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Should she leave? Just turn around and go? She shaded her eyes from the bright spring sun and stared into a deep blue sky. She could barely recognize what a beautiful day it was. Just made for a picnic.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, it was to see Coach Sutton’s tanned, knobby knees as he prowled around the pit, checking the temperature. Miss Billings was seated on a lawn chair, smiling up at him. Delta felt ill. It seemed like love was in the air for everyone but her.
She realized there was someone just behind her left shoulder, and she turned around swiftly to find Woody Deavers sliding her a sly smile. She turned back around just as swiftly. Woody was always trying to get a laugh, most times at someone else’s expense. His hair was too long—much longer than Tanner’s—and he wore jeans so faded and worn they were almost white and looked like they could shred into cotton puffs and float away. He’d taken off his T-shirt and laid it over his shoulders, exposing a hard, deeply tanned, muscular torso for all to see. A tattoo of a landing eagle, talons extended, ran along his shoulder and collarbone.
Delta hated tattoos.
“Hey, Ms. Smith,” he said lazily. “What happened with your man there in the golf cart?”
She didn’t respond.
“He and that ice bitch together now?”
“They’re just bringing stuff up from the house,” she stated shortly as he strolled into her range of vision.
He thrust his fists in his pockets and gave her a long look. There was something aggressively male about him. She’d seen him in a short, comedic play, and he hadn’t been half-bad, but he was not one of the cool kids, and she’d spent a lot of time working on her own popularity, which could be undermined by even talking to him.
“Where’s Crystal?” Delta asked, referring to his girlfriend. If Woody had one tattoo, Crystal had a dozen.
“Crystal wouldn’t be caught dead at a class party.” He smiled, a brilliant shot of white. “Don’t know what I’m doing here. Actually, I do. I came for the pig. Crystal’s a vegetarian, so that didn’t interest her, either.”
Delta smiled tightly.
“Seriously, what’s going on with Tanner and Amanda?” he asked.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t. Much. But you do.”
“They’re just friends. We’ve all been friends for years.” She shifted away from him a few feet, wondering if she could just run for it.
“Sure. That’s why you’re so miserable.”
“I’m not miserable. I’m just tired.”
“You gonna stay overnight here?”
“We’re not doing that anymore. Did you miss the memo?”
“Maybe the adults in the room are leaving,” he said, shooting a glance toward the coach, Miss Billings, and the assistant guy, “but that doesn’t mean we have to, does it?”
“The Forsythes aren’t letting us stay here,” she informed him tightly.
“Ice bitch’s parents don’t have to know.”
Just the idea made her heart clutch. She was a hard sleeper, and what if she fell asleep and then Tanner and Amanda got together and everyone knew and they had sex and it was all over for her and Tanner? Maybe she should have put out. They’d certainly had their make-out sessions, and some had come pretty close to them doing it; Tanner had certainly pressed her. But Delta had held off, not because she didn’t want to, but because of some nebulous impulse for self-preservation that she’d gleaned from her friends, who seemed to have sex with one boyfriend, then get dumped, then have sex with another, just to have the whole thing start all over again. That’s what had happened with Zora and two guys from their school, both of whom had been older and had already graduated. She acted like it was no big deal, but Delta wondered. She now had a reputation for being easy, which didn’t seem to bother her, but it would bother Delta.
Still . . . was that the reason Tanner had jumped to Amanda? As far as Delta knew, Amanda hadn’t even had a serious boyfriend, so far. She was, as Woody put it, an ice bitch, and kept guys at arm’s length . . . or at least she had.
You should’ve made love to Tanner. You should do it tonight.
“Excuse me,” she said shortly, walking away from Woody. It was a long trek back to the house, and by the time she got there, Tanner and Amanda would probably have loaded up the cart and be on their way back to the party.
She hesitated, wondering if she should wait. She had to get Tanner away from the party entirely. They needed their own special time together. Somewhere else.
“Have you seen Amanda?” Ellie asked Delta. She’d been talking to McCrae, flirting, Delta had noted, but now she was looking at Delta in that intense way of hers.
“She and Tanner went up to the house to pick stuff up,” Delta said, purposely making it sound like no big deal.
