Since You've Been Gone

“So?” he asked, stretching the word out. “You and Benji? I see a future there.”

“No,” I said, taking a sip of my water. “No offense to your cousin, but . . . no.”

“Surprising,” Collins said, arching an eyebrow at me. “Because you were just in there a long time.”

I coughed on my water. “We were?”

“You were,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.

I took another drink of water and shook my head. “Oh. Well. Um . . .” I looked over at him and saw he was still grinning. “Oh, shut up,” I muttered, surprising myself—and Collins, by the look of it—as Dawn started to laugh.

Later, when I was walking home—after Dawn had left and the boys had started to play Honour Quest, a video game I had no interest in, despite Beckett always trying to get me to play with him—I found that I couldn’t stop smiling. It was a warm, humid night, and I could see fireflies winking in the grass and hear the cicadas chirping. I headed home, my thoughts still turning over what had happened.

I had stood up in front of a crowd and performed, and it had gone fine. Nothing horrible had happened, and I’d gotten through it. But bigger than that, I had kissed a stranger. My pulse started to pick up a little as I flashed back to the pantry, to Benji’s hands in my hair. I had kissed someone tonight, which I certainly had not been expecting to do. Not that I wanted to make a regular practice of kissing Collins’s relatives in dark pantries, but for just a moment, it had made me feel brave.

And as I tilted my head back to look at the stars, I began to really understand, for the first time, just why Sloane sent me the list.

7

SLEEP UNDER THE STARS

The bell over the door jangled, and I stood up from where I was cleaning the ice cream case, taking a breath to welcome the customer to Paradise, but I stopped when I realized it was only Dawn.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Okay,” she said, hurrying across the store and then leaning across the counter toward me, talking fast. “We have to discuss the fact that you made out with that dude for like half an hour in the pantry, and we have to talk about Matthew, because he seems awesome, and after all that, I have something for you.”

“It wasn’t half an hour,” I protested, but Dawn just raised an eyebrow at me and I felt myself smile.

“I need details,” she said, taking one of the perpetually empty metal seats and settling in. I noticed that today, her shirt read Captain Pizza—We do PRIVATE parties!

“Okay,” I said, coming out from behind the counter, realizing that before we gossiped about my make-out session, I had to tell her the truth. “So . . . you know my best friend, Sloane? The one who sent the list?” Dawn nodded and I took a breath. “She’s not camping in Europe. I don’t know where she is. She just left, and all I have to go on is the list.”

Dawn looked at me for a long moment. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the black-and-white patterned floor. “It just . . .” I shrugged. I hadn’t wanted to admit I had no idea where my best friend was. Now I knew that Dawn wouldn’t have judged me for it, but I hadn’t known that—or her—then.

“Wait a second,” Dawn said, leaning forward. “Was that why you wanted to go on that delivery with me? To cross off ‘Hug a Jamie’?” I nodded, realizing that while I’d been making out with Benji in the pantry, Collins must have been filling Dawn in on the rest of the list. “Well, I’m really glad you didn’t,” she said, her eyes wide. “Jamie Roarke’s puggle is crazy. He would have freaked out if you’d tried it.” She stood up and rummaged in her bag, then placed a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the counter in front of me.

“What are those?” I asked, picking them up. As I turned them over, I suddenly realized that they looked familiar—I was pretty sure these were the ones I’d seen on Bryan. “Dawn,” I said slowly. “What . . .”

“Number four on the list,” she said. She grinned at me. “Want to break something?”

Music: Better for Running than Observational Comedy

Make Me Lose Control

Eric Carmen

Let My Love Open the Door

Pete Townshend

Jolene

Dolly Parton

Springsteen

Eric Church

Badlands

Bruce Springsteen

Compass

Lady Antebellum

When You Were Mine

Cyndi Lauper

Let’s Not Let It

Randy Houser

Sunny and 75

Joe Nichols

And We Danced

The Hooters

Don’t Ya

Brett Eldredge

Anywhere with You

Jake Owen

867-5309 / Jenny

Tommy Tutone

Nashville

David Mead

Kiss on My List

Hall & Oates

Here We Go Again

Justin Townes Earle

Me and Emily

Rachel Proctor

We Were Us

Keith Urban & Miranda Lambert

Where I Come From

Montgomery Gentry

Delta Dawn

Tanya Tucker

Things Change

Tim McGraw

Mendocino County

Willie Nelson feat. Lee Ann Womack

The Longest Time

Billy Joel

The summer began to take shape. I had my largely customer-free job, I had early morning or late afternoon runs with Frank, and I had the list. But I was no longer, it was becoming very clear, on my own in trying to finish it. My friends were helping me.

“Want to go to a gala?” Frank asked, sliding something across the kitchen island at me. I’d been driving around with Dawn, keeping her company while she made deliveries, when Frank had called and invited me over, and he’d extended the invitation to her, so it was the four of us at his house. Dawn was out on the beach with Collins, and Frank and I had been tasked with bringing snacks outside. I looked at him over my armful of sodas, waters, popsicles, and the energy drink Collins loved and which I had a feeling would soon be banned by the FDA.

I glanced down and saw that it was the gala invitation I’d noticed when I’d been at his house the night I’d kissed Benji. Before I could read where it was being held, he put it back on the fridge with a Porter & Porter magnet. “It’s for my parents,” he said. “Collins is coming too, but since they’re going to have to be in the same room together all night, pretending they don’t hate each other, I could use as many friends as possible.”