Текст книги "Forbidden Boy"
Автор книги: Hailey Abbott
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Forbidden Boy
her. She shivered and crossed her hands over her bare arms. Then the shadow cleared its throat. Julianne’s eyes shot up in alarm. Remi was towering over her, his no-longer-so-skinny arms crossed in front of his chest, looking much more imposing than the twelve-foot dune.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Nothing. You know. Just listening to my iPod,” Julianne said casually, trying to shrug while slowly standing up.
“I hear the sound quality’s a lot better if you actually turn it on.” He raised one eyebrow. Crap.
“Thanks for the hint. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone.” Julianne tried to capture her sassiest comeback voice.
“Left alone to do what? Continue eavesdropping on my father’s construction crew?” There was self-righteousness rising in Remi’s voice, mingling with teasing amusement. Julianne felt her pulse rising along with it.
“I think you mean demolition crew,” Julianne corrected, matching him note for sarcastic note. “I don’t see any construction going on here—just a whole lot of bulldozing. And I don’t need to explain myself to you.
Some parts of this beach are still public. At least for now.”
“Julianne, what the hell is your problem?” Remi burst out, clearly frustrated. Julianne felt a pang, seeing Remi’s usually handsome face contorted and shouting.
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“This is my dad’s dream house, and they’re making great progress.”
“Progress? This isn’t progress! It’s . . . it’s . . . greedy and selfish. Your family is grabbing up every last morsel of space, every last grain of sand, so that you can have all of it to yourselves. It’s not about making something—it’s about proving that you’re the biggest kid in the sandbox.” After weeks of lying low and “monitoring progress,” it felt so good to just yell and let her anger pour out.
“I don’t understand why you’re taking this so personally!” Remi bellowed back at her. “My dad is an amazing architect and this is his home. It’s all he’s ever wanted—
it’s his legacy. Why does that bother you so much?”
“You are defending this? What’s with the infinite faith in your dad? How can you be so sure that he doesn’t have it all wrong?” Julianne posed the question half as a challenge and half because she genuinely wanted to know.
“He’s a brilliant architect!” Remi exclaimed, stretching his arm toward Julianne as if to put his hand over her shaking hands.
“And that means he can’t be wrong? Why? He’s wrong about you! He doesn’t even think you can handle your own job site, but you trust him completely? That’s just weird!” Julianne pressed on, undeterred by the fact that she had just inadvertently spilled the beans about eavesdropping earlier in the week.
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“He’s my dad, Jules. And he’s worked his entire life for this,” Remi said quietly, seeming to ignore Julianne’s slipup.
“Well, did it ever occur to you that other people have worked their entire lives to afford the tiny slices of space that they live on? To sit at their windows and take in the view that you guys just bulldozed? The beach you’re wiping out to make your gigantic glass jungle gym belongs to this entire neighborhood!” The words were tumbling out of Julianne’s mouth, rolling over and over each other like marbles. Her mouth was thick with emotion and she was choking back tears. “Some people barely have any thing left, Remi,” she wailed. “Do you really need to take the beach away from them for some house?” It was all Julianne could do to keep from sob-bing. Her throat was burning from the screaming and from swallowing angry tears. She knew she probably wasn’t making any sense, but she just needed him to hear her now.
“Maybe this is bigger than just ‘some house’!” Remi shouted back at her. “My dad has been working for this for so long. I can’t even tell you what it means to him—
this is his artistic vision . . .” As he babbled on about his father’s dream, his voice was so earnest that Julianne knew he meant every word. All he wanted was to make her understand.
But she couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to cut 115
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him off. If anyone needed to understand the real importance of this beach, it was the Moores. “Name one life that’s being made more beautiful by what is happening here, Remi!” Her feet dug into the sand as she tore off down the beach to grab her easel. “Want to talk about artistic vision?” she cried, spinning back to Remi. “You know who had it? My mom! And her vision was all about this beach. The one your family is destroying! I can barely see her beach anymore. Soon it will be impossible to remember what she must have seen. But if you think I’m going to give up her beach without a fight, Remi Moore, you have another thing coming. This beach is more than just sand to my family—it’s all we have left of my mother. It’s the only place where she still feels alive. And I’m sorry if my family’s past is getting in the way of your dad’s bright, shiny future, but that’s too damn bad!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Julianne saw Remi’s mouth open to speak, his eyes wide. But there was nothing she wanted to hear from him right now. The sand flew up behind her as she raced to her easel.
