocks around the fire. Miller sat in his heavily, tossing his guitar case on the sand with more force than I’d ever seen him use.
“What happened?”
“Violet wanted to make a video of me playing,” Miller said, staring into the fire. “To put on YouTube or something. So I sang for her and the moment…it grew big, and I felt things change and go deeper so I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”
“That doesn’t sound terrible,”
