“I have English and history with him.”
“Maybe he’s interested in you?” Tala kept her voice low. Alex had made it quite clear early on that he had no desire to come out in a place where the majority of the population still thought dinosaurs were a cosmic practical joke.
He snorted, but his voice was equally as quiet. “He’s as straight as a metal ruler. Besides, he’s not my type. I prefer green-eyed guys with messy curly hair and British accents.”
“That was strangely specific.”
It was his turn to blush. “Shut up.”
“You’re making fun of me,” Tala repeated, but with none of the conviction. They rarely talked about their respective secrets nowadays, an unspoken agreement they’d made and reinforced, but Alex was also the closest thing she had to a best friend, and it wasn’t like him to pull something out of nowhere.
“Is it so ridiculous to think that a cute guy might be interested in you?”
“Yeah, Alex, they’ve been breaking down my door these last few years.”
“So, you’re coming with me to Sydney’s bonfire party this weekend?”
“Absolutely not.” There were two kinds of bonfire parties at Elsmore High: the regular desert bonfire party everyone went to once the championship games ended, and the bonfire party exclusive to cheerleaders, jocks, and a select few of their friends. For the last three years they’d celebrated it at Sydney Doering’s house, which was the biggest one in town.
“I know Ryker’s gonna ask you. And I’m inviting you, so that’s like, two invitations total. You know how many people would kill for just one? And it’s my birthday the day after, so consider accepting as your gift to me. Come on, everyone says the bonfire’s the best party of the year.”
“Is this another one of your attempts to hide from Lynn Hughes?” The girl was a year younger than Tala, and obviously smitten with Alex, much to his dismay.
Alex reddened. “She’s a nice girl, nicer than her brother, anyway, but obviously you know why I’m not asking her out.”
“You know Sydney Doering and Chris Hughes just broke up. That means Hughes won’t be coming to her party, which means Lynn won’t be there either. Is that why you’re choosing Doering’s thing over the desert this year? Did Hughes give you some sort of ultimatum about his sister?”
Alex shrugged, but that didn’t fool Tala. “Maybe I just want to try something different this time. I heard the Buendia Bruja might even show up. She predicted the Tigers winning, and she’s never wrong.”
Tala rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you’re totally going to the bonfire just to have your fortune told by the only seeress of the Royal States’ southwestern realm. It’s not often you turn down the chance to quietly ogle half-naked guys around a fire. And I’m not going to Doering’s party. You know I’ll wind up murdering everyone there, right? I’m pretty sure half of them still think I’m Mexican.”
Alex frowned. “I won’t force you to go. But I wasn’t lying when I said Cadfael’s gonna ask.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s just that crowds are the last thing I want to deal with, especially their kind of crowd. And anyway, if a boy wanted to ask me out, the least he could do is ask me himself instead of funneling the request through friends.”
“That’s good to know.”
The voice came directly behind her, and Tala’s stomach promptly dropped out of her body, along with her confidence. She turned away from the grinning Alex to stare up into Ryker Cadfael’s amused blue eyes. “Uh, um, uh,” she stammered.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“Of course not,” Alex said cheerfully, gathering up his things. “I gotta work on a paper before my next class. I’ll see you at the library later, Tally.”
Coward, Tala wanted to scream after his retreating form, don’t leave me here with him, you traitor, but she couldn’t because Ryker Cadfael was standing Right There looking at her, and she had to concentrate on not making a fool of herself and holding it together lest she somehow disrupt the current space-time continuum by accidentally imploding.
Oh God, Tala, why are you like this? She was usually so sarcastic, had good enough self-esteem for her age group, wasn’t really one to care about what other people thought about her…
“Uh,” she said again.
“Did Smith tell you about the bonfire party?”
“Uh…yes?” She knew instinctively that the answer wasn’t no, but was just as uncertain if there could be another response other than an affirmative.
“That mean you’re going?”
No was now her immediate reflex, but she was also worried this might be misconstrued as turning him down, so she frantically tried to come up with an answer that was a mollifying mix of I’m not comfortable going because most of your friends are trash fires with the much more demure I’m not very good at mingling with people.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Did my friends do something?”
Crap. Had she said the first one out loud? “I’m not very good at mingling with people, is what I wanted to say.”
Ryker nodded understandingly. “I know they’re not always the best crowd to hang with, and a lot of them can be pretty obnoxious. We don’t need to go.”
Tala nodded eagerly, thankful for the reprieve, until the pronoun he’d used started bouncing around her head. “We?”
“I wouldn’t mind going to the desert bonfire this year. There’s a crowd there too, but at least it’s not going to be closed off like at Sydney’s.” He hesitated. “Would you prefer going there with me instead?”
With me, he said.
Supernovas gave birth to new worlds hammered out of ice, only to succumb trillions of years later into balls of fiery gas; kingdoms rose and crumbled away; the melody to “Your Song” from the ancient Elton John vinyl her father loved to play spun through her head. And then she remembered she was supposed to answer.
“I’d like that a lot,” she squeaked out. Dammit.
“The game ends at seven thirty, so would eight be good? Okay if I have your number so I can call you once I get there? You’re going to watch the game, right?”
She just nodded, having exhausted human speech, and let him put his own contact details into her phone.
“Done.” Ryker leaned closer, and for a short, delirious second Tala thought he might actually kiss her. Here, in a roomful of witnesses. But all he did was place her phone very gently back into her hands. “It’s a date.”