Julianne’s afternoon of perfect blue was perfectly ruined.
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Chapter Eleven
!
“ Yo, Jules! Toss me those blueprints!” Beau called up to Julianne.
“No problem. Coming right down,” she called back, tossing the rolled-up specs down from her perch in the rafters.
“Hey, J-dog, have you seen my tape measure?” asked Mitch from a ladder ten feet away.
“Have you tried checking your toolbox?” Julianne offered teasingly, flashing him her brightest smile.
“Nine times out of ten, when you ask me for something, you already have it in there.”
“That’s our girl. Voice of practicality—what would we do without you?” asked Tom, covering for Mitch, who had turned crimson as he hurried down the ladder 117
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toward his toolbox. He’d been a little bit awkward all summer; ever since Julianne had appeared in her cute
“first day of work” outfit. The other guys seemed evenly divided between ribbing him for his possible crush and hoping Jules would let him down easy. Everyone murmured in agreement, and Julianne thought for the mil-lionth time how lucky she was to have this cool summer gig as den mother, little sister, and one of the guys. She felt like she was learning something new about the male mind every day.
Jules’s typical morning banter with the boys was in full swing when Remi walked by, clipboard in hand. He made it almost past the group before calling back over his shoulder, “Julianne, if you have a second later, can you drop by the trailer? I have a question for you.” The question was accompanied by low whistles from the other guys, but Remi never skipped a beat.
“Yeah, sure,” Julianne called back to him, trying to sound equally nonchalant. “I’ll come by as soon as I finish tiling upstairs.” With that, she swung down from the beams and ran off to lose herself in tiling. She planned to throw herself into work in a blatant attempt to forget about her one-on-one with Remi.
! ! !
Julianne was enjoying the silence. For the first time in weeks, she didn’t have a song, or a dashing spy scenario, 118
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or the remnants of a painful spat with Remi in her head.
In what would be the master bathroom of Cullen Construction’s very first eco-friendly home, it was just Julianne and the tile. Tiling, Julianne conceded to herself, was sort of like the paint-by-numbers version of mosaic. Sure, she was sitting in the middle of a big empty space with lots and lots of ceramic and a big bucket of cement, but focusing on the tile patterns was calming her down. Anything that could keep her mind off of Remi was all right by her.
Whenever she was alone in a huge room, Julianne liked to imagine herself transforming the entire space into art, just like Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of her favorite artists. Julianne caught her mind wandering and giggled to herself as she got back into the groove of her tiling. Apparently she couldn’t turn her mind off after all.
Julianne was tiling diamond patterns into the floor, according to a diagram that Bill had based on Julianne’s own design, when she heard a knock on the door frame.
“C’mon in.” She laughed absently. “The door’s open!” In fact, the entire room was open—the walls had been framed but not yet filled in. She turned toward the door and felt her serenity evaporate as Remi approached, decked out in one of his weekday shirt-and-tie combos.
Whatever, she chided herself. At the end of the day, anattractive jerk is still a jerk.
“Hey,” Remi started.
“Hey,” Julianne replied, utterly deadpan.
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“Do you mind if I come in?” Remi hesitated before taking a step further into the doorway.
She wasn’t in the mood for any sort of discussion right now. She just wanted to get back to her tiling. She tried to wave him away. “What, are you a vampire or something? You can’t come in unless you’re explicitly invited?”
Remi smiled faintly. “Buffy fan?” Julianne looked him square in the eye. “Is there something you need?” She refused to get into a discussion about brilliant-but-cancelled TV shows with her former crush/current nemesis/boss.
“Can I talk to you about the other day?” Remi asked earnestly.
Julianne looked down at the flecks of cement covering her hands. “If you don’t mind, I’d really rather not.
I’m sort of in the middle of something. I’m sure your firm isn’t contracting Bill to pay me fifteen dollars an hour to sit around and chat,” she shot back brightly.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” Remi said, employing the same brand of persistence Chloe had used to rope Julianne into going to that fateful party in Malibu. “How about we talk about this job? If I’m not mistaken, Bill is paying you fifteen dollars an hour to consult with the project manager about the status of the project.” Julianne grimaced. “You know, Mr. Moore,” she said sweetly, “I’m not sure how constructive that chat would 120
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be. I think you and I have very different goals for this project.”
“Which are?” Remi’s brow furrowed.
