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The sun felt like heaven on my skin, so I stripped off my shirt and laid down on my side, propped up on my elbow. “What’d you do last night?”
She jerked her thumb at Nina. “Ask this chick. She’s always getting me in trouble.”
I’d stayed in last weekend and last night, trying to get a handle on my schoolwork. I was a terrible disappointment to my cousin, but she had a vast network of friends, so she was never without someone to party with, even when I let her down.
“A group of us went to a punk club in D.C.,” Nina said. “I almost got Hep in the bathroom.”
“Rookie mistake, using the bathroom at a dive,” I said.
“I drank beer. I can’t help that it runs right through me. I would have been better popping a squat in the alley.”
Laura sputtered. “I honestly don’t need to know all the details. Can’t we maintain some mystery?”
I laughed. “You lived with her for a year. Don’t you know every dirty detail about her?”
She flung her thin arms above her head. “I think I’ve blocked them out.”
Nina lifted her pant leg, revealing a nasty bruise on her shin. “I accidentally went into the mosh pit.” She yanked her shirt off, revealing another bruise on her ribs. “Tino had to rescue me.”
I shook my head. We’d been going to some shady clubs since we were sixteen and figured out how to sneak around our parents. I couldn’t even count the times we’d come home with bruises all over our bodies from banging around in mosh pits full of testosterone-fueled jackasses.
“Do I need to chaperone you?” I asked.
She rubbed her side. “I learned my damn lesson.”
“We need music,” Laura declared. She pointed to her bag. “I brought my radio. Turn that baby on.”
Nina dug out the pink portable radio and tuned it to an alternative station. It had to be her lucky day because “Wonderwall” by Oasis came blasting through the speakers.
“Good thing Tino’s not here to hear this,” I said.
“He’d throw a fit,” Laura agreed. Tino was not a fan of the Gallagher brothers and had banned all Oasis songs from playing in his home.
The three of us sang along, completely off-key and way too loud. The guy with dreadlocks peeked at us from under his hat, shook his head, then went back to sleep.
“I had planned to join you, but now my ears are bleeding.”
Tino stood next to our sheet with a blanket slung over his arm and a playful scowl on his face. I tugged at the bottom of his cargo shorts. “Don’t leave! I haven’t seen you in years.”
His scowl turned into a grin, and he spread his blanket out next to me. “Hello, beautiful girl. I’ve been missing you something fierce.”
I stuck my bottom lip out. “I’ve been very boring lately. I think I’m sort of getting it all under control now, though.”
Since his party, we’d met for coffee twice and talked most days, if only for a couple minutes. I already loved him, even though I had no time for him.
I went in for a hug when he laid down beside me, and he pulled me on top of him. “I’m not letting you go until you promise to come to my place tonight. We’re keeping it lowkey. I have a hookah and copious amounts of adult beverages.”
I laid my head on his chest, not even trying to escape. “What you don’t know about me is I am a fiend for snuggling. You’re going to have to pry me off.”
“It’s true. I wake up with her in my bed most mornings,” Nina said. “As much as I love her, she’snotthe chick I want warming my bed.”
Tino petted my hair, letting me stay sprawled on him. “Poor Nina. We must find you a lady friend.”
“I tried to hook her up with my friend, Heather, but she wasn’t interested,” Laura said.
“I’m picky.”
The sun was suddenly blocked by two very tall men standing over our blankets.
