“Well, why do you think I’m tellin’ you?”
She glanced behind her, a mixture of a snort and a giggle leaving her as she grasped my hand even tighter and danced forward with me like we weren’t already being suspicious. Like we weren’t talking about the two Dixon boys behind us.
Hunter and Madison were officially done with middle school and would be joining Beau and me at the high school next year, and I couldn’t wait to have my best friend at school with me again. But to celebrate the last day of this school year, we’d met up at the diner for milkshakes and fries the same as we had the last couple of years.
And I’d just told her what I’d been dying to tell her for days: I was ready.
You know . . . to go there with Beau.
Come end of summer, Beau and I were gonna be connected in an even deeper way, and I would no longer be a virgin.
Oh. My. God.
She stopped mid-pirouette and pulled me to a jarring halt with her. “Wait, have you told Beau?”
My mouth parted but nothing came out for a moment. “I mean, he knows. I didn’t tell him, tell him. But he knows because we, you know, do stuff, and it’s going that direction.”
She smacked at my arm. “You told me before telling Beau?”
“Shh!” I skipped forward, dragging her with me, and jumped onto a storefront bench. Hurrying across it and leaping off in a grand jeté that was nowhere near as good as Madison’s.
“Gorgeous,” she said when she linked her arm through mine.
I bumped her hip. “Liar.”
“It was!”
I just rolled my eyes, knowing we would go back and forth on this all day.
We’d both been dancing since we could walk and taking lessons since we were three. I’d met her the week we moved to Amber when my mom had taken me to check out the tiny studio in town.
But while I was good at ballet, it wasn’t my strength like it was Madison’s. Probably because everything we danced to in ballet kinda made me wanna fall asleep, and I craved music that I felt in my bones. The kind of music that made me move.
Hip-hop, on the other hand? That’s where I thrived.
But taking classes with Madison was only one of the reasons we were so close. The other had everything to do with the boys trailing behind us.
“So, when are you gonna tell him? Because you have to actually tell him . . . right?” she asked, sounding a little unsure. “I’m telling Hunter.”
I shoved her away before pulling her super close, a gasp ripping through me as the conversation turned around to her. “You’re what?”
Shock and confusion covered her face before it fell dramatically. “No! Not that—not yet.” Her cheeks blazed red as a soft laugh left her. “Oh my word, we haven’t even—” She glanced over her shoulder before dipping her head closer to me, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He hasn’t even touched my that. You know this. He just touched my these”—she subtly gestured to her boobs—“for the first time, like, a month ago!”
“You said you were telling him. I thought—”
“I meant when I’m ready, I’m gonna tell him.” She lifted her hands to her cheeks. “Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”
My head tilted back as a laugh tumbled free, and then I was linking our arms again and continuing on the trek toward the Dixons’ house and mine.
“Well, I don’t know how to tell him,” I said, finally answering. “It feels weird, trying to think of a way to say to him, ‘Hey, I want to have sex.’” The last was said so softly, it almost got lost in the late spring breeze. “Like, I just want it to happen and be perfect and beautiful.”
When Madi didn’t respond, I glanced over to find her looking at me like she was trying so hard not to laugh.
“Don’t make fun of me, you brat!”
The laugh broke free. So hard and loud, she immediately began wheezing. Head slowly shaking as she tried to speak and catch her breath. By the time she finally did, tears were slipping out of the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry, friend, it’s just the thought of anything Beau and beautiful is funny.” Another sharp laugh left her when I smacked her shoulder. “Maybe brutal.”
“You’re so hateful,” I chastised as I turned to face Beau and Hunter while walking backward.
Beau was watching me, taking in my every move in that intense way that always made my heart race and my stomach dance. His signature tight-white-shirt-and-jeans combo making him look like something right out of the fifties and doing crazy things to me. The hint of a smirk on his gorgeous face telling me he most definitely knew we were talking about them.
“You know he’s different with me,” I said softly.
“I know, I know,” Madison admitted. “But since you’re the only one who sees that side of him, it is funny for the rest of us—even someone like me who sees teeny, tiny glimpses of your private moments—to think of Beau Dixon being beautiful.”
“His heart’s beautiful,” I confessed.
She exhaled slowly before shrugging. “If you say it is, then it is.” A worried noise left her when she turned to face the boys just as Beau shoved Hunter a few feet away.
But Beau’s powerful stare never left me, and Hunter’s laugh crossed the distance between us.
“He’s fine,” I murmured and tried to ignore Madison’s silence that seemed to shout what she was clearly thinking.
This time.
A bomb set to explode—that’s how everyone else saw Beau, including his parents and especially mine. They just didn’t understand him. They didn’t see underneath all the anger to the pain and frustration he held for that anger.
Then again . . . it wasn’t exactly their faults. He didn’t let anyone in except me.
But I saw him differently. I saw how he struggled to control what he felt controlled him. Saw how much it wrecked him when he hurt the people he cared about.
Beau’s anger was big. So big. But so were the rest of his emotions.
The way he cared. The way he hurt. The way he loved and cherished me. All so intense in that Beau way . . . he just hid those amazing parts of himself from the rest of the world.
I stopped walking when Hunter started jogging our way, never slowing down when he wrapped Madison up in his arms, her laugh trailing behind them just as Beau reached me.
Pulling me close and resting his forehead on mine as he slowly walked me backward. One hand pressed firmly to the small of my back, the other around my cheek and teasing my hair as his mouth brushed across mine.
“What were y’all talking about?”
My lips twisted into a coy smirk before pressing against his again. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
A rumble sounded deep in his chest before he effortlessly turned me so I was facing forward and tucked against his side.
“Why’d you push Hunter?”
Beau glanced down at me, his deep, deep dimples flashing a rare hello to match his even rarer smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
My lips parted on a huff because that was so not fair, but he wouldn’t get me to talk that easily. I could fight my curiosity.
“Nope,” I lied, popping the p and earning a rough, whispered laugh from him.