Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Adam,” Mrs. Vader said. Somehow she conveyed a lot of disgust in that one name. Having raised three boys close in age, Mrs. Vader was good at this sort of thing.

“Yes, ma’am,” Adam said politely, and therefore sarcastically. If he hadn’t gotten a Talking-To an hour ago, he would have responded to her call with his full name, rank, and serial number like a prisoner of war.

I tried to catch his eye and give him a warning look. Our romance was at stake here. I didn’t think this was a good time to be sarcastic.

“You’ve got gas,” Mrs. Vader said.

Cameron and Sean cracked up. Some jokes never got old, at least to teenage boys whose little brother was in trouble.

“I figured,” Adam muttered. Heading for the office door on his way down to the marina’s floating gas station, he pushed his way past Cameron and Sean. He even shoved my brother. I would have found this angry-at-the-world act kind of sexy if things hadn’t been so serious. We were in enough hot water.

He slid past me, his chest warm against my bare arm. I looked up into his eyes and watched him as he moved past me. My skin tingled wherever he touched me, like sand sparkling and swirling in the lake when the water was stirred. He filled the sunny doorway for a second. Then he was gone down the wooden stairs to the floating dock.

I turned back toward Mrs. Vader’s desk. She and the three remaining boys stared at me like they’d never seen me before. Like I was Lori McGillicuddy, Teen Geek and Fashion Disaster, transformed into an underage sex goddess. Just the effect I’d been going for two weeks ago when I was trying to hook Sean. Now that I was in trouble, not so good. To assure them I was the same old Lori, I said, “Funny. I figured you’d give me gas.”

“Ew,” Sean said. Cameron fanned the air to dispel the pretend smell, and my brother took a step away from me.

“Sean and Bill,” Mrs. Vader called, “you’re in the warehouse.”

My brother amiably headed toward the warehouse door. Sean put one hand on Mrs. Vader’s shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t need help here in the showroo—” He stopped midsentence when Mrs. Vader glared at him. “On second thought, I’ll see if McGillicuddy needs any help in the warehouse. Good suggestion.” He crossed his eyes at Cameron and me as he slipped past us out the office door.

“And you two,” Mrs. Vader said to Cameron and me. “We sold a lot of stock over the festival weekend. You’re delivering boats.” Cameron took the stack of tickets she handed him. “Score!” he exclaimed, holding up his arms to signal a touchdown, because the boys considered this the choice job.

Then he glanced at me. “No offense. I didn’t mean you.”

“Nice.” I’d been so focused on the catastrophe with Adam, I hadn’t even processed that there were a lot of sex jokes in my future, courtesy of rude boys. I approached Mrs. Vader’s desk cautiously, because she looked like she’d had Just About Enough. “I wanted to remind you that you do not allow me to deliver boats, as I have been known to crash them.”

“It’s time you earned your keep around here, Lori,” Mrs. Vader snapped. “You’ve had your boater’s license for almost a year. Now you’ve turned sixteen. Whether or not you’ve learned left from right, you need to act like a grown-up. You can’t rely on the boys to do everything for you. Take some responsibility.” My jaw dropped lower and lower as she said this. First of all, I worked hard around the marina, mostly, and she paid me minimum wage. What did she expect me to do, scrub the wharf with a toothbrush?

Actually, as she seemed pretty miffed, I would not have suggested this, even in jest.

Second of all, bringing up the fact that I was directionally challenged was a low blow, since my handicap had caused me to wreck on my wakeboard and bash my forehead just three days ago.

And finally, the suggestion that I had been careless and irresponsible in sullying her youngest child with my sexiness… well, that called for a Retort. I shifted my dropped jaw to one side and gritted my teeth with the effort not to say a word. I could still salvage my relationship with Adam and convince our parents to let us date. I knew I could if I just kept my mouth shut for now, which, let me tell you, was about as ridiculous an idea as my sudden transformation into a teenage temptress.

Staying silent became even more difficult when, from behind me, Cameron moaned, “Woooo,” like his mom had dissed me good.

I pressed my lips together and backed out of the room, without so much as a “Yes, ma’am.” I was afraid of what I might say if I said anything at all.

Cameron moved past me and slid a few sheets of paper from his mom’s printer. “Hey,” she protested when he snagged a black marker and a roll of tape, but he just followed me out.

In the sun, with the office door safely closed behind us, he asked, “Why couldn’t you and Adam hook up last summer too, and the summer before? Y’all are a riot. Sure beats three-on-two water polo for my entertainment dollar.”