“Well, as I see it, your goals are more bottom-line related.” Julianne continued to absentmindedly lay tile as she went on. “You ace this internship; you get a leg up on your architectural career. You get a leg up on your architectural career; you stand a chance of being the next big developer. You become the next big developer; you get to follow in your father’s footsteps and, one day, you can make a big glass house of your very own, just like him.” Julianne waited for Remi’s rebuttal, but he was silent. His big brown eyes were trained on her hands as she continued to plunk down tile. “What’s the matter?
Did I hit too close to home?” she pushed on.
“Nope,” Remi murmured quietly. “I was just wondering how someone could lay fourteen consecutive pieces of tile upside down without noticing.” Jules felt her cheeks flush red. Why did she always make the silliest mistakes when Remi was around? “Do you need some help?” Remi offered.
“No, thanks,” she replied tartly. “I’ve got it under control. I just need a little more space—you’re making me feel claustrophobic, and it’s hard for me to concen-trate like this.”
Remi pushed himself up from the floor and moved back about fifteen feet. “Okay, well that’s something. So 121
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now that you’ve given your brilliant analysis of my reasons for taking this job, care to share yours?” Julianne shrugged. She was hesitant to tell Remi anything even remotely personal. She’d been spying on him, trying to figure out what his motives were, for the past three weeks. Who was to say he wasn’t trying the same tactic on her?
“I’m just going to sit here until you talk to me,” Remi said. “So the sooner you spill, the sooner you can re-focus on your tiles. How’s that for motivation?” Begrudgingly, Jules started talking. “If you must know . . .” She took a deep breath and then continued.
“There are a few things that I really like. First, I get to spend my entire summer outside in the sunshine, instead of bagging groceries or folding jeans. Plus, for me, at least, a house is like a work of art. But on a grand scale. This bathroom is like a mosaic—only bigger. The whole frame of the house is one giant sculpture. It’s beautiful, functional, oversize art. It’s creative and it’s fun. And I can’t say I mind being the only girl on a crew of hot college guys, either.” She looked up to see Remi staring right at her, his mouth open slightly, as if there were something he was trying to bring himself to articulate but couldn’t. “Never mind.” Julianne looked down at the tile again. “I certainly don’t expect you to understand.”
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I understand? That’s exactly how I feel about it, too. I mean, except for the part about the college guys. I want to make beautiful things. That’s why I went into architecture.”
Julianne stared across the tiles, avoiding looking up and seeing Remi’s face. “You’ve got a strange way of doing it, you know?” She looked down at her hands.
“Just following your dad’s lead all the time . . .”
“There are a lot of different interpretations of beauty, Julianne,” Remi said quietly.
Julianne’s mind was tumbling over itself. Remi sounded sincere—more than that, he sounded like he got it. Like he knew about having a passion for something bigger than you. It wasn’t the first time that he seemed to totally get it, either. She could feel his eyes fixed on her, and the back of her neck began to prick and blush.
She shifted her weight so that she was sitting cross-legged on the half-tiled floor, and picked at stray threads poking out from the bottom of her shredding, knee-length cutoffs. She thought for a long minute before she spoke. “Okay, so tell me about it.”
“About what? About houses? About art?” His dark eyebrows were pressed together and his forehead was lined in thought.
“About making beautiful things.” She was challenging him. But she was also desperate to know. She leaned a little bit closer and tilted her long neck to look up at him.
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“Okay, welll. . .” Remi took a minute to get his foot-ing before the words just started shooting out of him. “I love the idea that I’m making something permanent. I like seeing something I’ve designed or built and knowing that my hands made it.” Julianne lifted her eyes just enough to see the earnest concentration on his face. “I like leaving a part of myself behind for people I may never even meet. Plus, I like using tools.” He shrugged.
“I guess that’s it. I don’t know.” Remi stared expectantly at Julianne, who raised her eyes until they met his. They sat on the tile floor, staring at each other, for probably two whole minutes in shocked, self-conscious silence.
Then Remi stood up quickly and walked out, leaving Julianne alone in the room with her upside-down tiles and a whole lot of messy thoughts.
! ! !
