Heat of the Moment (12 page)

“Not really.”

I roll my eyes. “We're going.” Quinn's always been stubborn. If she got it into her head that she didn't want to do something, she would stick to that decision no matter what. So when I was friends with Quinn, I used to back down whenever we had an argument. I knew there was no winning with her, so I would just let her have her way. Why bang my head against the wall if she was just going to win anyway?

But Quinn and I aren't friends anymore.

And I can't have her spouting off in front of Derrick about Beckett. Not that I want to keep the Beckett thing a secret. In fact, I think I'm going to tell him. Derrick. Tonight. For sure. It's the right thing to do. And I can't live with this whole Juliana thing hanging over my head.

Besides, if I tell Derrick tonight when we're all cozy and romantic, he's not going to care as much. He'll see that he's the one I want to sleep with, not stupid Beckett.

A flash of me and Beckett kissing in a Jacuzzi tub enters my mind.

My back is pushed up against the side of the tub, the steam rising out of the water in clouds. He's kissing me, his hands in my hair, his mouth hot and wanting. He leans in and whispers in my ear, “Lyla, you are so beautiful.”

No, no, no, no! Must banish all sex fantasies out of my
mind! Hormonal sex fantasies are not allowed here! Unless they involve Derrick.

I try to picture the same scene, only with Derrick. Somehow it's not as good.

“Hello!” Quinn's saying. She's walked a few feet ahead of me toward the snack bar. “Are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, I'm coming.” I put my cover-up on as we walk. It's one thing to be wearing an inappropriate swimsuit on the privacy of my own towel. It's quite another to be walking all around the beach in it.

We walk to the snack bar in silence, Quinn always a few steps ahead of me, pushing sand angrily with her feet.

When it's our turn to order, a good-looking guy wearing a crisp white T-shirt leans down and looks through the order window.

“Hey, ladies,” he says.

I give him a smile. “Hey,” I say.

“What can I getcha?”

“Just a soda,” Quinn says, her voice hard. God, what is her problem? She doesn't have to be rude to the guy. He's just being friendly.

His face crumples a little bit, like he's not used to being talked to so harshly. “Don't mind her,” I say to him. “She's kind of . . . uptight.”

“No, I'm not!” Quinn says.

“We'll also have a bag of chips and a soft pretzel,” I say.
My stomach grumbles. Derrick and I stopped for pancakes before the beach, but I guess pancakes and doughnuts and orange juice aren't exactly the kind of fuel that's going to get you through the whole day. It makes sense. Aren't nutritionists always talking about junk carbs? Hmm. It's probably not going to help that I just ordered up some more.

“So listen,” Quinn says while the guy goes to get my food. “I just wanted to tell you to please stop following me.”

I hate that she's saying please. Sometimes saying please is polite. Other times it's what people say when they want to say something they know you're not going to like and they want to
pretend
they're being polite. “I wasn't following you. Beckett said you might be in trouble, so I wanted to make sure you were okay. Excuse me for caring about you.”

“Oh, right, like you just care about me sooo much,” Quinn says. She rolls her icy-blue eyes toward the sky.

“I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you, if that's what you mean.”

“Really? Then why did you let me leave the room like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like I was going out to try and find a random guy to hook up with!”

“I'm not your keeper, Quinn,” I say. “I tried to say something, but you—”

“That'll be sixteen dollars,” the hottie says, returning to
the window with my stuff. He pushes a fountain soda with no top and a bag of chips and a pretzel across the window.

“Sixteen dollars?” I repeat incredulously. “For a bag of chips and a soda?”

“Well, and the pretzel,” he says helpfully, like this makes it any better. He's decidedly less cute now that he's trying to rip me off.

I reach into the tiny pocket of my cover-up and pull out a crumpled ten-dollar bill. It's all the money I brought. I left my debit card back at the room, because I didn't want to end up losing it.

“I guess I'll put the chips back,” I say sadly.

