Page 36 of Ancient History

“Gross.” Everett scoffed at something on his phone.

“Nobody good here?” I asked, wondering if the search was fruitless, ironically.

Everett snapped out of his phone haze. “What? No. Raleigh posted some idiotic pictures of him and his girlfriend-of-the-week at some sports bar. Why does he think people care about him going to a bar?”

Everett cared, apparently.

“Why do you follow him on Instagram?” Chase asked.

“He friended me, and I couldn’t not friend him because he’d know I hate him.”

Julian cocked his head. “That makes no sense.”

Everett ignored him and returned his eyes to his phone. “Oh shit.”

“What?” I asked.

“Hutch is on Milkman.”

“Oh,” I said innocently. I hadn’t shared updates with the guys. I wanted to protect the intimacy of that night.

“And he’s on his way here,” Everett said.

“What?” I darted my head up. “How do you know that?”

“You can see how close people are on Milkman. Hutch is getting closer. He was three miles when I first opened his profile. Now he’s two point five.”

Of course Everett knew every feature of Milkman.

“Mine says two point four,” Chase said. “And he has some cute pictures.”

I pulled out my phone to confirm the news. “You don’t know that he’s coming here. He could be driving past.”

“There isn’t much to do past this strip mall. The most likely scenario is that he’s headed here,” Chase said.

Unease boiled inside me. Who was he coming here with? Was this a first date? A quick drink before fucking like jackrabbits?

“One point nine miles,” Julian shouted out like we were playing gay Marco Polo.

“Stop!” I put my hands over as many phone screens as I could. “This is–this is an invasion of privacy. What does it say about our society that we can track people’s movements? That means the government is watching everything we do. That’s not right. What about freedom? I’ve studied this in past societies, and with this kind of overreach, at some point in the near future, people will start to rebel. And, you know, we could have another revolution on our hands.”

I gasped in breath. I stared at my friends in silence, waiting for someone to say something.

“How far away is he now?” I asked.

“One point one.” Everett shot me a snarky grin. “But I loved the monologue. Shakespeare is shooketh.”

“Okay. That’s cool. Remix is a big place. He’ll hang out with whoever, and that’s fine.” I shook around the ice to get the last traces of liquid courage from my drink. I could use every drop.

Hutch strolled in looking like a million of the sexiest bucks ever produced by the United States mint. He wore a baseball T-shirt that stretched across his jacked chest with green sleeves pushed up his thick forearms. His hair was mussed to perfection, a few sneaky strands falling in his sparkling eyes.

This was easily the hottest he’d looked since he returned to Sourwood. But who was keeping track?

“Is he alone?” Julian wondered.

When I finally pulled my eyes away from his body, I noticed that Julian was right. There were no other people at his side.

“He’s probably meeting people here,” I said. Some hot date. A registered nurse who never shops Amazon.

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