Want pooled under my ribs, obvious and demanding. What he’d taste like deeper. How he’d sound when he lost that composure. Whether all that careful control would crack under the right pressure.
Underneath that was the scarier part.
I liked him. Not the surface attraction. The actual person. The way he’d listened. The way he’d clocked my fear without making me explain it. The way he’d held a boundary instead of going along with what I wanted because I wanted it.
Ellis made me want to try, which was the kind of thing I’d talked myself out of for so many years it had become a personality trait.
Terrifying.
Chapter seven
Friday night meant Neon Pulse.
I leaned against the busted streetlamp outside Sierra’s building and checked my phone for the third time in five minutes. Raven was beside me with her arms crossed, dark lipstick somehow surviving the humidity. Calliope shifted from foot to foot. She’d been doing that since middle school whenever she was waiting on someone. Her spiky red hair caught the flickering light.
“Where is she?” Calliope asked.
“Probably forgot.” Raven crossed her arms tighter. “She’s been spacey all week.”
“Ghost girl’s got her twisted up.” I pocketed my phone and glanced at Sierra’s building. The lights were on in her apartment, so she was definitely home. “Give her another minute.”
I’d dressed for it. Black jeans. Deep purple shirt. The glitter gel was on my arms and cheekbones again because Calliope had no off switch about glitter. Silver hoops. I looked good. I was good, too, which was a thing I rarely admitted out loud, because admitting it had a way of making it stopbeing true.
Tomorrow night, I had a date with Ellis. An actual date. Dinner at some Italian place in Park Slope, with cloth napkins and wine lists and the whole deal.
My stomach twisted.
“You’re smiling at nothing.” Raven’s eyes narrowed. “That’s unsettling.”
“I’m in a good mood. Sue me.”
“It’s Gym Guy, isn’t it?” Calliope grinned. “The date’s tomorrow?”
“His name’s Ellis, and yes.”
“He’s got you all…” She gestured vaguely at my face. “Glowy.”
“I’m not glowy.”
“You’re extremely glowy,” Raven agreed. “It’s weird.”
Before I could defend myself, Sierra appeared in the doorway, hair still damp from the shower. Frazzled, guilty, and beautiful the way she always was without trying.
“You’re late,” I called, grinning. “Fashionably late, I’ll allow it, but next time you’re buying the first round.”
“Disappear on us again and I’m filing a missing persons report. Don’t test me, Turner.” Raven’s eyes narrowed like she was only half-joking.
“It’s club night, darling.” Calliope looped her arm through Sierra’s before she could blink. “The gods have decreed it. Your protest has been overruled.”
“I didn’t even say…”
“You don’t get a vote,” we chorused, and I laughed at Sierra’sresigned expression.
Neon Pulse was already going when we got there. The sign out front buzzed in its pink and blue. Inside it smelled like perfume, vodka, and the start of things that were going to end somewhere worse.
We moved through the crowd in a blur of elbows, glitter, and strangers pressed too close. The bass beneath our feet was doing its job.
I threw myself into it the way I always did. Spun Calliope until she shrieked. Dipped Raven, exaggerated enough that it almost worked. Got Sierra to actually dance instead of just standing in the rough vicinity of dancing, which was her usual move.
