Tarek takes a long drink without missing a beat. “Worth it, though.”
“You and your grand gestures,” Elisa says with a shake of her head, and I search her words for subtext. There’s no way she’d be so cavalier about this if she turned him down at the marina. At least, I don’t think so.
“I maintain that the only embarrassing one was the flash mob,” Tarek says proudly. “Because we all know I can’t dance. Everything else, I was running on pure adrenaline.”
“They’re so sweet,” Stella says. “The most a guy’s ever done for me was ask me to prom by writing it out on a pepperoni pizza. And he got hungry on the way over, so technically he asked me to POM.”
“Sure, it’s sweet, but if he doesn’t get at least a hundred likes within an hour, he deletes the post,” Harun says.
“I absolutely do not.” Tarek folds his arms across his chest. “One hundred and fifty.”
Everyone laughs at this, and when I try to, it sounds more like a croak.
When it’s Stella’s turn, she gives the rest of us a wicked grin and says, “Never have I ever had sex in the shower.”
It feels like a tremendous relief that Tarek doesn’t take a sip.
Harun’s turn. “Never have I ever… jerked off while stuck in traffic. But I’ve definitely thought about it.”
Elisa raises her faux-Croix-filled cup high and takes a sip. “I was stuck on I-5 between Tacoma and Olympia, and no one was moving.” She shrugs. “I was bored.”
Bryce takes a sip too, and Stella’s mouth drops open. “Bryce Terpstra, you did not,” she says. “Where did you even put it when you were done?”
Elisa holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
My face grows warm, a side effect of the champagne combined with talking about something I’m not uncomfortable doing—though I’ve never done it in a car—but not entirely comfortable talking about. I can’t decide if I want to be able to say I’ve done any of these things or if I’m content telling the truth. And what either of those impulses says about me.
It’s not that I’m worried about them judging me—it’s that Tarek is sitting next to me, and the idea of him knowing something this intimate feels contrary to the friendship I’m trying to resurrect. We’re not there yet, and this isn’t where I want to start.
As if he can sense my uncertainty, he taps my leg with his cup, drawing my gaze to him. “You okay?” he asks in a low voice. With a thumb, he scratches at his forearm, wrinkling the fabric of his catering shirt.
The firelight hangs on to the angles of his face. The curve of his brow. The cut of his jaw. Everyone must realize how lovely their friends look in the light of a firepit on a beach at midnight. It’s one of the hallmarks of friendship, I’m pretty sure.
“Yep. Great.” And then it’s my turn. “Never have I ever… cheated on a test.” Everyone groans at that, and I tell myself I don’t mind.
“She’s in high school.” Elisa reaches across Tarek to pat my knee. “She hasn’t been inducted into R-rated Never Have I Ever.”
I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be offensive, but along with the knee pat, it feels ten times more patronizing than anyone who’s marveled at how young I am to be playing the harp. My parents have treated me like an adult since I was twelve. To them, I am a colleague. An employee. I’ve always felt mature for my age, relished the compliments when my parents’ friends doled them out. At least, they always felt like compliments.
Now I’m wondering if maybe they weren’t.
“Never have I ever… had sex in public,” Bryce says, and Tarek lifts his cup to his mouth, gives this sheepish smile, and takes a sip.
The champagne in my stomach stages a revolt.
Elisa tips her cup to him. “Lucky girl.”
“In my defense, it was late at night on her apartment rooftop after prom, and almost no one had access to it,” he says. “And it was over very, very quickly.”
Bryce shoves his arm. “Really selling yourself, buddy.”
Okay. Breathe. Tarek has had sex. So have I. Clearly we are not the kids we once were. Tarek has had sex on an apartment rooftop and maybe other places too. He had this whole mystery year in college too—who knows what else happened.
After prom. That means it had to have been with Alejandra Agustín, the girl who had gourmet snacks waiting for her in every class period. They were together for a few months, about as long as most of his relationships. He posted photos with her at least every week, and they never looked real: the two of them on a playground, a silhouette of their linked hands, Tarek kissing Alejandra’s cheek while she closed her eyes. And the parade of likes below each one. Part of me must have separated the gestures and the performative photos from real physical intimacy, even the kind that’s over “very, very quickly.”
Jesus, this game is dangerous.
“Never have I ever had sex in public” turns into “sex with anyone else here,” which no one drinks to. Harun throws his hands up and says, “Just wanted to know!” This discredits my heaps-of-orgasms theory, but I guess they could be lying. Next is “sex in a car,” which sparks a debate about whether it’s the same thing as “sex in public” and gives me an opportunity to take my first sip in two rounds.
Stella claps my shoulder, like she’s proud of me, and when Tarek’s eyes meet mine for a brief moment, I look away fast, as anxiety and regret war for control of my brain. I have to fight the urge to qualify my statement. It wasn’t hot. It wasn’t sexy. We were in the parking lot of a Denny’s that closed a couple years ago, and if there’s anything less sexy than a Denny’s, it’s an abandoned Denny’s. And what happened in the back seat