It was imperative that I pretend nothing about this bugged me. To Cameron, and especially to Sean, any inkling Adam and I were really worried would be like blood in the water to a shark. I waved at the paper in Cameron’s hand. “What’s with the school supplies?” He handed me the tape. Spreading one sheet of paper against the side of the building, he covered it with a big black ll in marker. He wrote an R on the other sheet and tried to hand them both to me. “Tape these on either side of you in the boat. They’ll keep you straight.” I looked at the ll and R, then at him. “I know my left from my right, thank you very much.”

“Okay then.” He pulled the boat tickets from his pocket and examined one. “The first place we’re going is about five miles to the right.” Before I thought, I gazed in that direction. Not that I could really pick out a house so far away along the forested shoreline.

“Caught ya,” Cameron said. “Your other right.”

Like Adam had taught me, I made an ll with the fingers of my supposedly right hand. If it had really been my right hand, the ll would have been backward. Oops.

“at’s not fair. Now you’ve got me thinking about it, which is what confuses me.” I took the sheets from Cameron anyway. I definitely didn’t want either of us to return them to Mrs. Vader in her office just then. Judging from her current mood, I should steer clear of her for a couple of decades. We trotted down the steps to the wharf.

“So…,” he said. “Did you and Adam do it or not?”

Risking death by taking my eyes away from the stairs beneath my flip-flops, I looked up at Cameron.

Suddenly I remembered the one time he and I had kissed, when I was eleven years old and he was fourteen and clearly very pedophilic and misguided, or perhaps just desperate. It was an awful lip-lock, especially compared with every bone-melting kiss I’d shared with Adam in the past few weeks.

Nevertheless, that’s what I thought about as I looked up at this nineteen-year-old college boy. He was asking me if I’d had sex with his brother. If I had, I would have been beyond mortified at this question. In fact, I probably would have refused to leave my house this morning, or ever. Frances could quit her gig with the fam across the lake and homeschool me.

However, as I had not, I found the question interesting. Empowering, even. People didn’t consider me a child anymore, or a tomboy. ey considered me Trouble in High Heels (or, at the moment, flip-flops—but I did own heels now). Maybe being an underage sex goddess wasn’t so bad. I fought the urge to pat my boobs underneath my bikini and test whether they’d grown.

“Adam told Mom you didn’t do it,” Cameron prompted me.

I blinked, realizing Cameron and I had paused on the stairs, facing each other. I galloped down them again, asking him over my shoulder, “Why’s your mom so mad, then?”

“Mom never believes Adam,” Cameron said. “And Adam didn’t make it easier on himself.” We’d reached the bottom of the steps. He nodded to the speedboat the boys used as a chaser when they made deliveries. “You drive the fifteen-thousand-dollar boat and I’ll drive the fifty-thousand-dollar, brand-new one. Sound okay?”

“Fine,” I muttered, stepping into the chaser boat. I did need to practice driving, even if it was a boat rather than a car. Every bit helped. I wanted to take my driving test this week—as soon as I could get off work for a few hours, drag a licensed driver with me, and convince someone to trust me with their insured vehicle. Adam and I had intended that licensed driver to be him and that insured vehicle to be his truck, but it looked like we’d blown any chance of that.

Or he had. As I puttered through the wharf behind Cameron’s boat, I felt bitter that I couldn’t grin and wave to a hot Adam at the gas pump. Hot as in obscenely good-looking with his shirt off, and hot as in an air temperature of eighty degrees at seven thirty in the morning. I couldn’t risk his mom seeing me flirting with him—not that he himself seemed to comprehend such concepts as subtlety and tactics.

At least I didn’t have to stare at the highway bridge all day like he did, with LORI LOVES ADAM freshly painted among the other graffiti of love. Last night it had seemed daring and romantic. Now I wished the words weren’t there to taunt Adam—in red, no less—or to irk our parents further.

I throttled up to keep pace with Cameron as he arced to the right, or left, or whatever. Upstream. Away from the highway bridge. And I pondered what Cameron had said: Adam didn’t make it easier on himself. What had Adam done?

I couldn’t ask Cameron about this at the house where we delivered the boat. We had to make nice with the customer. We made nice so well that Cameron came away with money, which he pocketed. en he saw me watching him and guiltily handed me a five without showing me what the other bills were. To determine whether I was being cheated (highly likely), I would consult with Adam later on the etiquette of sharing these tips. If I was ever allowed to speak to him again.

