Best of all, our friendship had stabilized. Will didn’t hint about asking me out or being jealous of Sawyer. He was dating Angelica now. And I didn’t worry too much about what he was doing with Angelica. With night practice lasting until ten, she probably didn’t let him so much as come over to watch TV and feel her up, because she needed to be fresh for insulting other girls’ outfit choices the next morning. They had only the afternoon to spend together, and how much trouble could anybody get into in the afternoon?
The one thing that bothered me about my week with Will was that we kept touching each other and getting in trouble for it with Ms. Nakamoto. The whole band turned around to stare at us when this happened, including Angelica with her arms crossed. It wasn’t like we meant to touch each other. We just started talking about TV or music or, God, I don’t know. We could make a joke out of anything. And then I pretended to sock him for something he said, and he grabbed me, and we were in trouble again.
Boys with girlfriends had propositioned me before. This made me uncomfortable. I had turned them down. I didn’t want to feel like the mistress of a married man. But I wasn’t Will’s mistress. He wasn’t married. This was just being friendly without fooling around. And if he did have some exclusive understanding with Angelica that he was not to touch other girls, that was his problem, not mine.
The only reason I felt uneasy was that I liked him so much. Every time he put his hands on me, I liked him more. This was dangerous.
As problems went, however, it was a happy one to have. I wasn’t late to band again, because the minute practice was over I was pretty much dying to see Will again. But toward the end of the week, a couple of things happened to ruin my paradise.
First, at band practice on Thursday, instead of breaking at noon and then meeting up on the football field again at six, we reconvened on the beach at four. Attendance had already seemed pretty good at practice, and you could bet all hundred and eighty of us would be at a party. DeMarcus’s dad grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for us. A lot of other parents brought delicious grub. Ms. Nakamoto laid down her whistle, donned a little white one-piece, and frolicked in the surf with her husband and her children like a real person.
As far as sexytimes went, there wasn’t much new to see, because most of us had already taken off our clothes during band. But something about Will lying on a towel in the sand with his front to Angelica’s back, both of them apparently asleep, got my blood boiling. Sure, for the past three days he’d sat on my towel in band with his shirt off, and I’d taken my shirt off too to show my bikini top underneath. The only differences between that scene and this one were that he was now wearing a bathing suit instead of shorts, she was wearing bikini bottoms instead of shorts, and they were lying like lovers.
Oh—and the girl by his side was Angelica, not me.
I sat with Chelsea on a big rock under palms, taking pics of the great view: the Gulf, the boats sailing in and out of the town’s small harbor, and all the boys we claimed not to like that way. I didn’t take a pic of Will, though. I couldn’t believe Will voluntarily lay in the sunshine rather than the shade. His tan wasn’t dark enough yet to protect him. And he definitely hadn’t gotten used to the heat. Sometimes in band he seemed almost sick with it. He and Angelica must have lain down when that part of the beach was in shade. Now the sun had moved.
As I was steaming about this, I got a text from Sawyer, just a question mark. He was asking if I wanted to hook up after he got off work.
I texted back, “At marching band party, geeking out. Come crash. Great food. I will find you some vegan.” I really did want to see him. I wanted Will to see me with him even more.
No such luck. Sawyer texted, “KILL ME NOW.”
And a second later, when he realized that was a little mean, even for him, “Thx but no thx.”
I plopped my phone down on my lap in frustration. I ordered Chelsea, “Go down there and tell old Angelica she has to get Will out of the sun. He doesn’t understand that the five o’clock rays will still fry him.”
“I’m not getting in the middle of this,” Chelsea said.
“In the middle of what?” I asked innocently. But I felt myself blush at the idea that Will and I were in a messy love triangle.
“Besides,” Chelsea said, “if that player fries, he deserves it.”
“What?” I asked. “Will? Why is he a player?” My heart sank at the thought that he might have dropped Angelica off to go night-night after practice, but he had another girl on the side. This hadn’t occurred to me.
Chelsea gasped. “He went home with you after Brody Larson’s party, then dumped you for Angelica the next day, and now he’s here feeling her up at the beach after he basically felt you up at band practice all morning! Don’t you even care?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant when she said he’d felt me up. True, at every practice, Ms. Nakamoto called through her microphone, “Mr. Matthews, get off Ms. Cruz.” In fact, Jimmy had taken to looking at his phone and announcing the elapsed time between her reprimands—“One hour, forty-five minutes”—like we were going for a record. But in one of those instances, Will had been helping me adjust my snare harness. It only looked like he was molesting me. On another occasion, he caught me in a headlock, which I really enjoyed, after I mentioned lutefisk to see what he would do. So that was my fault. And several of those times, he was spreading sunscreen on my back at my request. Ms. Nakamoto simply didn’t catch me when I was lotioning him up.
“He’s cute, though,” Chelsea said. “I look forward to seeing that around school this year. I’m not helping you, but, yeah, you should go warn him before he gets burned. Hey!” When she called out to DeMarcus, who was passing by, he helped her backward off the rock. They walked toward the open-air pavilion where the food was, abandoning me to carry out my own mission.
I scrambled down to the beach. But as I moseyed toward Will and Angelica, who were oblivious that I was about to disturb their romantic moment, I felt less and less like a friend aiming to avert a medical tragedy and more and more like a scheming bitch. Will was seventeen years old, and he could put on his own sunscreen. He couldn’t reach his back, though. And he didn’t seem to have a lick of sense when it came to the Florida sun. I ought to let Angelica take care of him, but obviously she wasn’t willing or able.
So I knelt in front of them—I knew I should not be doing this as I did it—and said in a low tone that spoke of my mature health concerns, “Angelica, you can’t let Will get burned out here, no matter how much you’re enjoying second base.” I waited only until she sat up and scowled at me in outrage. Her movements jostled Will’s sunglasses down on his nose. He opened one eye and frowned at me.