And then she smiles. It’s a genuine smile, coupled with a laugh of disbelief, a slight nose scrunch.
Seth’s face lights up like someone’s flipped a switch at the power station.
He laughs, shrugs, points over his shoulder at the brewery. For a few moments, they stand there, talking like old friends.
Then she holds her arms out, still laughing, and Seth accepts the hug.
It’s not a long hug. It ends a moment later, both of them still smiling. They each say one last thing, and then Seth turns around, walks back in the direction he came from until he disappears.
Silas just looks at me. I look past him, wondering where June is, whether I can get her alone and ask what’s going on, whether she was ever going to tell me.
“I guess that’s it,” Silas says, and shrugs, firelight flickering over him.Chapter Twenty-SevenJune“No, you cannot throw a can of soda on the fire to see if it explodes,” Daniel says. He sounds tired.
“It will,” Silas confirms.
“Just one,” Rusty says, as if this is still a negotiation. “I have a hypothesis about it.”
Rusty recently learned that word, and I’ve heard her use it several times already today. Mostly, she uses it to try and convince her dad or Charlie that they should let her do something dangerous in the name of science.
It hasn’t worked yet, but I think she’s wearing them down.
“How am I supposed to know what happens if I don’t try the experiment myself?” Rusty asks, using her most innocent voice.
It’s a few hours after Seth found Delilah. Rusty is wide awake. Her dad and stepmom-to-be seem exhausted.
“It explodes and gets soda everywhere,” Silas says. “Just trust me.”
“That’s not very scientific,” Rusty says doubtfully.
“Hey Rusty,” Eli pipes up. “Do you know what Sasquatch footprints look like?”
That gets the kid’s attention.
“Yes,” she says with complete and total certainty.
“Then there’s something I need your help with,” Eli says, rising from his chair and beckoning his niece after him. “Violet pointed these out to me, but I’m not quite sure…”
His voice fades as he leads Rusty off, away from the bonfire, and there’s a moment of blessed quiet.
Then the quiet stops. Silas starts talking about something or other, and Charlie joins in, and then Daniel and Violet are also giving their opinions, and I feel like I can’t hear myself think. I’ve had three beers over a few hours and my head is buzzing in a way that’s not unpleasant, but that definitely makes it a little hard to think.
And I still haven’t told Levi. I haven’t really had the chance, but I haven’t made myself the chance either, and now I’ve avoided something unpleasant for so long that it’s become a serious issue.
From across the bonfire, I can feel him looking at me, and I swallow hard.
Just do it, you coward, I think.
I meet his eyes. His gaze is steady, unreadable, but the light is strange and Levi’s not exactly an open book. I tilt my head ever-so-slighty, raise one eyebrow. He nods.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell no one in particular, then step away from the bonfire and toward the brewery building.
The night is cool, almost cold, and it feels good against my fire-and-alcohol-heated skin. I close my eyes, tilt my head back, breathe it in, and despite myself I think I’m going to miss this.
Inside the brewery is dark, all the chairs up on the tables, the bar wiped down. I didn’t really have a destination in here, just wanted Levi to follow me, so I wander aimlessly: the shuffleboard table, the dartboards, behind the bar.
I pull down one tap out of idle curiosity, wondering if they’re still on, then instantly push it back when a stream of beer comes out.
“I keep telling them to charge for tasters,” Levi’s voice says, followed by the hush of a door swinging shut.
“Of course you do,” I tell him, wiping my hands together, drying the droplets of beer that landed on my shirt. “You drink for free.”
He doesn’t say anything, walks to the bar. He puts his hands out on the polished wood, palms down, and just looks at me.
He looks at me like I’m a riverbed and he’s the river, like he’s flowing over and through me, like his gaze can make its way into the tiniest of crevices, between the rocks that make up my rapids, like he can dislodge wrecks I’ve long forgotten.
I let him wash over me.
I let him look, and I watch him in the near-dark of the brewery, no light except the vague flicker of the bonfires outside and the pale moon trickling through the high windows.
“Why are we here, June?” he asks, unmoved.
I take a deep breath. I shake my hands, clench and release them, because they’ve stopped feeling like part of my body.
“I have to tell you something,” I say.