I couldn’t ask Cameron what had transpired this morning between Mrs. Vader and Adam when we launched the chaser boat either, because the motor was too loud. And when we idled it back to the wharf, Mrs. Vader stood in the office door, motioning to me with both hands above her head and phone message slips between her fingers.

“You worried a lot of people last night,” she said as she handed me the slips and walked into the show-room, leaving me alone in the office. I examined the messages.

For: Junior

Taken by: Sean

Time: 8-ish

From: Tammy

Message: I was at your house with Bill last night when you didn’t show up. I take it you’re still alive or Bill would have called me. Are we still on for this afternoon?

at slip was scrawled as if Sean couldn’t care less whether I could read it (surprise). e next message, however, he’d taken neatly, as if afraid of offending his ex-girlfriend when I didn’t get the gist.

For: Junior

Taken by: Sean

Time: 8:16 a.m.

From: Rachel

Message: Girlfriend, your dad called me last night looking for you and woke me up! I was worried about you! Tammy is still bringing me over to wakeboard this afternoon and I will kill Adam for you if you want me to! Your dad is whack!!!

I called both chicks back to confirm our wakeboarding date and let them know I was alive. Hanging up quickly so I didn’t get run off the phone by Mrs. Vader before my break time was up, I turned my attention to the message that really mattered.

For: Lori

Taken by: D. Vader

Time: 8:30 a.m.

From: Frances

Message: Call me.

Frances answered the phone just as the machine picked up. She sounded out of breath. “Harbargers’ residence.”

“You’ve got to talk Dad down for me,” I whispered into the phone.

“I don’t think I can do that, Lori. Excuse me.” More faintly, with her mouth away from the receiver, she called, “Alvin, not on the cat. No, sir. Let kitty go.” A thump sounded loud enough that I held the phone away from my ear, and even at that distance I could hear horrific cat noises.

en she came back, but after I heard what she had to say, I wished she hadn’t. “Your father was terribly upset last night, Lori, and rightly so. He thinks you and Adam aren’t mature enough to handle the responsibility of being alone together, and I support him in that decision.”

“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “You sound like some kind of authority figure. Is someone making you say these things? Are you being held against your will? Tap once on the receiver for kidnappers and twice for spies.”

“This is no laughing matter.”

“It sure the hell isn’t. Any other time you would have talked some sense into Dad for me, but now you refuse because you’re sleeping with the enemy.”

“Lori!” she exclaimed, sounding genuinely appalled at my jab at her for going on a date with my dad yesterday. Not much appalled Frances—not that she let on, anyway

–so I actually squirmed in the office chair as she scolded me. “That is a completely inappropriate comment.”

“No, Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1990s Julia Roberts movie,” I backtracked. I’d never seen it the whole way through, but during puberty Sean had been very fond of the bathtub scene and had subjected the rest of us to it over and over. “Your role as my nanny was to help my dad see that it was safe and healthy for me to play with the boys. You and I have an unspoken yet binding agreement that your role should continue now that you are my ex-nanny.”

“We have no such thing,” she said haughtily, like an ex-nanny without a sense of humor. “Adam’s mother told me Adam’s side of the story and how he expressed it to her. Sounds to me like Adam needs to grow up. Mirabella, kitty does not like that. Mir—” In the background, kitty sang “e Star-Spangled Banner.” “I’ve got to go,” Frances said.

“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean, Adam needs to—”

Frances hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hand. A boat horn honked outside. Cameron idled a sparkling new boat around the chaser boat. I galloped down the steps to the wharf and leaped into the driver’s seat of the chaser. Before switching on the engine, I shouted through cupped hands to Cameron, “What did you mean when you said Adam didn’t make it easier on himself this morning?”

Cameron shrugged. “For starters, when he first came in this morning, he said to my mom, ‘You’re up early.’ is time we’re going to the left.” I could have sworn he pointed to the right as he said this, and he roared off.

Over the course of the day, I was able to drag more information out of Cameron and piece together the rest of Adam’s defiant act, full of sassy one-liners he would not have uttered if he were trying to get out of trouble. He’d even said [cuss word you never, ever say in front of your mother]!

Cameron shared this last tidbit late in the day as we idled into the wharf after making our final delivery. Down on the floating dock, Adam finished topping off a boater’s tank and straightened with the gas nozzle in his hand in time to watch us pass.

I saw us through his eyes. Me, his girlfriend, in a bikini, wearing big movie-starlet sunglasses, behind the wheel of the boat. His oldest brother, shirtless, in Ray-Bans, whispering (well, shouting, but still) in my ear.

