Lovestruck Summer Melissa Walker (top 100 books to read .TXT) 📖

I uptight? I don’t think I’m uptight. I think Russ thinks I’m uptight, but he doesn’t know me at all. He just met me and already he thinks he’s so smart about what I should think and say and be. He doesn’t even know—Whoosh! I drop down a sloping rapid and almost fl ip over in my tube. I manage to hold on to the sides and get myself upright before I go

Lovestruck Summer

159 entirely underwater, but the baseball cap that I borrowed from Russ is totally dunked. When I shake my head out and clear my vision, I see that he’s right behind me, laughing. And I start to laugh too. We’re outside, fl oating down a river on a hot, sunny day and I’m sitting here worrying about my skin (which is already covered in SPF 80 from before I left the condo), my footgear, my whole outfi t, for goodness’sake! Russ is right. I need to just let go and enjoy myself. We’re at a slow stretch of water, so Russ pulls the cooler to him as I paddle over to grab a Coke. Russ holds our tubes together with one hand and his soda with the other. He shares a bag of Doritos with me as we fl oat. “So, do you come here often?”I ask. “Sometimes,”he says. “I used to tube here when I was younger, with my dad. He loved to fl oat down the river.”“That’s cute,”I say. I look over and see a little boy on the edge of the water aiming a water gun at his mom, who’s sitting at a picnic table in their yard. She screams as he douses her. “Were you like that kid?”I ask.

160 “So much worse,”says Russ. “I used to set water balloons above the front door . . . inside the house.”“And have you matured since then?”I ask. He grins and wipes a Dorito-cheesed hand on my arm. “Gross!”I shout, leaning over to wash off the orange powder. He laughs and takes a sip of Coke. We fl oat quietly down the river like that for a while, and it’s nice. I sort of enjoy Russ’s com- pany when he’s not talking. Soon we go over a small patch of rapids, which is really just a quick drop to a lower sec- tion of the river, and Russ lets go of my tube and I drift ahead. “Are you over hanging on to me?”I joke. “You’re getting that song stuck in my head,”he says. “If that happens, I won’t be able to stop singing it for hours.”“What song?”I ask. “The one you’ve been humming all day,”he says. “‘Waltz Across Texas.’It’s the fi nal track on the CD I made you, or at the end of Side B, if it’s the tape you’ve been obsessing over.”

161 He smiles at me with a triumphant twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,”I say, paddling my tube ahead of him so I won’t have to acknowledge that his songs are getting into my head. “Nothing to be ashamed of,”says Russ. “That’s my favorite song of all time. I’m glad you like it.”“I don’t like it,”I say stubbornly. “Admit it!”Russ calls out. “You love my mix!”I can hear him paddling from behind me and gaining speed. “I do not!”I shout, smacking my hand through the water to splash him as he pulls up alongside me. “Methinks she doth protest too much,”says Russ. I pout, looking off into the distance and pre- tending to focus on the next bend in the river. “I’m really getting to you, aren’t I?”asks Russ. “You’re starting to have a crush on me.”“No,”I say. “You’re just around a lot. If some- one’s constantly there, it’s like, you just think

162 about them because they’re around.”“Okay, Cleopatra, Queen of Denial,”says Russ, lying back on his tube. “I’m really into Sebastian,”I say, looking over at Russ to gauge his reaction. His sunglasses cover his eyes, but I see the muscles around his mouth twitch a little. “I’m happy for you,”he says, swinging the cooler around with his leg and opening it up for another soda. I’m a little preoccupied for the rest of our fl oat down the Guadalupe, but I try to push the awkward feelings aside and enjoy the cool water. I hum a hard-core London Rose song audibly, so Russ knows his mix is out of my head. Luckily, it’s going out of rotation soon. Sebastian texted me on Wednesday and asked me to come to Dirty’s Friday night. And he said he has a present for me. Russ and I don’t talk much as we get to the end of our fl oat and return the tubes. The drive home is quiet too, but it’s not a bad kind of silence. We listen to a Loretta Lynn CD that he has—and Jack White is singing on it, too, which is pretty cool.

163 * * * The next day, Jade and I are planning on going out to dinner when we leave Amalgam, and then heading over to Dirty’s to see Sebastian deejay. “Let’s stop by your house fi rst,”says Jade. “Why?”I ask. “You’ll see,”she says. Those two little words are ominous, but I duti- fully pull in to the condo parking lot anyway. When we walk in, Penny and Chrissy are racing around, cleaning. Penny has a bottle of Windex in one hand, and she’s spraying it on every possible surface. She’s also holding a wad of paper towels. Chrissy is vacuuming the rug under the couch, and all the chairs and tables have been moved to the walls. “What’s going on?”I ask. “Ooh, Quinny! We’re having a party!”says Penny. Chrissy squeals in delight. “Everyone’s been gone for a while, but now that it’s getting closer to August, people are coming back. The semes- ter starts in a month, and we’re throwing the fi rst big bash of the season.”“It’s, like, tradition,”says Penny.

164 I look over at Jade. “Did you know about