“I love it,” I say.
“Told you!” Ashleigh bustles past me toward the light-strewn patio of BARn, which I now know is stylized as BARn. My hair is still damp from my post-kayak shower, my shoulders hurt where the straps of my dress rub into my sunburn, and my arm muscles feel like Jell-O. Mixed with wet concrete.
Miles and I didn’t even make it to the island, let alone around it, before I accepted I couldn’t go any further.
That was also when I realized my biggest mistake of the day. I’d saved absolutely no energy for the paddle back to shore. We’d had to stop every few strokes so I could gather my strength, while Miles paddled back and forth in a wide zigzag.
It would be a while before I kayaked again, before sunrise or not.
So far, BARn is much more my speed.
Julia and Miles pile out of the backseat of Ashleigh’s hatchback into the grassy field–cum–parking lot. “Oh my god, a taco truck,” Julia says, hurrying to catch up with Ashleigh as she strides toward the patio.
To the right of the parked taco truck, there’s a dance floor and a stage, a cover band blaring out “The Boys of Summer.” To the right sits a big red barn, its doors propped open, people filing in and out with booze-filled Mason jars and beer bottles clutched in hand. There’s also a partially covered bar jutting out from the side of the barn, every inch packed.
“I’ve loved boyfriends less than I love this place!” Julia calls back to us as Miles is shutting the car door.
“That’s just our attachment issues,” he tells me.
“Oh?” I look over at him. “You share them? That’s nice.”
“She once dumped a guy because he thought Mamma Mia 2 was better than the original,” he tells me.
“Wow, a die-hard fan,” I say.
“She hasn’t seen either movie,” he says. “She just thought having such a staunch opinion about it was a red flag.”
The infamous low chortle sneaks out of me, and his smile is so affectionate I wish I could roll myself up in it like a blanket.
“Well, if nothing else,” I say, “she and Ashleigh-the-Phish-Hater should have something to bond over.”
“Yeah, they’ll probably ditch us by the end of the night,” he agrees.
Our eyes catch. My blood hums. My body warms with phantom sensations, memories from two nights ago.
He brushes his fingertips over my bright-red shoulder. “This hurt?” he murmurs.
“A little,” I admit. “But that’s what I get for trying to be the cool, laid-back girl who doesn’t need to slather every inch of her body in sunblock every half hour.”
We’ve stopped moving, just barely out of reach of BARn’s twinkling lights, Julia and Ashleigh lost somewhere ahead in the crowd. “She might be cool and laid-back right now,” he says, “but she’ll feel less fancy-free when she’s taking monthly trips to a dermatologist.”
“Nah, cool, laid-back girls never face consequences for their spontaneity. It’s how they’re able to keep being cool and laid-back. They’re genetically predisposed to health. They’re not allergic to poison ivy or shellfish, and they never get migraines, even if they only sleep for three hours in a cold tent, and they never burn in the sun.”
“Huh,” he says.
“What?” I ask, right as I spot Julia in line at the food truck, waving us over.
“I just realized I’m a cool, laid-back girl,” Miles says.
I start toward Julia and Ashleigh, toward the safety of a buffer, calling over my shoulder, “I could’ve told you that.”
The four of us eat fried fish tacos on one of the wooden picnic tables set up in front of the food truck. We order bourbon and sweet tea from the outdoor bar, briefly poke our heads inside before deciding it’s way too packed. We wander around the back of the barn to the goat enclosure, where one is rubbing its face against the fence while the others are tucked away in a covered area inaccessible to bar patrons. We scratch the lone goat’s head for a while, then pump our hands generously with the provided sanitizer before making our way back to the snap-lock dance floor.
The band cranks out country covers of hits through the decades, and we dance until my hair has dried all the way through, then until it’s sweaty again.
At one point, Miles goes to get fresh beers—and a cider for me—and comes back wearing a handful of glow-stick necklaces, a sloppy pink lipstick mark on his cheek.
“Of course,” Julia shouts over the music, not interrupting her dancing whatsoever and not even close to winded.
Oh, to be twenty-three.
She jerks her head toward Miles. “Leaves for a beer, comes back with a hickey!”
I think she must mean figuratively, but that doesn’t stop me from scanning his throat as he’s passing out our drinks. When he’s doled them all out, he drops one of the glow necklaces around Ashleigh’s neck, then gives Julia one, which she adjusts to be smaller so she can wear it like a tiara. Then he puts the last two around my neck.
“Thank you,” I shout. The band’s just started in on a cover of “Crimson and Clover,” and half the audience is drunkenly singing along around us.
“My pleasure,” he says.
“I see that.” I flick his cheek just below the kiss mark. I hope that sounded friendly and jokey like I intended, and not incandescent with jealousy.
“Part of a bachelorette party scavenger hunt or something,” he explains. “Can you get it for me?”
I brush my fingers over the condensation on the outside of his beer bottle, then smudge the mark out of his skin. “Can’t take you anywhere.”