The hottie removes them from where they're sitting on the window ledge, then pushes some buttons on the cash register. Good-bye, fried carb goodness. I barely knew you.

“Twelve dollars,” he says.

I sigh. “I guess I'll put the pretzel back.”

He looks at me, aghast. “You can't put the pretzel back! I've already served it.”

“Not really.” I look at it, sitting there on the counter, its salty softness taunting me. “It's just sitting there.”

“Once I take it out of the warmer, I can't put it back in. Health regulations.”

“Fine, then I'll put the soda back.”

“But I already poured it!”

“Oh, for the love of god,” Quinn says. She drops a
ten-dollar bill on the counter in front of me. “Here. Take it.”

“Thank you,” I say politely.

The guy at the window shakes his head, like he can't believe how much tomfoolery he has to put up with. I can't believe I ever thought he was cute. Or nice.

He gives me eight dollars change, which I hand to Quinn.

She shoves it into her bag without looking at me.

I head for one of the picnic tables in the corner and set my food down. “Would you like a bite of pretzel?” I ask once we're sitting down.

“No.”

“So what, exactly, do you want to say to me now?” I ask. “You already told me to leave you alone. So I'm leaving you alone. I won't chase you down at any other random guys' houses.” I rip off a piece of pretzel and pop it into my mouth. So. Good. I wish I had some mustard, though. I glance around, but I don't see a condiment station. Probably against health regulations.

“Good,” Quinn says.

“Where'd you meet that guy anyway? He was seriously hot.”

“At a club.”

“Really?” I raise my eyebrows. I know I saw how Quinn was dressed last night, and I know that this morning when I found her at that guy's house it was pretty obvious what they were up to, but still. I was halfway expecting that maybe the
guy she hooked up with was someone she knew already—a friend of her sister's from college, or someone she met at camp. Not just some random she met in a club.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I dunno. Just doesn't seem like something you'd do.”

“Yeah, well, you don't know me anymore.”

“Apparently not.” I shrug and take another piece of pretzel. “You don't know me either.”

“Yeah, since you were cheating on your boyfriend.”

“I was not cheating on him! I told you, Beckett came to my room and told me you were in trouble.”

“And since when are you such good friends with Beckett?”

“I'm not.”

“Does Derrick know?”

“Obviously not.”

She shakes her head, like she can't believe Derrick doesn't know. She has a tiny bit of sunburn on her nose, making her freckles stand out and softening the hard look she's giving me. “Well, whatever. I don't have time to get caught up in your drama.”

“
My
drama? You're the one who hooked up with some random guy.”

She bites her lip, then opens her mouth to say something smart, but then a shadow crosses over her face. She shuts her mouth and stares down at the ground.

“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I shouldn't have said
that. It's really none of my business.” It isn't. And besides, judge not lest ye be judged or whatever.

“Did you get the email?” Quinn asks softly.

“The one we sent to ourselves? Yeah.” I take another bite out of my pretzel. Why is she bringing up the email? And then I remember what she wrote in her email.
Before graduation, I will . . . do something crazy
.

Was her “something crazy” that guy? The one she slept with? That seems risky and a little reckless.

“Are you going to do what it says?” Quinn asks. “Learn to trust?”

A moment passes between us. The kind of moment where you know if you say the right thing, you could end up healing a lot of old wounds. The kind of moment that's hard to come by, the kind of moment you hope you're going to get in a situation like this. It feels like a tennis ball balancing on the net, not sure which way to drop, and it's up to me to tell it what to do.

“Quinn . . . ,” I start. But my throat gets choked up. What am I supposed to say to her? What do you say to someone who was like a sister to you? Who you shared everything with? And how can someone you were so close to just be gone from your life, suddenly, like it's nothing? I grope around in my head for the right words to say, something that could do something, anything, to bridge the huge gap that now exists between us.