She floated through the rest of the day, replaying her interaction with Remi over and over in her head. Even if for just a split second, she’d felt a flash of whatever she had felt on the beach the night they first met—that kind of ease or understanding that had made her feel like she could talk to him forever. Julianne racked her brain while she set one tile down beside the next, over and over again. She swirled one finger around in the cement, 124
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watched the white goo harden on her skin. Remi had talked about architecture the same way she thought about art. But how could someone who felt something so pure about creating something new and exciting be so complacent about her naturally incredible beach—and the lives that people had built there? “Deep down, Remi gets it. I may have been right about him after all,” Julianne told herself, fixating on the flecks of light that had fil-tered in from the unsealed window frames in the bathroom.
! ! !
On her bike ride home, Julianne didn’t put on her iPod or even notice the familiar Palisades faces that waved hello as she rode by. She was still too preoccupied with Remi and their cryptic conversation. Why should it even matter to her what his intentions were? No matter how good his ideas about art were, no matter how insightful he was, he was still the enemy. But he seemed to understand something that she’d never been able to articulate to anyone else. Jules tapped her fingers on the handle-bars as she glided along, trying to puzzle it out. She wished her mom were here to help her make sense of the confusion. Her mother had always been so good at taking something and breaking it down into parts, turning it into something totally usable. Julianne had always 125
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assumed that was why she was such a good painter. She could isolate light, isolate space, isolate movement, polish them all, and then snap them back into place where they belonged. Jules had always been messier. She didn’t re-create the things she saw around her; she broke them up and twisted them into new angles. Was that what she was doing with Remi—trying to make him into something else entirely because she wanted him to be something good? Her brain spinning and her stomach twisting, Julianne rode up to the house. She sat for a long moment staring up at her front door and wondered if it would be possible for her to ever find the middle ground, instead of the horizon.
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Chapter Twelve
!
Julianne climbed the stairs and walked directly past her bedroom, right into Chloe’s. Flopping down on her sister’s red flowered Marimekko comforter, she announced, “I give up!”
Chloe, who had been sitting at her desk filling out her daily log for her internship at the Children’s Hospital, immediately snapped to attention. She popped out of her rolling chair and dove onto the bed, practically landing on top of Julianne.
“Tell me everything! What did he do? Oh, Jules, I knew he was bad news! So, what’s the deal? Are they selling the property and moving to Iceland? They’re not going to move out and sell it to some business, are they? That house is just ugly enough to have potential as a casino.” 127
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“No, it’s not like that,” Julianne hedged. “I had a lot of time to think about it at work today, and I feel like some pieces are starting to come together.”
“What, what, what?” Chloe wheedled. “Is all of their building money embezzled? Can we call the IRS and shut them down? It’s major, isn’t it? I can just feel that it’s major! Don’t leave a sister hanging here!”
“I think we might be operating under slightly different definitions of ‘major,’ Chloe,” Julianne prefaced, before switching gears altogether. “Oh, I don’t even know. I had this really weird conversation with Remi at work today and now . . .” She paused, burying her head in a pillow. “I’m so confused!”
“What a jerk! Jules, you can’t let him get to you.” Chloe poked Julianne in the side playfully, but Julianne didn’t even giggle. “C’mon, Debbie Downer—cheer up!” Chloe grabbed a throw pillow from the head of her bed and pressed it against her chest, like she was trying to squeeze answers out of the satin-covered down. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for Remi giving you a hard time. Maybe he’s an alien. No, wait; I’ve got it—they’re plowing down the beach to make a puppy farm where they’re actually going to kick all of the puppies. That’s got to be it. It’s evil—pure evil. And now P.E.T.A. is closing in on them!” Julianne knew that Chloe was mostly kidding, but she couldn’t handle the Moore-bashing any longer. It was exhausting. Chloe 128
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studied her sister’s face. “What’s wrong? Jules, are you okay? You don’t look—”
“I’m just not sure he’s such a bad guy after all,” Julianne blurted out. “I think it’s all just kind of . . . messy.”
“Oh, Jules.” Chloe sighed like a deflating beach ball.
“Of course he’s a bad guy. Look what they’re doing next door.”
“That’s the thing, though,” Julianne continued. “We had this talk at work today, and he was showing definite, concrete signs of having a soul. I think he may just be going along with his family because they’re his family.
Plus, his family seems kind of rough. His dad showed up at the site last week, and you wouldn’t believe the things he was saying to Remi! He was awful. I have no doubt that his dad is a destroyer of all that is good, but I just don’t think Remi’s the same way. He said these things, Chloe, about making something meaningful and bigger than him that just felt really . . . true.”
