Page 121 of Summer Love

“Jesus?” Jace says.

Noah inhales, slowly turns his head toward him.

“Seriously?”

He goes back to his pose.

“A statue?” Harper guesses.

“An angel?” Sierra tries.

Noah lets his arms drop and rolls his eyes.

“Titanic,” he says flatly.

“Ah…” Jace says.

“You should’ve smiled, too,” Miles says. “DiCaprio didn’t look half-dead. That was more crucifixion than Titanic.”

We switch teams. Jace still isn’t on mine. I don’t know if it’s chance or if he arranged it so we’d be on opposite sides. He doesn’t come after me, doesn’t throw jabs. He just plays and glances up—sometimes—in my direction.

It’s worse.

Because the little war, at least, was familiar ground. Since the wave we caught together, he hasn’t done anything. No blasting music, no needling.

We move on to Jungle Speed. Miles deals the cards into piles in front of everyone, taps the table twice to start the game.

The totem sits in the center. The game falls apart in under three rounds. Luke and Kai lunge at the same time, knock over a glass. Evan just reaches out and grabs the totem, expressionless.

“This guy’s a robot,” Luke declares, shaking out his sore hand.

Harper’s settled in next to Noah. Sometime between Time’s Up and Jungle Speed she slid from one chair to the next, and now her elbow brushes his when she sets down her cards. Noah doesn’t pull away, doesn’t move closer either.

Harper touches his arm to show him a card. Noah’s eyebrows lift, barely. This time, he gets it—and he looks surprised that it’s happening to him.

Pictionary.

Miles hands out the markers and the pad. The drawings are a disaster. Kai draws a circle with two lines and waits for us to guess the Eiffel Tower. Maya draws some kind of alien that turns out to be a cat.

Jace grabs the marker. He’s fast and good. The outline of a wave, a surfboard…

“The beach!” Sierra yells.

“Surfing!” Kai says.

Jace shakes his head and adds a girl on the board, long hair.

“Blue Crush!” Harper says.

The old movie with the Hawaiian surfer girl. Jace and I watched it together, that summer.

Jace points the marker at Harper. Got it.

Then he looks at me.

The lights shift to pink. I look away.

Noah and Harper team up for Pictionary. He draws, she guesses. At one point he leans toward her to whisper a hint—it’s cheating, but nobody calls it out. Across the table, Sierra watches them, jaw tight.