An arm snakes around my waist. I turn and almost knock heads with Tucker. He tightens his hold on me and pushes hard toward the shore. He’s a strong swimmer. All that beefy arm muscle definitely helps. I can do little better than hang on to his shoulders and kick with my legs in the right direction. In no time we’re gasping on the sandy riverbank. I flop onto my back and watch a fluffy white cloud pass over.

“Well,” says Tucker simply. “You’re brave.”

I glare at him. Water drips off his hair, down his neck, and then I jerk my gaze up to his eyes again, which are impossibly blue and filled with laughter. I want to punch him.

“That was dumb. We both could have drowned.”

“Nah,” he says. “The river’s not so fast right now. I’ve seen it worse.”

I sit up and look upriver toward the tree, which looks like it’s a good half mile away now.

“I guess the next step is to hike back to the tree.”

Tucker chuckles at the irritation in my voice. “Yep.”

“Barefoot.”

“It’s pretty sandy, not too bad. Are you cold?” he asks, and I see in a flash that if I am he’ll gladly put his arms around me. But I’m not really cold, not now that the sun is out and the water has mostly evaporated from my skin. Just a little damp and chilly. I try not to think of Tucker so close with his bare chest, heat pouring off him, and me in this itsy-bitsy two-piece with goose bumps rising across my belly.

I scramble to my feet and start walking up the bank. Tucker jumps up to walk alongside me.

“Sorry,” he says. “Maybe I should have warned you about how fast the river is.”

“Maybe,” I agree, but I’m sick of being mad at Tucker, when, after all, he did come to my rescue at prom. I haven’t forgotten that. And he’s here now. “It’s okay.”

“Want to try it again?” he asks, his dimple showing as he smiles at me. “It’s lots easier the second time.”

“You really are trying to get me killed.” I shake my head at him incredulously. “You’re crazy.”

“I work for the Crazy River Rafting Company during the summers. I’m in the river five days a week, sometimes more.”

So he was pretty confident that he’d be able to pull me out, no matter how crappy a swimmer I was. But what if I’d gone straight to the bottom?

“Tucker!” someone yells from upriver. “How’s the water?”

At the tree there are at least four or five people watching us make our way toward them up the shore. Tucker waves.

“It’s good!” Tucker calls back. “Nice and smooth.”

By the time we reach the tree, two other people have climbed up and jumped into the river. Neither of them seems to have the least bit of trouble getting to shore. Seeing that is what has me up in the tree again. This time I make an effort to whoop as I fall, the way Tucker did, and strike out for the shore as soon as I’m in the water. By the fourth time I jump, I’m not scared anymore. I feel invincible. And that, I now understand, is the draw of places like this.

“You’re Clara Gardner, right?” asks a girl waiting to climb the tree. I nod. She introduces herself as Ava Peters, even though we were in chemistry together. She’s the girl I saw with Tucker that one day at the ski lodge.

“There’s a party Saturday at my house if you want to come,” she tells me. Like I’ve suddenly been allowed in her club.

“Oh,” I say, stunned. “I will. Thanks.”

I flash a grateful smile at Tucker, who nods like he’s tipping his hat. For the first time it feels like we might, just maybe, be friends.

Tucker takes me to dinner at Bubba’s that night. Even in that casual barbecue joint, it feels enough like a real date that I’m a bit antsy. But after the food arrives it’s so delicious that I relax and wolf it down. I haven’t eaten since my bowl of Cheerios this morning, and I don’t remember ever being so hungry. Tucker watches me as I gnaw on a barbecued chicken wing like it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. The sauce is insanely good. After I’ve cleared a quarter of a chicken, barbecued beans, and a big helping of potato salad off my plate, I dare to look up at him. I half expect him to say something snide about the way I pigged out. I’m already formulating a comeback, something to call attention to the fact that I need some extra meat on my bones.

“Get the vanilla custard pie,” he says without a trace of judgment. He’s even looking at me with a hint of admiration in his eyes. “They bring it with a slice of lemon and when you bite the lemon and then eat a piece, it tastes exactly like lemon meringue.”

“Why not just get the lemon meringue?”

“Trust me,” he says, and I find that I do trust him.

“Okay.” I wave at the waiter to order the vanilla custard pie. Which is divine, and I ought to know.

“Wow, I am so full,” I say. “You’re going to have to roll me home.”

For a minute neither of us says anything, the words hanging in the air between us.

“Thank you for today,” I say finally, finding it hard to meet his eyes.

“A good birthday?”

“Yes. Thank you, also, for not blabbing to the restaurant so they would come over here and sing to me.”

“Wendy said you would hate that.”

I wonder how much of this day was orchestrated by Wendy.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“I have tomorrow off, and if you want I could take you to Yellowstone, show you around.”

“I’ve never been to Yellowstone.”

“I know.”

He’s just the gift that keeps on giving. Yellowstone sounds loads better than sitting at home channel surfing, worrying about Jeffrey, and trying to lug a big Christian-sized duffel bag into the air.

“I’d love to see Old Faithful,” I admit.

“Okay.” He looks suspiciously pleased with himself. “We’ll start there.”

Chapter 15

Tucker Me Out

Our trip to Yellowstone is marred only by me accidentally speaking Korean to a tourist who’d lost track of her five-year-old son. I help her talk to the ranger, and they locate the kid. Happy story, right? Except for the part where Tucker stares at me like I’m a mutant until I lamely explain that I have a Korean friend back in California and I’m good with languages. I don’t expect to see him after that, assuming that my birthday gift from Wendy is all used up. But Saturday there’s a knock on my door and there he is again, and an hour later I find myself in a large inflated raft with a group of out-of-state tourists, feeling enormous and bloated in the bright orange life jacket we all have to wear. Tucker perches on the end of the boat and rows in the direction of the rapids, while the other guide sits at the front and shouts orders. I watch Tucker’s strong brown arms flex as he tugs the oars through the water. We hit the first set of rapids. The boat lurches, water sprays everywhere, and the people in the raft scream like we’re on a roller coaster. Tucker grins at me. I grin back.

That night he takes me to the party at Ava Peters’s house and stays by me through the entire thing, introducing me to people who don’t know me past my name. I’m amazed at how being with him changes everything for me, socially speaking. When I walked the halls of Jackson Hole High, the other students looked at me with careful disinterest, not entirely hostile, but definitely like I was an intruder on their turf. Even Christian’s attention in those final weeks hadn’t made much of a difference in getting people to talk to me instead of about me. Now with Tucker by my side the other students actually converse with me. Their smiles are suddenly real. It’s easy to see that they all, regardless of what clique they belong to or how much money their parents rake in, genuinely like Tucker. The boys yell, “Fry!” and bump fists with him or do their shoulder bump thing. The girls hug him and murmur their hellos and look me over with curious but friendly expressions.