Wildefire by Karsten Knight Page A

thirsty friends while you’re at it?”
    Ash made a sound of disgust. So wrong on so many levels. “Lily’s not your beer wench , Hanssen.”
    “They prefer beer maiden ,” Rolfe corrected her, and continued to hold out the pitcher.
    Lily sighed. “Fine.” As she accepted the pitcher from him, Ash couldn’t help but notice the way her hand lingered on his. Then she grumbled something in Japanese, snatched the ten-dollar bill from his other hand, and disappeared back into the bar.
    “Love you, cupcake!” Rolfe called after her.
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    Ade pointed his pool cue at Rolfe. “Not cool, dude.”
    “What?” Rolfe barked. “It’s just a pitcher.”
    “You know that’s not what I meant,” Ade said. “Don’t play with her like that.”
    Ash shook her head. Anyone who had spent more than two minutes with Lily and Rolfe in the same room knew that she was completely infatuated with him. Rolfe’s way of dealing with her crush seemed to be a mixture of pretending it didn’t exist and, at times, exploiting it. “When are you going to put that girl out of her misery and take her on a date?” Ash asked.
    Rolfe avoided eye contact with her, and instead set the cue ball down on the table and lined up his first shot.
    “Soon as Ade stops cheating at pool.”
    “Boys,” Ash muttered. She looked into her glass. A few sips shy of empty. “I need a refill,” she said, but the boys had already tuned her out, sucked back into their game.
    Halfway to the bar Ash spotted two newcomers nestled in a corner booth. The young man, with his five o’clock shadow, close-cropped hair, and olive complexion nearly as dark as Ashline’s, didn’t match her memory for anyone she’d seen at Blackwood. He looked too old to be a student, and yet was still out of place in this bar. The girl smoldering next to him, however, Ash was indirectly acquainted with: Raja, an Egyptian goddess of sorts on campus, with a reputation for being “standoffish,” to put it lightly. For the few games of Who Would You Do?
    that Ash had been present for at the boys’ lunch table, Raja had always come out on top. Ash had met her only 61

    once, at one of Bobby’s nefarious soccer parties. When Ash had offered her a drink, Raja had just stood up and walked away. When Ash had passed her in the hallways, she had observed Raja gliding through the living world like a ghost, mentally somewhere else—home, college, traveling the world. Who knew?
    Tonight things were different. The young man was impossibly ignoring his drop-dead gorgeous companion in favor of fixing Ash within his sites.
    Ash dropped onto the bar stool next to Lily and tried to ignore them. Ray was busy refilling the pitcher. “Rolfe’s a dick,” she said to Lily.
    Lily just shrugged.
    Shit , Ashline thought. She’d never been good at this whole girl-talk opening-up nonsense, and Lily wasn’t making things any easier. “If you like him,” she tried,
    “maybe you should just ask him out.”
    “Let me spell this out for you,” Lily said in such a surprising display of anger that even Ray looked up from what he was doing. The pitcher overflowed. “I’ve been to a dozen American schools since the fifth grade. Each and every one has had its own Rolfe Hanssen, and they’re all the same. So for the final time, let the record show that I do not have the hots forRolfe.”
    Ash sat stunned. “I’m sorry. I—”
    “No, I’m sorry.” Lily was rifling through her handbag, flustered now. “I’m just sick of being asked.” She fished out the ten, tossed it onto the bar top, and waved Ray off when he tried to give her change.
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    “Well, if you want to talk . . .”
    But Lily was looking behind her. “You’ve got company,” she whispered. And like that, she picked up her pitcher and disappeared back into the billiard room.
    That’s when Ashline felt his presence looming behind her. He lingered silently, just within the boundaries of her peripheral vision. He wasn’t begging to be