“Yeah, but philosophical differences and parental pressures aside here, Jules, he’s still going along.
Whether he’s heart-and-soul on board or not, his loyalty is still with his family. What’s your deal, Jules? I mean, I know you guys, like, had a moment at the Malibu party, but that was ages ago! Besides, what prompted this heart-to-heart anyway? It sounds totally manipulative, if you ask me. If I were you, I’d watch your back. He absolutely, positively can’t be trusted.”
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“Watch my back? What do you think he’s going to do, impale me with a solar panel? Don’t you think you’re being a bit melodramatic?” As soon as the words were out of Julianne’s mouth, she realized how silly she’d been acting, sneaking around, spying on Remi.
Julianne just didn’t know how to explain her mixed feelings to Chloe.
“I’m not being melodramatic. I’m just being cautious,” Chloe explained, choosing her words very precisely. “Did Dad tell you that Remi’s parents were over here the other day while you were out painting?”
“No!” Julianne’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she felt a cold sweat break out along her collarbone.
“What did they want?”
“This is what I’m trying to tell you!” Chloe exclaimed, as though she were talking to a confused child. “We really can’t trust these people. They offered to buy our house and the land from Dad. They were really, really pushy about it. Calling it an ‘offer’ is pretty gener-ous.”
“No way!” Julianne gasped again, the intake of breath sharper this time. “They didn’t threaten Dad or anything, did they?”
“Nope, but they did basically everything but,” Chloe said in a conspiratorial whisper. “It was more of a strong-arm than an offer. I mean, obviously Dad didn’t cave, but they were really all over him.” 130
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“Oh God.” Julianne breathed out a long, slow whistle. She closed her eyes. “Still, I really don’t think Remi’s like that, though.”
“I wouldn’t let my guard down if I were you,” Chloe insisted. “These are the people who raised him. Just keep that in the back of your mind, okay?”
“I just don’t understand why everything has to be so us-versus-them all the time,” Julianne pressed, standing up and pacing across the room toward Chloe’s massive oak bookshelves. She trailed her fingers across the rows of alphabetized spines, comforting herself with their familiar texture.
“Because that’s what it is, Jules. This is definitively an us-versus-them situation. They want to do something completely self-serving that will really hurt us. We want to stop them. That’s sort of what ‘us versus them’ means.
There’s no way to be neutral here. You can’t compromise—you can’t be on both teams!” Chloe’s face was darkening.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Julianne agreed, flopping onto the mattress and sinking back into the cushy nest of pillows on Chloe’s bed. “You’re one hundred percent right.” Julianne knew she should actually feel as confident in her sister’s assessment of the situation as she was pretending to. Chloe had an annoying little habit of always being right about everything. Still, Julianne couldn’t get over the nagging feeling that there was 131
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much more to Remi Moore than his family. She cocked her head toward her sister before getting up and walking out of the room. It didn’t matter what she said about Remi; Chloe’s mind was made up, and there would be no convincing her. Julianne walked into her own room and clicked the door shut behind her.
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Chapter Thirteen
!
Julianne excitedly pushed her small cart over the bright purple carpeting lining the aisles of Palisades Design. Other than the beach, there was no place she’d rather be on a beautiful day than stocking up on art supplies—especially with no supervision and a company credit card. That morning, Bill had called her aside and told her that the owners of the eco-house had asked for another new design concept. Apparently, they wanted a local artist to hand paint ivy in the courtyard. Julianne was still beaming that Bill had suggested her.
As Jules cruised through the aisles of Palisades Design, she was beside herself. What could be better than an entire store devoted to art supplies? She tossed 133
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a few different colors of green paint for the ivy walls into her cart, and was checking out a terra cotta stain when she noticed a familiar ponytail bouncing across the aisle in front of her.
“Lucy! Hey!” Julianne said, tossing the stain into her cart for further consideration and dashing down the aisle to greet her friend. Even though Lucy’s back was turned as she made her way up the scrapbooking aisle, Julianne instantly recognized her by her red hair, freckled arms, compact frame, and regulation Mean Bean work T-shirt.
Julianne hadn’t seen her in ages. During the school year, they ran into each other all the time. Lucy worked at the Mean Bean, Julianne’s favorite Palisades coffee shop, and occasionally contributed a comic strip to the Cliffview, the school arts magazine that Jules co-edited.
