Birthday Girl

I sit up and dust the grass off my arms that I was using for a pillow to watch the stars start to come out. “Hey, what are you guys doing?” I ask.

“Anything but this.” He sighs. “There’s a shitload of people at the A&W. Wanna come? I’ll buy you a float.”

I chuckle under my breath and stand up. That actually sounds really good.

“I haven’t been there in so long,” I remark. “Why not? Let me just tell my ride.”

He and his friends head to their cars up the street, and I jog over to the lawn chairs full of guys in the center of the road. Pike sits with his back to me, while Dutch lounges next to him with his wife on his lap, and a few others around the circle I recognize from Pike’s poker games.

“Hey,” I say, coming up to Pike’s side. “Some friends are heading to the A&W. Root beer floats and that. They invited me to come.”

I’m not asking permission, but it kind of comes out like that.

He doesn’t look at me, just tips up his bottle of beer and takes a sip. “Root beer float?” he repeats sternly. “What are you…five?”

Jerk.

“Noooooo,” I say, “but that’s how you like to treat me sometimes.”

Dutch laughs quietly next to him but speaks up, in my defense, “Hey, I still love floats, man.”

I roll my eyes at Pike and look to Teresa, smiling. “Thank you so much for having me,” I tell her. “This was nice.”

“Thanks for coming, sweetheart. And thanks for the food.”

“How you getting home?” Pike interjects, still avoiding my eyes.

“I’ll bring her.”

I look over to see Carter stepping up next to us, and Pike turns his head just a hair to see him before turning away again.

I lift the corner of my mouth in a little smirk and bend down, speaking a few inches from his ear. “Do I have a curfew?”

Dutch snorts, and I see a little snarl flare on Pike’s mouth before it disappears.

“Have fun,” he says tightly.

I stand up again and turn, following Carter to his truck as amusement lightens my mood again.

Pike is jealous.

And while I don’t want to be thinking about him, I really like knowing he’s trying not to think about me.

How much of what he wants is he hiding or burying or trying to suppress? What does it look like when he doesn’t control himself anymore?

“Oh, my God, did you hear about Jillian?” Selena Gardner gestures to another girl, intermittently chewing on the end of a straw. “She tells Dean and Matt that one of them is the father, they go to get paternity tests, and neither one of them is the dad!” She laughs.

“Oh, my God!” The other girl’s eyes bug out. “Shit, does she even know whose it is?”

“Who cares?” Selena furrows her brow, leaning back on the car again. “I’d be more concerned about catching something other than a baby. I don’t leave the house without condoms anymore. You never know when you’re going to need them. Like really…”

Everyone laughs, and I fake a half-smile in an effort not to be awkward, but I’m sure I am, since I have barely said two words in the last ten minutes.

We got to the A&W an hour ago, and as expected, the place is full of teenagers and families with truck beds full of kids. The moonlight and crickets compete with all the headlights and car stereos, and the smell of charbroiled burgers and hot asphalt fills the air as engines rev and car doors slam.

There’s not a single person here I’ve talked to more than twice since I graduated over a year ago.

“I love this,” someone says to Selena, reaching over and handling her small Louis Vuitton purse. “Where’d you get it?”