Though Adam was twenty yards from me, I could almost see those little creases form between his brows when he frowned. When he was worried. When he was jealous.

Sure enough, he slammed the nozzle into the gas pump, tossed one last furious look over his shoulder at me, and stomped up the wooden steps.

At this point it occurred to me that, despite my best efforts, Adam might prove difficult to date.

And I was right.

“Where’s Lori?” I asked as I threw a life vest at Cameron in the wakeboarding boat. I was part of a line. Sean in the warehouse (where it was cool and he wouldn’t melt) tossed the wakeboarding equipment we needed to McGillicuddy, and McGillicuddy tossed it to me. en I tossed it from the wharf down to Cameron. Or threw it, because I was pissed.

Cameron caught the life vest just before it smacked him in the face. “Why the hell are you asking me?”

“I figured you’d know, since you were hanging all over her just now.”

“I was not,” Cameron insisted. He glanced around the wharf like he was afraid his girlfriend from college, Giselle, would overhear. I wished she would. Unfortunately, she’d gone to Europe until the middle of the summer.

McGillicuddy must have shot Cameron a dark look from behind my back. ey were best friends, but that went only so far when it came to Lori. McGillicuddy thought Cameron was too old for her. Damn straight.

Cameron dropped the life vest and held up both hands. “I did not.”

Sean’s voice echoed inside the warehouse: “Aw, Adam is in wuv, and he misses Lowi.”

A life vest hit me in the back. I turned to pick it up and saw that McGillicuddy wasn’t paying attention. His eyes lingered on Cameron a moment longer to send his warning about Lori. Then he told me, “She’s teaching Tammy and Rachel to board this afternoon, remember?” He nodded toward his house.

Over at the McGillicuddys’ dock, three sunkissed girls in bikinis—Rachel tiny, Tammy tall, and Lori the happy medium—loaded their boat with gear. Exactly what we were doing but prettier, and nobody was getting hit in the head.

“Ow!” I put one hand to the back of my head where the handle of the ski rope had dinged me and glared at Sean in the darkness of the warehouse door.

Lori had told me she was boarding with Rachel and Tammy today instead of with us. But in the face of losing her, I’d forgotten. And all day I’d looked forward to spending an hour in our boat with her, the one place where we weren’t banned from each other. Lori was the best wake-boarder we had. A good wakeboarding show in three weeks on the Fourth of July would raise interest in the sport, which would translate into sales for the marina. Maybe my mom was willing to give that up to test my maturity, or what the hell ever, but my dad was easily bought, thank God.

And now this. Lori had flirted with Cameron in the chaser boat, and now she wasn’t even coming wakeboarding with us, as she had almost every summer afternoon as far back as I could remember. A hot breeze lifted her laughter across the water to me. Her boat looked small. She seemed very far away.

McGillicuddy pried my fingers from the bundle of ski rope and tossed it down to Cameron. “Relax,” he told me. “There’s a deep breathing exercise for that.”

“There’s a pill for that,” Sean’s voice echoed.

Normally I wouldn’t have let the comment pass. Sean loved to jab at me because I didn’t take my medicine for ADHD. If I didn’t respond, he’d jab at me harder. When I was little enough to complain to my mom about Sean constantly ragging on me, she always told me to ignore him and he’d stop. at might have worked with a normal brother. Sean was not normal.

is time I hardly felt the sting. I watched Lori push her boat away from her dock with one long leg, toes pointed, and hop in at the last moment before she lost her balance.

e other guys must have been as interested as I was in what was going on in the other boat. Sean had dated Rachel until she broke up with him a few days ago. ere were some people in the world besides me who saw through Sean’s pretty-boy act. McGillicuddy and Tammy had gone out for the first time last night—and, judging from the fact that he was not grounded from her, I assumed their date had gone better than mine had with Lori. We managed to speed up the equipment line and launch our own boat a few seconds later.

And when I neglected to crank up the rock music, not one of them said a word. We preferred to hear girls.

Manning the wheel first, I steered the boat into the middle of the lake—far enough from the girls for safety, but close enough that I could hear Lori explaining to Tammy the starting stance for boarding. McGillicuddy strapped on his life vest and board and hopped over the side. I would drive him in a couple of big circles on this section of the lake, then Sean would board, then Cameron. Lately they wanted me to board last. at way, if I had to go to the emergency room, they’d already taken their turns.

