He nodded. We didn’t say anything for a while; then he tipped the bag of M&Ms in my direction. I opened my palm to receive the candy. He looked at me, and I stuck out my tongue.

“You don’t have to add insult to injury,” he said.

“Is it blue? From the straws?”

He shook his head.

We never talked about it again. When he started dating Kelly Iwanowski in eleventh grade, Scarlett asked me if I was jealous, and I answered honestly that I wasn’t. I remember thinking they’d break up eventually and he’d still like me. He liked me first. He liked me best.

“You still like me?” I ask him now, swiping the cold tip of my nose across his forehead.

“No,” he says. “Not at all. Over it.”

“Hey.”

He leans down, holds my chin in his hand, and tilts my face so our eyes are lined up exactly.

“You know the answer to that question. You’ve always known. Don’t make me say it just to hear me say it.”

He’s being honest with me again, like he was on the curb outside of the movie theater. The kind of honest I can’t skate around.

“I can’t make you do anything,” I say, stepping away from him. “You’re much bigger than I am.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got weapons,” he says as I pick up my bow and arrow.

“Damn right,” I say, crossing the yard back to the party, butterflies eating me alive from the inside.

I can’t believe I just kissed a guy on a swing set. I can’t believe I just kissed Ian Pedretti.

I need to find Scarlett.

As soon as I step into the house, my post-kiss giddiness is demolished by the song that’s playing.

“There you are,” Scarlett says, removing her hood. “I got stuck talking to these rubes. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say as Warren Zevon howls over a jaunty tune. I start to laugh in spite of myself. “This song.”

Of all things. Honestly.

“You don’t like ‘Werewolves of London’? This is the first good song that’s come on in, like, an hour,” Scarlett says.

“We definitely haven’t been here for an hour.”

“Listen, I made you a plate but then I ate it. Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” I say. I grab a mummy hot dog from the nearest platter and wash it down with my bourbon.

“Let’s go outside,” Scarlett says. “Ash told all of her mom friends that I’m pregnant and now they’re all coming up to me with advice.”

I escort her outside, where Seth is no longer tending bar. I pour myself another spot of the Jim Beam Apple.

“Pace yourself,” Scarlett says.

I clutch my imaginary pearls. “You’d shame your own sister?”

“I support you in all your endeavors,” she says. “But I can’t carry you home if you get blitzed.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

And it’s true. I’ve already had a fair amount to drink, and I’m not even buzzed.

I look over Scarlett’s shoulder to the pirate couple, who appear to still be fighting. Scarlett follows my gaze to them, then looks back at me.