That’s when Jack looks over his shoulder and sees me there. Our eyes meet and the side of his mouth quirks into a smirky grin.
“Savannah, hey. This is my friend Kelsey,” he says, and I shake hands with the girl. “Savannah’s living at my farm now.”
“Can we get chips and salsa?” she asks, turning away from me.
“Sure.” Jack seems startled that Kelsey just snubbed me, but I’m not. She clearly wants to jump him. Or already jumps him. Or something.
“You want to sit with us, Savannah?” Jack asks.
“Yeah, we do,” Rory rushes to reply. His eyes flick over to Vanessa.
After I get my order, I join Jack, Kelsey, Vanessa, and Colton at a circular booth in the corner. Curious, I watch them out of the corner of my eye. Kelsey taps on her cell phone as her friends dig in. Between texts, she feeds chips to Jack, giggling like crazy. He eats the chips she feed him because his stomach is clearly doing the thinking—just like with 99 percent of all guys. But he glances at me as he chews.
“Oh my God, this rice is so good,” Vanessa says, shoveling it into her mouth.
“I think it’s ’cause they cooked it in straight-up butter,” Jack says, practically inhaling his rice.
“I wish they served this stuff at Starbucks,” Vanessa says.
“You only love three things in this world.” Colton ticks them off on his fingers. “Starbucks, clothes, and meeting guys at Starbucks.”
“That is so not true,” she replies, throwing a tortilla chip at Colton’s face. The chip sticks to his black T-shirt. He plucks it off and eats it.
Rory slides into my booth with his tray. “You guys are so rude. I can’t believe you started eating before I was seated.”
“That’s what you get for being a perv, Whitfield,” Vanessa says, sucking her drink through her straw. She shakes her cup. “I’m already out of iced tea.”
“Maybe if you didn’t drink like a horse,” Rory says.
Vanessa rattles her cup again, trying to get more tea out.
“Let me get you more to drink. I won’t be able to eat in peace if I don’t,” Rory says, leaping to his feet and snatching the cup out of her hand. He jogs over to the beverage station to get a refill. He comes back and passes Vanessa her tea. She takes one sip and nearly gags.
“This is warm. Where’s the ice?” she asks.
“Oh, well I don’t like ice, so I didn’t get you any.”
“But it’s iced tea!” she says. “It tastes crappy when it’s warm.”
“Oh.” Rory looks down at the cup. “Maybe you should put some ice in it then.”
I silently laugh and Vanessa throws a tortilla chip at him, looking furious, but then it turns into a subtle smile.
“So,” Jack says to me. “Tell me about yourself. What else do you like besides riding—”
I’m about to start talking when Kelsey starts bragging about the college party she went to last night. “It was an underwear party and everybody danced around in foam and we sprayed silly string everywhere.”
Jack bites into his taco, looking perturbed at Kelsey.
Rory mouths “silly string,” and his eyes light up. He digs the scrap of paper out of his pocket again and jots down underwear and silly string.
“Tell me about that girl from last night on your Instagram pictures,” Colton says to Kelsey. “The one from the sorority you want to rush next year.”
“She said she’s going to study abroad this spring,” Kelsey says.
“Never mind. Long-distance relationships are hard,” Colton replies. “I couldn’t handle dating that girl Ellen I met in Murfreesboro.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “That’s only thirty minutes from here.”
“Yeah.” Colton purses his lips and shakes his head. “She was just too far away. I can watch a whole episode of I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant in that amount of time.”
Because they’ve both been drinking like horses, Rory and Vanessa stand to go refill their cups at the same time. Rory purposely pushes a lever on the Coke machine, making orange soda spray on her hand.
“You ass!” She pushes on the ice button, grabs a cube of ice, and drops it inside his T-shirt. He jumps and wiggles around like an eel.
“He’ll never get her into bed now,” Colton muses, laughing.
Considering she’s popular and wealthy, I don’t think Rory will ever get her into bed even if he does behave like a perfect gentleman.
After dinner at the perverted taco place, we drive out to a huge field where a large bonfire is already blazing. Tiki torches are everywhere. I feel like I’m on that show Survivor, only instead of surviving on a deserted island, I have to survive a couple of hours with people I’ve never met before.
Trucks and four-wheelers are parked on the muddy grass. My heart speeds up as I scan the large group of kids, drinking, dancing, laughing, jumping around.
The second I hop down from Rory’s truck, people from my new school are already staring at me. With a firm grasp on Ava’s leash, Rory glides through the crowd, laughing and grinning at everybody. He seems like the All-American Guy, one of those people everyone wants to be friends with. When I get separated from him in the crowd, Rory reaches back through a cluster of people and grabs my arm, pulling me closer to him.
That gets the attention of the girls. And unlike the guys smiling and pointing me out to their friends, the girls are giving me Ultimate Stink Eye.
“Be careful tonight,” Rory says quietly. He scans my tank top and skinny jeans.