His fingers wrapped over mine. Reluctantly, I let him pull me closer. “This isn’t waterproof,” he said as set his watch across my wrist. The wide leather band still held his warmth. Then, as he buckled it in place: “Now you’ve got a reason.”

Anthony passed me the stub he’d been given as we made our way back to the party. I hesitated about bringing it to my lips as I watched him work the keg. That was always Kori’s call. In addition to not wanting me to talk funny, she doesn’t want me to end up like her. She tells me I can only smoke when she gives it to me. That’s our rule.

I desperately wanted to take a couple drags to settle the racing rat in the wheel that was my brain. I’d just spent the past hour snuggled in Anthony Beck’s lap talking about everything and nothing at all. You know, the kinds of things that keep you up at night smiling as you remember them? And now I’d worked myself into a panic because he hadn’t kissed me and I so wanted to kiss him. I’d held my breath savoring each second, but then he’d brought me back to the party and the moment had passed, and I just needed to calm down.

I couldn’t spot Kori anywhere. Instead my search halted on Marci Mancini. She’d wandered off from her friends and was making a funny face as she stared down into her plastic cup of beer. After flicking a glance at the flour baby nestled in the crook of her tanned arm, she lowered her nose to the cup and sniffed. With a violent shake of her head, she tossed the full cup of beer out onto a nearby shrub. I rolled my eyes. She probably only drank Zima.

First she cradled her flour baby. Then she held it out in front of her with both hands, as someone might lift an actual child to look him in the eye. Even from the distance I could see her forehead all wrinkled in the same way it’d been when she contemplated drinking her beer.

The BBs are so bizarre sometimes. I knew it was just a sack of flour and all, but I couldn’t even watch if she was going to toss it into the shrub with the beer. And when my gaze swung around, it collided with the dazzle of Anthony’s emerald greens. Oh hell, it was just one drag.

I pressed my lips around the joint and inhaled deeply.