Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Parker didn’t uncurl from his ball.

“Hey.” I reached over and rubbed his knee in a friendly warming-your-skin way, not a way that would earn me the hickey from Parker that had been claimed by several sophomore girls whose stories I didn’t entirely trust anymore. “Let’s go in and meet my dad.” I thought he might regain some of his bravado by the time we got inside. But as I opened the door in the garage and crossed from the kitchen into the den, he continued to trail after me like a kitten with PTSD from being shot with way too many Nerf darts. ere was a reason the Vaders’ cat did not often venture out of the master bedroom. Parker would never scare my dad while he acted like this.

I would have to rely on Parker’s reputation getting back to my dad. en my dad would say, “My goodness, that timid boy is actually a man-slut? By analogy, Adam Vader, who seems to have a death wish, probably has his shit together after all!” Of course, this was the best-case scenario, or perhaps the in-my-dreams scenario. In retrospect, this was one of the reasons my plans had a tendency to backfire.

I walked into the den and stopped so fast that Parker plowed right into me. Dad was sitting on the couch all right, and Frances was curled up next to him.

In a miniskirt!

Well, maybe not a miniskirt. It might have been mid–calf length, and I got the first impression that it was a miniskirt because she usually favored floor-length hippie garb. She’d kicked off her Birkenstocks to reveal freshly painted red toenails. In short, for Frances, she looked adorable. I was sure this was an accident.

“Hi!” I exclaimed as if I’d totally expected my ex–au pair. But I truly hadn’t bargained on Frances being there. is threw a monkey wrench in my plans, though I wasn’t sure yet whether it was a big sucker like a pipe wrench or something that would be easier for me to manage like a little Allen wrench. We all exchanged greetings and I introduced Frances and my dad to Parker.

“Parker Buchanan.” My dad stood and gave him the firm handshake and the full grin he used with clients. “Nice to see you again.”

“Yes, sir.” Parker sounded as if he might faint.

“All right then!” I announced. “Parker and I are going up to my bedroom.” I figured if this date with Parker had any thrust left with my dad, it was the fact that we were going to hang out in a room with a bed in it. I did not add that when we got to said bedroom, we were not going to make out. We were going to have a long talk about how my dad already knew Parker and why it was nice to see him again.

We started up the stairs, Parker ahead of me, when my dad called, “Lori, can I have a word with you alone?” Parker paused and turned his traumatized kitten bug eyes on me. I nodded for him to go on into my room. As I bounced back down the stairs by myself, I resisted the urge to rub my hands together with glee. My dad wanted to give me a Talking-To about Parker! Hooray!

I reached the den again and my dad was still grinning, which did not bode well for the Talking-To from the concerned parent. Also, Frances hadn’t budged her organic cotton–covered booty, which confused my interpretation of what my dad had meant by “alone.” I could almost see her waving a monkey wrench at me.

“Young lady,” he said, which was a pretty good start for the Talking-To, “I am so proud of you.” DAMN IT!

“Thank you!” I beamed at him like I knew what the hell he was talking about.

“I have been Parker’s grandparents’ counsel since they founded the yacht club,” he said. “I’ve watched Parker grow up. He’s a terrific student, as I’m sure you know, with designs on Yale. But his grandparents have always been concerned about his social life and frankly, his mental health. He hardly peeks out of his shell at his private school in Birmingham. Then he comes down here to stay with them in the summer, and apparently he tells a lot of tall tales, making himself out to be some sort of Lothario.”

“You’re kidding!” I did not need to fake my astonishment, though I was not astonished for the reason my dad assumed.

“It’s wonderful that you’ve started a friendship with him,” my dad went on. “I’m sure it will do him good.” I was sure a knuckle sandwich would do him more good, but I refrained from saying this. “Dad, your pride means more to me than you know.” We gave each other a final manic grin and I headed for the stairs again, but not before I caught a glimpse of Frances watching me. She knew I was up to something.

Well, lucky for her and Dad, I was not up to a whole lot at the moment. I slogged up the stairs, into my room, and closed the door behind me.

Parker was sitting on my bed, thumbing through one of the issues of Playboy I’d stolen from McGillicuddy for fashion advice. He threw it back into the drawer of my nightstand and slammed the drawer shut, as if I would be completely fooled by this and had not been the one who put the magazine there in the first place.

I sat next to him on the bed and smiled sweetly at him. “You’re so tense, Parker. You’re not still worried about Adam and my brother kicking the shit out of you, are you? To be honest, I think they’re still mad, but they don’t have martial arts training like you do.” He stared at me. His eyes were so wide that I swore they were going to rebel and pop right out of his head and wander around the room, looking at whatever they wanted. If they ventured up my skirt, I was going to step on them.

“What am I going to do?” he cried.

“What do you mean, what are you going to do?” I asked him innocently. “You trained in Japan for your black belt. Just get in a good lick or two, and maybe they’ll leave you alone. Maybe, I’m saying. McGillicuddy probably will. Adam might not. Adam doesn’t always respond to negative reinforcement like you’d think.”