“Never mind,” she says, standing up. Her face is hard again, like she can't believe how stupid I am, and how stupid she was for thinking I could be anything but dumb. “Just stay out of my life, okay?”

And then she's gone.

“DO YOU WANT TO GO TO A CLUB?”

This is what Derrick says later that night when he comes to my room to pick me up for our big night out.

“Excuse me?”

“A club.” He seems very . . . I don't know. Energetic? Frantic? He's wearing a crisp blue button-up and khaki shorts, and he smells like hair gel and cologne. Yum.

“What kind of club?”

“A dance club. A bunch of people are going.”

“I thought we were going to dinner,” I say, making sure to keep my tone light just in case he thinks all I care about are the material things. “And then to cuddle—to the Jacuzzi room.”

“Oh, we are,” he says. “But I was thinking we could go dancing in between.” He leans in close to me in the elevator. “Come on. Me, you, dancing . . . it will be hot and sexy.” His eyes are bright with excitement.

“You don't dance,” I tease.

“I'll dance with you.”

“
I
don't dance.”

“You'll start.”

I think about it. Me, Derrick, in some sexy club with house music pumping and strobe lights flashing. We'll order drinks and sip them in the corner, people-watching and talking with our heads close together until we're buzzed enough to head onto the dance floor. Our bodies will become a blur, until we're all hot and bothered and ready to go back to the hotel room, where we'll fall into the Jacuzzi to wash off.

Actually, that sounds disgusting. Why would we wash off in a Jacuzzi? Then we'd just be sitting around in our own filth. Not to mention how many other people have probably used that Jacuzzi to wash off. We'll be sitting in their filth, too. They probably don't even wash the tubs. They probably have a bunch of college kids working there who don't care about things like antibacterial spray. They probably just wipe it with a little water and call it a day.

“So you want to?” Derrick asks. “Go dancing?”

“Sure.” Sounds sexy. Sounds fun. I decided to just go with it. Plus, I'm wearing the perfect dancing outfit—a black tank top and a short flippy black skirt. Strappy black sandals that I bought at a little flea market on the street earlier complete the look. I'm a little tan from the beach, and my
bronzer has finally started to blend in. I curled my hair into beachy waves, then sprayed the whole thing with tons of hair spray to make sure it would stay. I look Florida sexy and ready for anything.

Derrick takes my hand as we walk out of the hotel and onto the cobblestone walk that leads to the sidewalk. I flush with pleasure at being with him. I remember when Derrick and I first got together sophomore year. It was at a school basketball game, and I was trying to climb up the bleachers with my hands full of food. I tripped and almost landed in his lap, spilling a little bit of soda on him in the process. He didn't care, though. He helped me get my footing, held my soda for me, and then held my hand and walked me to my seat.

Throughout the game he kept coming up the bleachers to check on me, asking me if my legs were okay, joking around that I needed to tell him if I was going to attempt to walk again so he could help me. It was the perfect meet-cute. But my life wasn't a movie, and so I figured I'd probably never talk to him again. We didn't have any classes together, we had no mutual friends, and so there was really no reason for me to run into him. But when I passed him between second and third period the next day, he pulled me over to the side of the hallway.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” He was holding a copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
in one hand, and the top corner of the book was fraying. I couldn't
stop looking at that fraying corner. I felt like I was in a dream—things like this (cute boys coming over to me in the middle of the hallway after I'd spent the whole night thinking about them) never happened to me. But if I were in a dream, there was no way I'd notice something as detailed as a fraying corner of a book. As long as that fraying corner was there, everything that was happening was real.

“Listen,” Derrick said, “I'm not going to beat around the bush and be all coy. I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since last night. Do you want to hang out later?”

And that was it.

We have been together ever since.

Everything was perfect.

We
were perfect.

Until now.

You cheated on him
.

I have to tell him. I know I do. I can't have sex with him while keeping this kind of secret. It's just not right.

By the time we get to the restaurant, a cute little seafood place called the Anchor that's right on the ocean, my stomach is in knots.