All three of them boarded better than they had all summer, which didn’t take much, since Lori had been putting us all to shame lately. At least, they looked good as far as I could tell. I was driving, not spotting, so the only glimpses I caught of them were in my rearview mirror as they hung upside down in mid-trick.

And the whole time, I had one eye on the girls’ boat. ey were never hard to spot. ey stayed in one place, with Tammy and then Rachel in the water trying to pull up, and Lori driving and instructing them at the same time. I should have been over there helping her.

Or Cameron should, I thought bitterly.

Lori did not have one eye on me. I didn’t know how long I could stand this panicky feeling as I watched her across the water, waiting and wishing for her to glance in my direction. Now I knew how my friends on the football team felt when they drove around town on the slim chance they might cruise by the cute girl they liked in the parking lot of the movie theater. I’d never felt that desperate about Lori. Ever since we were kids, she’d sat right beside me in the boat. We might not have been officially together until yesterday, but at least she’d always been nearby.

Now I couldn’t even tell what she was saying to the other girls. The topic had better be boarding. It had better not be dumping me for the next Vader brother on her list.

Or for Parker Buchanan. As if it weren’t enough for my brothers to talk to Lori when I couldn’t, Parker roared past in a ski boat with some of his rich, spoiled friends from Birmingham. His grandparents owned the snooty private yacht club a few miles downriver. Our marina had banded with the others to host the festival on the lake yesterday, but the yacht club topped us all every year by putting on an enormous Fourth of July fireworks show over the lake.

I’d known Parker for a while. He showed up to our parties sometimes, and rumor had it he was blazing a trail through the ladies. He had dark hair and dark eyes and a habit of staring through people with his eyeballs wide open and unblinking like an owl. Girls thought this was sexy. ey said it was like he could see right through them into their souls. I thought it was one of the first signs of hyper-thyroidism, but I kept it to myself.

I had no reason to dislike him. I’d never considered him a threat before. Usually he water-skied on the yacht club side of the lake. Usually he didn’t venture this far from home. Usually he didn’t slalom through our wakeboarding course while waving to my girlfriend. Usually she did not wave back. ere was a first time for everything—

everything awful, that is—and every bit of it was happening to me today.

Finally it was my turn to board. Parker disappeared around the bend. I had nobody left to take out my aggression on but my brothers. Instead of buckling on my board in the boat and flipping backward over the side like a scuba diver, as I normally would have, I waited for Cameron to crawl out of the water onto the deck in back. I pretended to slip while getting in, and I shoved him with my shoulder.

“Oh, man, you have pushed the wrong brother,” he told me. I thought this was more of a jab at Sean than at me. I’d whipped Sean a couple of times recently.

Then Cameron pushed me so hard, my board slid all the way across the deck, and I smacked into the water on my ear.

I shook off the pain underwater and surfaced. Now Lori watched me from her boat. She was waiting for me to come up, either because she was concerned or because she was simply paying attention to me at the precise moment I didn’t want it. She gave me a thumbs-up.

“Sunglasses.” McGillicuddy stretched his open hand toward me.

“I won’t lose them,” I said. If I’d managed to keep them on during that dramatic entrance, they weren’t in danger of falling off.

“Right,” Cameron said. “You never lose them.”

“Adam’s sunglasses are piled up like buried treasure on the bottom of the lake,” Lori giggled as her boat prowled slowly by ours, headed for shore. All three girls waved to us like beauty queens on a parade float. They must have been done for the day.

Her boat sped up then. Over her motor, McGillicuddy and Sean must not have heard Cameron murmur, “Talk about buried treasure,” still looking straight at Lori.

I kicked off my board, pushed it ahead of me, and caught our boat in five strokes, just as McGillicuddy started the engine. All three of the guys snapped their heads in my direction in surprise as I pitched my board into the boat and pulled myself dripping over the side. Then I punched Cameron in the jaw.

It would have connected if I hadn’t been wet and Cameron hadn’t slathered himself in sunscreen. As it was, my fist slipped right off his face. I lost my balance and fell on the floor of the boat. Then he was on top of me, and I knew I was in trouble. But when he tried to pin my arms behind me, his hands slid right off too.

Before he could come after me again, a second set of flip-flops approached my nose and scuffled with Cameron’s pair. McGillicuddy was pulling Cameron off me. And then Sean caught me in a headlock.

“We’re taking impulsive to a new level, aren’t we?” Sean shouted in my ear, over the noise of the motor.

