Page 22 of Thrown for a Loop
Chase is seated on a deck chair on the far side of the dormitory’s roof—the boys’ end of the building. He’s got a pizza propped up on a plastic bin that he’s carried upstairs from his room. He’s got cold beers and lime wedges. He’s even got tunes playing on his Bluetooth speaker.
The only thing missing is Zoe.
He opens a Corona and pushes a lime wedge through the top. He leans back in his chair and eyes the pizza box. If she doesn’t show up, he’ll eat a piece or two and cram the rest into his mini fridge.
But he’d much rather feed it to Zoe.
His phone plays “Some Nights” by Fun, and he taps his foot on the asphalt. He loves this song, because it’s a lot like him—cynical as hell but still upbeat. Good times don’t usually last, so you have to celebrate your wins. He sings along with the chorus, leaning his head back to take in the deepening sky and keeping an eye on the stairwell entrance.
But then something appears in his peripheral vision, and he startles like a kitten in a YouTube video. “Holy shit,” he says to Zoe, clutching his heart with his free hand. “You really shouldn’t sneak up on people. How’d you get up here?”
She laughs and then points to another bulkhead on the other side of the roof. He can’t see a door on it, but obviously he miscalculated. “I went up the back stairs.”
“Huh. Sit down,” he says, recovering. “Our pizza is getting cold. Want a beer?”
Her gaze flickers to the other Corona, sitting in a cooler with some ice cubes. A beat goes by. “I don’t drink alcohol,” she says eventually.
“Let me guess—empty calories?”
She shrugs. “You’re twenty-one?” She drops into the other deck chair. This is the first time he’s seen her with her hair down. It’s sliding all over her smooth shoulders.
He can barely process the question. “No, but I have a very good fake ID.” He reaches into the cooler and pulls out a bottle of water, which she takes from him. “Cheers. Here’s to summer nights, warm pizza, and…”Your kissable mouth.“And the fact that the mosquitoes haven’t found us yet.”
She raises her bottle and touches it against his, but her expression is aloof. “Cheers.”
“Let’s dig in.” He flips open the pizza box and offers it to her. She takes a slice, and they each take a bite.
Zoe is suddenly less aloof, though. She lets out a groan of happiness, and he feels about ten feet tall. “It’s not bad, right?” he says unnecessarily.
“It’s thebest,” she says between bites.
“Now be honest—did you eat those gross crackers?”
She gives him a sideways glance. “I put them into a drawer for an emergency.”
He still doesn’t quite get it, but he’s not going to press her with questions about why she can’t just eat when she’s hungry. God, it’sweird being a girl. The boys in Filbert—Ethan and the crew—don’t seem to live by those same rules.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been up here before,” she says, glancing around the roof. “I’ve been coming to this camp my whole life.”
“Rooftops are the best,” he agrees. “My mother always said that it’s hard to be stressed out when you can see the sky.”
Zoe’s big brown eyes consider him. “Maybe that’s why I’m such a mess. It hasn’t been a good year for getting outside.”
“How come?”
She frowns at him. “You really don’t follow skating, do you?”
“Nope.”
She takes another bite and chews. “It was anOlympicyear. So I trained my ass off.”
His pizza pauses on its way to his mouth. “Wait. Did you go to theOlympics?”
“No!” She finally cracks a smile. “But I love that you don’t know that already. You’re, like, the only person on this campus who isn’t judging me for it.”
There’s definitely a story there. “Why? Were you close?”
She licks a bit of grease off her fingertip, and he feels it in a few inappropriate places. “I was favored to go, but I blew up during nationals, and they passed me over.”