“You okay?” Derrick asks once we've been seated.

“I'm fine. I think my feet just hurt a little from walking in these shoes.”

“Oh no,” he says. “I hope you're still going to be able to dance.” He reaches for the menu that's been placed in front
of him and slides his eyes down the list. “I want you to get whatever you want. Tonight's special, and so we should celebrate.”

I squeeze his hand and give him a big smile. Maybe I shouldn't tell him. I mean, why would I want to ruin such a special night? And honestly, would he really even
want
to know? I remember getting into this huge fight with Quinn once about how if someone cheated on her, she wouldn't want to know about it. We were at a party, playing one of those games where everyone passes around a deck of cards with questions on them, and the whole group has to answer. One of the questions was “If your boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on you, would you want to know?” and Quinn kept insisting she wouldn't, because if the cheating happened it was in the past, and she wouldn't be able to change it, so why would she want to ruin her whole relationship?

I wonder if Derrick would agree.

The waiter appears at our table. He's one of those fancy waiters, the kind that get all mad if you order your steak well done because they think you're ruining the meat. How can you be ruining the meat if that's the way you like it? I like my meat well done. I can't help it.

“What would you like to drink?” the waiter asks. He has two gray hairs growing out of his nose.

“Ummm . . .” I let my eyes wander over to the wine list, but he gives me a disapproving look. Whatever. I didn't want
alcohol anyway. I need to keep my wits about me. “Just a Shirley Temple.”

“Coke,” Derrick says.

“Very well,” the waiter says, like he can't believe what idiots we are.

“So,” Derrick says once the waiter is gone. He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I'm really glad I'm here with you.”

“I'm really glad I'm here with you, too.”

His fingers massage the inside of my wrist gently. Mmm. That feels good. I feel the tension in my shoulders and back instantly start to dissipate. See? This is going to be fine. This is going to be great. Derrick reaches out and fingers the beads of my tigereye bracelet and I pull back like I'm on fire.

“What's wrong?” Derrick asks.

But the waiter reappears with our drinks before I can answer.

“Are you ready to order?” he asks. He doesn't look like he's ready to
take
our order. He doesn't have a pad out or anything. I hate when waiters don't write down your order. They always end up messing it up, and then you have to be a jerk and send your food back when they're the ones who should have just written it down in the first place.

I haven't even looked at the menu, but Derrick surprises me by saying, “Yes, we're ready. We're both going to have the filet mignon, one cooked well done, one cooked medium
rare. And we'll have the garlic mashed potatoes and corn for the table.”

“Excellent, sir,” the waiter says, sounding like he thinks it's anything but.

“So what do you think?” Derrick asks once he's gone. “This is a nice place, right?”

What do I think? I think I wanted to order my own damn food is what I think. What is this, the 1950s? Who orders garlic anything on a night when they're going to be having sex for the first time? Garlic definitely doesn't scream sexy. And they had some really good-looking truffle mac and cheese that I was dying to try. What happened to me being able to get whatever I want?

“This place is great,” I lie.

“I hope you don't mind that I ordered for you. I heard the filet mignon is amazing.” He picks up my hand and kisses my fingers softly. “I thought it would be romantic.”

“It was.” I guess.

My body starts to feel filled with a weird energy, and my leg is jittering up and down under the table. It knocks against the bottom, and our water glasses vibrate.

“You okay?” Derrick asks. “You seem nervous. Are you nervous?”

“About tonight? No.” It's true. Who has time to be nervous about losing my virginity? That's the last thing I'm nervous about. The first thing I'm nervous about is the fact
that I'm about to lose my virginity to a boy I've been cheating on. Well,
cheated
on. “Been cheating on” seems like it's ongoing. Which it most certainly is not.

“Are you sure? Because we can talk about anything, Lyla. You know that, right?”

His eyes look so sincere, like he really does mean I can tell him anything.
Tell him. Do it. Do it now
. Okay. I'm going to. Right now. Now. Right this second.

