“Um,” I said. “Yeah.”
My father shrugged, nodding at one of the waiters to comp a round of drinks. He trusted me. He’d never had a reason not to. “Have a good time,” he said, lips against my forehead in a distracted good-bye kiss. “Home by curfew.”
“Yeah,” I said again. “Of course.”
I found Sawyer in the back hallway, leaning against the door to the office and scrolling through his phone, vaguely bored. “Did you just lie to your dad about me?” he asked, smirking a little.
“Yes,” I said.
The smirk bloomed into a grin. “Well, okay then,” he told me, perversely delighted. “Long as I know where I stand. You ready?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping against hope that he couldn’t tell what a big deal this was for me—that just the thought of being alone with him had my stomach doing the kind of gymnastic tumble that would have made Béla Károlyi proud.
Sawyer held the back door open and I followed him across the parking lot to his ancient Jeep. He didn’t talk. I had no idea where we were going, and at this point it felt a little late to ask: I opened my mouth, hesitated, shut it again. Sawyer didn’t seem bothered at all.
I glanced around the Jeep as surreptitiously as I could manage, beginning a list in my head as he hit the gas. Floor of Sawyer LeGrande’s car, a complete inventory: empty Snapple bottle, peach iced tea, check. Duke Ellington Live at Newport 1956, check. Dashboard: sunglasses, check. Tree-shaped air freshener still in the package, check. Mix CD with Allie Ballard’s handwriting on the label, check.
I closed my eyes for a second. Allie used to make me mixes all the time, songs for my birthday and Christmas and springtime and Tuesdays. My favorite was called “The Bad Behavior Mix”: sixty minutes of ridiculous hip-hop capped with Phil Collins’s “A Groovy Kind of Love,” presented to me on the occasion of our first high school dance. We ended up back at my house by nine thirty that night, making brownies with Soledad and shouting along with Kanye, doubled over in hysterical giggles.
I didn’t mean to sigh, never even heard myself do it, but I must have, because Sawyer glanced over at me as he turned onto A1A, sharp features lit reddish by the neon lights on the dash. “Long day?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, letting him think that it was the monotony of service work getting me down and not the absolute hopelessness of being in this Jeep with him, his eyes glittering a hundred thousand adjectives beyond green. “Kind of.”
Sawyer nodded. “You want ice cream?”
I blinked. “Ice cream?” I repeated. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it … wasn’t that.
“Yeah, princess, ice cream.” Sawyer laughed as he pulled into a parking spot, not bothering to wait for my answer. “What did you think I was gonna offer you, like, some glue to sniff?”
“No!” I said, although to be honest, he was probably closer to the truth than not. I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of the car. “No.”
“You think I’m so sketchy.” He bumped my shoulder with his as we crossed the parking lot, so lightly I thought it was probably an accident. “Like, way tougher than I actually am.”
I shook my head and looked away. “I really don’t,” I promised.
“Okay,” he said, in a voice like he thought I was full of shit but didn’t particularly mind. “Whatever you say.”
We ordered at the counter and I dug in my purse for my wallet, pulling out a set of house keys and my Lonely Planet to get to the bottom of the bag. Sawyer pushed my hand away. “I got it,” he told me, handing over a wrinkled ten to the cashier. He nodded at my book. “Planning a trip?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, no.” It suddenly felt enormously stupid, this game I played with myself, like hopscotch or Barbie. “It’s for my admissions essay.”
“To college?” Sawyer raised his eyebrows, licked the dripping bottom of my cone before handing it over. It was an old-fashioned shop, wood paneling and knickknacks on the walls, an antique cash register that sprung open with a loud ring. I smelled sugar and cold air. “Already?”
I nodded. “Northwestern,” I told him. “I’m graduating a year early, so I’m going to apply in the fall.”
Sawyer tilted his head to one side. “That’s ambitious.”
“I’m ambitious.”
“I know,” he said, taking his own ice cream and herding me back toward the door, holding it open with one foot as I scooted through. “So that’s what your essay’s about, then?” he asked as we crossed the lot toward the car, navigating a teeming crowd of noisy, restless kids about our age, shouts and laughter. “Traveling?”
“Yeah, kind of.” I shook my head, embarrassed. “It’s stupid.”
“I doubt that.” We were back at his Jeep by this point. Sawyer climbed up on the hood to eat his cone, angled his head at the empty space beside him until I got the message and pulled my sneakers up onto the bumper along with him. “Tell me.”
“Ugh, fine.” I rolled my eyes a little, blushing in the dark. “The program I’m applying to is for creative nonfiction, you know? Travel writing.” The words sounded wooden and unfamiliar; this wasn’t something I’d told a lot of people besides Allie. “So I’m writing the essay like a travel guide, basically—go here, do this, avoid this gross hotel—only instead of it being about a particular place, it’s actually about, like—my life.” I shrugged again, embarrassed. “Or like, the life I want to have.”