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I whip my head toward the assailant to find an angry Topican woman. She hurls a string of curse words at us while pointing at the bottle I’m holding.
“Shit. It’s Momma G. We gotta go.”
“Momma who?”
My feet are the consistency of lead when I manage to get them underneath me. I quickly ditch the liquor and yank Logan up by his arm. “The mayor’s sister. She’s basically the resident auntie around here, and she’ll totally rat us out to my dad if she catches us.”
That’s all the motivation Logan needed to finally get moving.
“This way!” I holler, ducking behind a cart full of wine barrels.
“Go faster,” Logan pants behind me. “She’s gaining on us.”
With smoke-scented air and laughter burning my lungs, we make a break for a group of yurts scattered sporadically along the farthest edge of the field.
I crouch behind the large, luxury-style tent closest to me, peering around the corner for any sign of Momma G and her chancla missiles.
“Do you think we lost her?” I whisper, but when I glance behind me, Logan is gone.
Weaving through the next several tents, I quietly call out, “Logan?”
A thrill hums through my chest, amplified by the hand that clamps over my mouth, weakening my muffling scream as I’m drug backward into the darkness.
I thrash and swing my fists until I connect with something warm and solid.
Logan groans in the dim light of the tent he’s dragged me into, holding the side I managed to punch. “Christ, Pen. It’s just me.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I hiss. “I thought I was being kidnapped.”
After zipping the flaps closed, he crosses the surprisingly cozy area to switch on the battery-powered lamp on top of a short wooden table with two drawers. “I feel sorry for the guy who ever tries.”
I nibble the tip of my nail as I glance around. “Wow. I’ve always wondered what it looked like inside one of these.”
In the center of the bell-shaped space, beside the small table, lie several layers of blankets, neatly folded at the end of a thin mattress. Wood panels support the bottom of the tent, making the ground even, and a fan sits at the base of the bed, next to a cooler full of water.
“This dance… I assume this is where the couples go afterward?” When Logan opens the top drawer of the table, his eyebrows disappear beneath his long, shaggy hair.
In previous years, when I’ve asked my parents, their answers were vague at best. My cousins and I, however, had our suspicions.
A box of condoms jiggles in his hand when he removes it from the drawer.
My eyes bulge, and he huffs a laugh. “Your innocence is showing, sunshine.”
“Me? Innocent?”
He plucks one from the box before setting it on the table. “You have seen a condom before, haven’t you?”
If we’re counting that one sex ed class in sixth grade, then yeah, totally.
“I, for sure, definitely have,” I say with painfully transparent confidence.
There’s a grin tugging the corner of his mouth, but something in the way he’s stalking toward me, tall and swathed in shadows, has my heart galloping.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Would I have brought you here if I hadn’t?”
He arches a brow, and because I know no other way to be, I word vomit. “Okay, fine. I didn’t know we’d end up here exactly. Doesn’t change the fact that I… Well, that I’m ready. For this.”