“Do you want to play a game?” I blurt.

Derrick looks confused, and then realization dawns on his face. “You mean like a sex game?” He shakes his head. “I don't know. I mean, it sounds fun, but I'm not sure we should do anything that might get us hurt. Especially the first time.” He cocks his head, considering. “But maybe we could do it on the second try. You know, later tonight.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I mean, like a game of
questions
.” I'm so brilliant. All I have to do is pretend that I'm asking a hypothetical question about whether Derrick would want to know if he was being cheated on. Like I did with Quinn at that party. And then when I find out his answer, I'll know what to do.

“You mean like truth or dare?”

“Sort of.” Sigh. This is going to be harder than I thought. Too bad I don't have that game with me—it would be a lot easier to explain. And then I have my second brilliant idea in the span of just a couple of minutes.

“It's this new app,” I lie. I pull my phone out of my purse and pretend I'm pulling up some imaginary app. But I accidentally start one of my playlists, and “All the Single Ladies” by Beyoncé comes blaring out of the speaker. The middle-aged couple next to us looks over and gives us a dirty look. “Sorry,” I say.

“You seem frazzled,” Derrick says. He reaches over and takes my hand. “If you're not ready . . .”

“No, no, I'm ready!” I say. We need to focus here. “I just thought it would be fun to play a game. You know, to, uh, relax me.” I clear my throat. “Okay, it's one of those games where you ask the other person questions.”

“Like ‘Have You Ever?'” Derrick asks. “Isn't that a drinking game?”

“Kind of like that,” I say. “But they're more, uh, in-depth questions. Okay, so for example . . .” I look at my phone, like I'm about to read a questions off my imaginary app. Actually, if there's no app like that, there should be. Maybe I should create it. Then I could play the game anytime I wanted. Or better yet, maybe I'll create a fake one. For situations just like this. It would probably make me tons of money. What should I ask Derrick, though? I can't just lead off with the cheating question. That would be too obvious.

“Um, if you caught one of your friends stealing at work, would you tell on them?” I try.

“Of course,” he says. “Stealing is wrong.”

“Yeah, but what if it was your
friend
?”

“My friend stealing is still wrong.” He takes a sip of his Coke.

“What if it was me stealing? Would you turn me in?” The thought of Derrick betraying me is almost comforting. Like his hypothetically getting me fired cancels out the actual, real-life kissing that I did.

“I might try to talk to you first,” Derrick says, “and tell you to stop. But if you kept stealing, I would have to do the right thing. You should always do the right thing.”

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

“Don't you agree?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I would totally turn someone in who was stealing.” It's a lie. Why would I turn in a friend who was stealing? Actually, why would I be friends with someone like that in the first place? I get annoyed that the game includes a question that makes no logical sense, and then I remember it's a fake app and that I made it up.

“Okay, next question!” I sound a little crazed. “Okay, next question,” I say quietly. “If someone was cheating on you, would you want to know about it?”

He frowns. “If someone was cheating on me?”

“Yeah, like if your girlfriend, uh, was . . . if hypothetically she cheated on you.”

“Why?” Derrick grins. “Are you cheating on me?”

“No!” Great. Now not only have I lied by omission, I've
actually lied straight out. Although the way he phrased it made it seem like he was asking if I was cheating, present tense. Which I'm not. So maybe I can get off on a technicality. Is it hot in here? It feels very hot in here.

“I know you would never cheat on me,” Derrick says tenderly. “That's why I'm so sorry for acting the way I did yesterday. You know I trust you, right?”

“Of course.” Pause. He's not answering the question, though. He needs to answer the question. “So what's the answer?”

“What answer?”

“The answer to the question. About cheating.”

“But I just said you would never cheat on me.”

Why does he have to be so literal? “Yeah, but it's not . . . you're not supposed to think of it that way. It's supposed to be a hypothetical girlfriend.”