“I’m not ready to go back yet,” he says against her mouth. “Let’s spread the blanket out here and . . .”

She knows what his silence implies and a couple of hours hasn’t suddenly made her brain ready, but her body knows what it wants. Cam turns on his phone flashlight so they’re not fumbling around in total darkness as they spread the blanket.

Everything he does is gentle. The way he slides down the straps on her dress. The slow caress of his hand against her skin. The sweep of his tongue in her mouth. Except there’s a twig poking her back under the blanket and they’re making out on someone’s private property. She hasn’t been holding out for true love or even the perfect, romantic setting, but Willa feels more exposed than sexy. She wishes she could rewind a few hours and be Campbell’s girlfriend for more than a minute before they have sex.

“Hey, um . . . can we take a break for a second?” Willa says. “Maybe we could just . . . talk a little.”

Cam falls onto his back with a frustrated sigh and rubs a hand over his face. “Sure. I guess. What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Things are moving kind of fast, don’t you think?”

“With my sister around, we’ve gotta grab the time when we’ve got it,” he says, leaning over to kiss her bare shoulder. Willa feels that pull inside her, magnetic and strong.

“I know, but—”

The sound of something rustling in the underbrush stops her short. An animal? A person? The rustling grows louder and closer—and a dog appears out of nowhere. Willa shrieks. The dog barks. And Campbell cracks up laughing.

“Otis!” a man’s voice shouts from a distance as the dog barks and barks and barks. “Who’s there? I’ll call the police.”

“We need to get out of here,” Willa whispers, scrambling to her feet. Cam snatches up the blanket and they bolt out of the woods with the dog behind them. Their bike wheels kick up gravel as they pedal away, Otis giving half-hearted chase as far as the next driveway.

“Oh my God!” Willa laughs. “That was wild!”

“The best nights usually are.”

They ride side by side back toward Minetto, and Willa works up the nerve to ask him why he dropped out of Cornell.

“It was boring, so I left.”

Since graduation, Willa has been worried that college will be as exhausting as high school, but she never once considered it might be boring. This new fear crowds into her chest along with the cell phone at the bottom of Lake Erie and the broken taillight on the car, and she almost can’t breathe. “Seriously?”

“I was surrounded by a bunch of overachievers knocking themselves out for . . . what?” Cam says. “A piece of paper and a mountain of debt? It’s not worth it.”