“He called Lori buried treasure!” I meant this for McGillicuddy. Since Sean held my head down, I had to yell as loudly as I could. “Cameron was looking at Lori and he said, ‘Talk about buried treasure!’”

“You did?” I heard McGillicuddy say. All I could see was the boat’s carpet. I could only imagine the look on his face.

“I wasn’t talking about her!” Cameron bellowed.

“Then who the hell were you talking about?” Sean shrieked.

Sean had a point, for once. Cameron had been talking about my girlfriend and McGillicuddy’s sister, or McGillicuddy’s girlfriend, or Sean’s ex-girlfriend, who Sean was very touchy about. ere was nobody else in the girls’ boat. e four of us guys used to comment on girls we saw drive by on the lake (with Lori in our boat too, rolling her eyes at us). Cameron had picked the wrong girls this time.

Furious as I was, I realized something else was wrong. Even though Sean still held my head down, I was the only one who thought to ask, “Who’s driving the boat?” Over the motor, I heard girls screaming at us the instant before we crashed.

The impact threw Sean off me. There was an awful screeching. I scrambled up and saw everybody was on the floor now but me. I jumped into the driver’s seat and threw the throttle into reverse.

Too late. We’d puttered into the marina and had hit one of the newer model speedboats. As I backed away from it, I saw the black mark our bumper had made up the side.

Worse, my dad stood on the wharf, watching. Funny how whenever I broke a bone, he had to be hunted up, but whenever we damaged the merchandise, he was on hand instantly. Glowering, he showed me his binoculars. Even from a distance, he’d seen everything. en he pointed the binoculars at me. We’d been through this enough times that I knew what he meant. Whatever the speedboat and our boat needed, I would fix them. He headed back up the steps toward the showroom without a word.

Cameron and Sean moaned at me, rubbing it in.

As I idled the boat into the usual space and cut the engine, McGillicuddy picked up my broken sunglasses from underfoot and handed them to me. “Looks like that mark will come out with buffing.”

“I hope.” Bailing out of the boat onto the wharf, I tossed the sunglasses into the trash before Cameron and Sean could rib me any more about this awful day. I blinked in the darkness of the warehouse until I could see, and I grabbed the wax and a cloth. en I blinked in the bright sunlight outside and thought I was hallucinating. My first break: Lori, Rachel, and Tammy had parked their boat and were talking to the guys on the wharf. I walked over, gripping the wax and cloth hard in each fist, hoping Lori wasn’t flirting with Cameron again, or Sean. Maybe I should put the can of wax down before I found out. It could really hurt somebody.

“Adam,” Lori called, loudly enough for me to hear her, but not so loud that her voice would carry up to my mom in the marina office—or to her dad, who might be listening from their screened porch facing the water. “I came over to get some tips from the boys about teaching Tammy and Rachel to board. Of course I did not come over here to see you. How could you think such a thing? That would be disobedient.”

I held up the wax. “For my own disobedience, I have to buff the boat. Then I’m going for a jog.” She tilted her head. Probably her eyes widened, but I couldn’t see them behind her sunglasses. I hated not being able to see her eyes. She asked, “In this heat?” I didn’t mind jogging in the heat. e heat was a big, friendly animal that liked to wrestle and only occasionally sat on me until I lost my breath. Anyway, she was missing the point. I repeated carefully, “I am going for a jog.”

“I heard you the first time,” she said. “It’s late afternoon in the middle of June. It’s ninety-five degrees out here.”

“He means he’s going for a jog,” Rachel and Tammy said at the same time.

“He’s going for a jog.” Lori still didn’t get it. Normally her blondeness was one of the things I loved about her. At the moment, not so much.

Exasperated, Cameron told her, “Adam wants you to go for a jog too.”

She said, “Oh!”

“If you two airheads have to hook up secretly for very long,” Sean said, “you’re not going to make it.”

“Like you’re an expert on making relationships work,” Rachel piped up.

Now Cameron and McGillicuddy moaned, rubbing in the jab at Sean. I couldn’t help but chime in. And when I saw the look Sean gave me, I regretted it. I didn’t expect him to be on my side against my parents, but I hoped he wouldn’t go out of his way to sabotage me. And sabotage was more likely if he and Rachel stayed broken up and he stewed in his own juices.

Lori was thinking the same thing—eyeing me, or so I thought. I desperately wanted to reach down from the wharf and take those sunglasses off her. She asked me, “Not that I have any interest in this whatsoever, but how long will it take you to buff the boat?”