Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

there with my number on her gorgeous face and my name on her arm. How can any guy not pass for four hundred ninety-six yards when he’s got her on his side?”

I can’t decide if I’m elated or mortified, but at least my head being in a fog makes it easy to ignore the pain of Shannon’s nails digging crescent-shaped valleys into each of my arms. I’m pretty sure they’re drawing blood.

“I was gonna wait until later to ask you, but I’m feeling so good, I can’t wait—Larissa Bogdan, will you go to Homecoming with me?”

Everyone’s eyes are on me as if they were stuck to my painted skin. But the truth is, I’m not shy, and I’ve known since I was twelve what the answer to this question is, even if it took him way too long to ask it.

I wish people would just admit what they want when they want it, I hear Jasmine’s voice rasp in my brain, and without hesitation I yell back “Hell yeah, I will!”

For the millionth time that night, the crowd goes wild.

“I hope I didn’t embarrass you,” he says as we walk to his car, his arm wrapped around my waist. It’s a short walk, since he has the spot closest to the school on game nights, but it’s long enough for me to take a good look at his smile and realize that’s only partly true. He likes the idea of making me blush. I wonder if he would’ve preferred if I’d responded shyly instead of in an outburst. But he doesn’t exactly look disappointed either.

He looks … like he is really, really into me.

“You didn’t,” I assure him, and I’m pretty sure it’s true. “I’m excited to go to Homecoming with you. I was hoping you’d ask tonight.”

“Even before I had the game of my life?”

I laugh. “Did you think you needed to in order to convince me to go with you?”

“No, but I figured it couldn’t hurt,” he says with a grin. We get to his car and he presses me against it and leans down to kiss me, his mouth sweet with the taste of Gatorade.

Whistles and catcalls sound around us as we make out against his car, exactly as I’ve always pictured, and it’s weird and amazing and confusing to have it all come to life. But even the handle pressed against my back has figured into my daydreams, and it’s prepped me for the discomfort.

I want to feel everything.

Chase does not quite share that desire. “I’m sorry,” he says, pulling away, “but this is killing my neck. You kinda take ‘shorty’ to a whole new level.”

“Hey, I’m a full five feet, thank you very much.”

“And you are a very cute five feet,” he says, wrapping me in a hug and lifting me off my toes for another quick kiss. “But I am a much less cute six-three and I’ve spent my entire night getting completely wrecked. I think my body’s at its limit for stretching in unnatural directions.” He waggles his eyebrows. “At least for another ten minutes or so.”

“Subtle. Do you want me to drive?”

“Nah, by the time you adjust the seat to your height the party will probably be over.” I whack him on the arm, and he laughs. “Come on—faster we get there, faster we find a more comfortable place to get back to what we were doing.”

I open my mouth to point out we can always skip the party, but we really can’t. Chase is the star of the night, and at some point, Hunter Ferris’s makeup party for the one Jasmine snatched away has definitely turned into a party in his honor. No one would forgive me if he didn’t show. I’ll probably have to get used to this—all the stuff that comes with being a star player’s girlfriend—and while it used to seem cool in my head, now it makes me feel … impatient. Exhausted.

Inevitably, my mind wanders.

THEN

I’m quickly running out of outfits to wear to parties in the Outer Banks, hoping people won’t notice how frequently I’m wearing the same shorts or jeans with different tank tops from the sales rack at Urban Outfitters. Jasmine sports something I’ve never seen every single night—sequined dresses or brightly colored capris or pleather leggings she wears as comfortably as a second skin. Even after getting closer, or maybe because of it, I haven’t had the nerve to ask her to borrow anything.

There is a dress I haven’t worn yet—it’s a gorgeous turquoise with cool beaded embroidery winding down from the single strap—that I packed in case my mom made me go to something fancy as her date. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, though I have no idea what occasion that might be. Almost everything we go to is messy with sand and beer and ash, and we come away reeking of smoke and weed that I keep promising my mom is not the result of my own consumption.

Suddenly, the thought of doing it all over again tonight is exhausting. It’s just another house party at Carter’s, but it means straightening my hair, and doing my makeup, and making small talk with whatever tourists he’s picked up on the beach, and nursing a beer I don’t even like, and dodging smokers, and politely rejecting come-ons that I don’t want, and I just … don’t feel like it. I spend most of the parties only hanging out with Jasmine anyway, playing at mixing drinks, or talking about books, or prying for details of her life at home, where she takes pictures for the school paper and goes to rock shows after having Shabbat dinner with her mom most Friday nights, and I can do that here.

The image of a lazy night on the couch, watching movies, sharing a blanket, skin grazing skin … I shake my head to dislodge it. That’s not how this goes. That’s not what this is. She’ll want to go to Carter’s party, because in real life, she wants