This is confirmed when I reach for a second cider, only to feel Jasmine’s rings dig into my wrist. “You’re gonna need to keep your wits about you, Tinkerbell,” she warns me. “These two share a Spades brain.”
I snort. “I think I can handle it.”
I could not, in fact, handle it. “The two of you are such shitty cheaters!” I yelp after getting utterly destroyed for a third hand in a row. “This is not humanly possible.”
Keisha smiles smug and wide, tossing her tight beaded braids over shoulder, while Carter throws back his head and laughs. “We’ve been coming down here since we were babies,” she says, her Southern accent coming in stronger as the night wears on and the alcohol settles in. “Carter’s brother and our cousin Richie trained us at this table as soon as we could walk.”
“There’s not a lot to do here after dark before you get a driver’s license,” Carter confirms. “At least not before I discovered girls.”
“You mean before girls discovered you,” Keisha says with a snort. “Your goofy ass wasn’t exactly ‘filling the time’ until you came back six inches taller and with your braces off.”
“Burrrrrn,” I say instinctively before realizing that Jasmine is one of those girls, though she seems completely unbothered. In fact, she’s laughing too. I turn to Keisha, remembering that she mentioned being aroace. “And what’d you do while girls were ‘discovering’ Carter? Guessing you had … different preoccupations.”
“Slightly,” she says with a laugh, dealing another hand. “I’m a gaming nerd, so I was plenty happy to stay home while Carter and them went out, play The Sims or Dragon Age until sunrise. But lots of nights we all stayed in and played, same as we did waiting up for Santa when we were kids.”
“See, that’s my problem,” says Jasmine, tugging on the six-pointed star charm hanging at her throat. “Too Jewish.”
“Hey, me too!” I cheer, and we slap five over the table while they laugh. My mom and I aren’t remotely affiliated—the one thing we do all year is light menorahs and eat latkes on the first night of Hanukkah, which we only do because it makes my mom feel better about raising me on Christmas—but it feels like the first thing we’ve had in common.
Except for how we both suck at Spades.
But it’s fun, and Jasmine seems so much more at ease in the smaller crowd. It takes the sting out of losing so badly to see her chilled out, more like the person I hang out with on photo shoots and long car drives. By the time we officially bite the dust, my face hurts from laughing so hard. At least until Carter asks us to stick around, his eyes hovering somewhere around Jasmine’s lips, and my stomach drops at the thought of ending our fun night by being ditched.
“Nah. We’ve gotta get up early for a sunrise shoot,” says Jasmine, rising on her toes to give him a peck on the cheek. The shoot is news to me, but I nod and accept good-night hugs and promises of a rematch. Keisha and I even exchange numbers, and I appreciate that her phone case is designed to look like a vintage Nintendo controller.
“Are we really doing a sunrise shoot tomorrow?” I ask after we buckle ourselves in and leave the Thomases behind us.
“Sure, why not?” Jasmine shrugs. “People love cheesy sunrises for social media backgrounds and templates. Unless you don’t think you can get up that early.”
I’ve been getting up early to run on the beach the past couple days, before Jasmine or Mom or even Declan is awake. It’s been nice having time to myself where I’m not in Declan’s house, or assisting Jasmine, or tiptoeing around my mom. I’ve never been a morning person, but running on the sand is more relaxing than walking on eggshells and feeling like an interloping piece of luggage my mom was forced to bring.
I don’t wanna give up my secret, though. “Oh, I can. The question is whether you want company that early. You don’t seem to enjoy the presence of others before coffee.”
Her teeth flash in the dark interior of the car. “You’ve noticed.”
“I’m very observant,” I say with a flip of my hair.
“You are.” Her voice is more serious than I anticipate, and I’m not ready for it. “I like this about you. You know when to talk and when not to. It’s a rare skill.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” It strikes me then that it’s the first time we’ve driven without music. “Especially since you can be a hard girl to read.”
The corner of her mouth turns up. “Not many people bother to try to read me.”
Outside, it’s relatively quiet, and with our windows down, we can hear the ocean lapping at the shore during the pauses in our conversation. The peaceful rhythmic interlude makes it less glaring that it takes me a minute to figure out how to respond.
“I don’t know about that. We just left a whole house of people sick of losing to you at poker.”
She laughs. “Touché. But none of them like to work for it.”
“Have you ever considered not making people work for it?”
“Literally never.”
“Well, at least you’re self-aware.”
My phone beeps, and I know before I look down that it’s gonna be my mom, asking where we are. I quickly tap out that we’ll be home in two minutes, and Jasmine says, “I didn’t really make you work for it, did I?”
I think of how quickly she invited me to the pool, to meet her friends, to join in on her photo shoots. I press send on my reply and say, “No, you didn’t, I suppose.” Although all of that was superficial; there’s still so much I don’t know. But