Since Julianne’s failed attempt to track Lucy down at the Malibu beach party where she’d met Remi, though, they hadn’t seen each other once this summer.
“Oh my God, Jules! Long time no see!” Lucy squealed, running over to hug her friend. “Have you been in hibernation, or what? It’s been forever!
Ohmygod, how’s Kat? Has she run with the bulls yet?” Lucy looked great. Her summer tan brought out the sparkle in her green eyes, and she had paired her black work T-shirt (which Julianne actually loved for its logo of two dueling coffee beans) with a pair of skinny gray jeans and slip-on Vans printed with hearts, stars, rainbows, 134
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and skulls. Lucy took a step back to appraise Julianne.
“You look awesome, babe.”
“Thanks! You too.” Julianne laughed. “Kat’s doing great. She’s in Madrid, though, not Pamplona. And I’m pretty sure she’d stay inside if she did see a bull, but it sounds like she’s having the time of her life. How’s your summer going?”
“Oh, it’s been great.” Lucy grinned. “Some work, some surfing, some partying. It’s a nice combo. It would be better, though”—she paused dramatically and affected a stern look—“if we ever saw you. You need to come out sometime. You haven’t been by the Bean once, and I haven’t seen you at Fishtail, either.” Fishtail was one of Pacific Palisades’ many outdoor cafés, but it was a favorite among Julianne’s friends because of its boardwalk seating, live music, and notoriously lax carding policies. “Lady, we’ve missed you!”
“I know! I’ve missed you guys, too. The summer has just been really . . . intense so far,” Julianne finished thoughtfully.
“Well, good intense or bad intense?” Lucy queried, leaning against a shelf full of glitter letters as she awaited Julianne’s answer.
“I mean, mainly good,” Julianne decided as she said it. “I have this awesome job—I’m doing building and design stuff for this cool new eco-friendly house being built near downtown,” she explained. “I’m actually 135
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doing a huge mural for the courtyard, starting today,” she explained, gesturing toward her cart of art supplies.
“I get to hang outside, paint, and ”—she paused for dramatic effect, the way Chloe did whenever she referred to Julianne’s job—“I’m the only girl on an entire crew of guys!”
“Sweet!” Lucy giggled. “The Bean could use a serious infusion of testosterone. We’re, like, seventy-five percent female this summer. It’s crazy. I mean, everyone’s great, but it isn’t exactly a breeding ground for love.” Lucy rolled her green eyes playfully. “Speaking of love . . .
spill, Kahn. Tell me everything.”
“Sorry to disappoint, Luce, but there really isn’t much to tell.” Julianne shrugged.
“Fibber!” Lucy practically shrieked. “We don’t see you all summer and there’s no guy involved? There’s no way.”
“Fine.” Julianne laughed grudgingly. “There may kind of be someone. I mean, sort of. A little.”
“That’s more like it. Details, please,” Lucy prodded.
“Okay, so I met this guy, and he seemed really great,” Jules started.
“At work?” Lucy asked.
“Well, sort of. I mean, I didn’t meet him at work, but it turns out he’s at work.” Julianne chewed her lower lip ever so slightly as she spoke.
“That sounds complicated.” Lucy pulled a tube of 136
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cherry ChapStick out of the pocket of her jeans and applied it liberally.
“Yeah, that’s the whole thing. And there’s stuff going on with his family, and with my family, and who knows if it can even work . . .” Julianne could feel her voice rising with each word.
“But you like him, right?” Lucy gave Julianne a knowing grin.
“Oh my God, Luce, he’s amazing. He’s beyond fantastic. He’s into architecture, so he’s kind of artistic. And he just totally gets what I love so much about my art.
And he’s funny and thoughtful and, oh man, so, so hot.” Julianne felt the corners of her mouth creeping up into a smile as she reached into her bag for her Nalgene and took a drink.
“Well then, that’s the important part.” Lucy was full-on smiling now. “If you’re meant for each other, all the pieces will come together somehow. That’s all. That’s just how it is. No worries.” She squeezed Julianne’s hand. Julianne smiled back at her, feeling relieved and thrilled that someone had finally given her the green light to like Remi. “Anyway, I should probably head out,” Lucy said, looking at her old-school oversize Swatch watch. “It’s free-smoothie-sample day at the Bean, and they need all the help they can get.” She hugged Julianne goodbye, grabbed some scrapbooking pages off the wall hooks, and headed back down the aisle 137
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