“Lori!” Parker cried. “I’m not who you think I am!”

I cocked my head and blinked at him. “You’re not Parker Buchanan, grandson to the Buchanans of the Buchanan Yacht Club, student at a fancy schmancy private school in Birmingham?”

“I am all that,” he admitted, “but I don’t have a black belt.”

I had surmised this already, but I played along. “You don’t?”

“No. And… Lori, can you keep a secret? I have so much bottled up inside me, and the pressure is getting to me.” He swallowed. “I didn’t date Miss Alabama when I was in middle school.”

“You didn’t?” I tried to feign continued interest. But if he wanted to self-debunk, he might go on all night, and frankly I was more interested in what Dad and Frances were watching on the Discovery Channel.

“No. I’m basically just a nerd. I have a 4.0 GPA, and I plan to matriculate at Yale and major in cognitive science with a double minor in statistics and ancient Greek.”

“You don’t.” I stifled a yawn.

“I do. The reason I’m spending the whole summer with my grandparents is that nobody knows me here, and I can be whomever I say I am.”

ere were a lot of things about this statement that made me angry. e lie. e fact that I’d been taken in by the lie. His smug tone of voice when he talked about it, revealing himself to be the biggest nerd I had ever met, even nerdier than the kid from my algebra class who collected antique motherboards, and absolutely the worst person I could have chosen to drive Dad into letting me date Adam again.

I said, “Can you be a person who is GONE FROM MY BEDROOM?”

Instead of moving away from me, which I would have much preferred, he scooted closer to me on the bed. “Why are you angry, Lori?”

“Why do I have to explain this to everyone twice?” I ran my hands through my hair and squeezed my head to keep my brain from falling out. “I was trying to go out with Satan so Adam wouldn’t look as bad to my dad. If my dad already knows you have a 4.0 and you know that he knows, why did you agree to go on a fake date with me?”

“You made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Parker said. “You offered to show me around town and introduce me to people. I knew you were popular because you’re always at that party next door.” He nodded toward Adam’s house. ose Friday night parties, ethereal and magical in my memory, admittedly had been excruciating in reality because I’d always been trying to get Sean’s attention. Or, more recently, Adam’s.

“And you’re so pretty.” He scooted even closer to me on the bed and put his hand on my thigh.

Just what I’d waited for all night. And now, not so much. I glared at him.

He wisely removed his hand without further prompting from me. “Lori, come on. Don’t be mad. Aren’t you basically doing the same thing, putting on this big show for your dad to get what you want? You can’t be mad at me for fooling people. Besides, we have to survive another ten minutes in your car together. I don’t have another way home.”

“Why don’t you call your family’s helicopter to come get you,” I suggested, “or did you make that up too?”

“My family does have a helicopter, but I didn’t crash it into the statue of Vulcan in Birmingham. I hope you didn’t believe that part of the story. It only works on twelve-year-old girls.”

“Why are you trying to impress twelve-year-old girls? Are you that desperate?”

He opened his mouth.

“Don’t answer that,” I interrupted. I didn’t want to know.

A knock sounded at the door. I thought about tackling Parker on my bed, but now that I knew my dad saw through Parker’s whole bad-boy lifestyle, there was no point. I didn’t even leap over to Parker and snatch up his hand. “Come in,” I called like a girl without issues.

The door creaked open very slowly.

My heart raced. Adam!

No such luck. It was only McGillicuddy, peering into the room with that now-familiar scowl on his face. “Leave this door open,” he said.

“What are you doing home?” I demanded. “I thought you had a date with Tammy tonight.”

“I do,” he said. “I came home to get my car and take a shower before I go over to her house.” I thought for a second. “Why are you just now home? What did you and Adam do after we left the movies?” My brother looked guilty. “Nothing.” With a final dark look in Parker’s direction, he disappeared.

“McGillicuddy,” I called. Now I did drag Parker by the hand after me as I followed my brother into his room.

“at’s why I have to take a shower,” my brother admitted, opening a drawer and extracting a neatly folded T-shirt. He grabbed the center of the T-shirt he was wearing and stretched it out toward me. “Do I smell like kerosene?”

I sniffed tentatively. “A little.” I wondered whether Adam was home taking a shower before his mother could ask him about the peculiar kerosene odor. “If you’re going to Tammy’s anyway, can you drop off Parker at his grandparents’?”

“No!” Parker exclaimed from behind me.

I turned around. I could tell from the way his eyes flitted back and forth that the look on my brother’s face was not any more hospitable than the look on mine.

“I mean…,” Parker stammered. Suddenly he focused over my shoulder, and his eyes lit up. “Is that a B-17?” I looked where he was looking—at the huge model of a World War II–era bomber hanging by fishing line from the ceiling. “Why, yes,” I informed him. McGillicuddy had built it from a kit when he was fourteen, and I had applied the decals. It was our pride and joy.

“At home I have a B-17E, with the longer fuselage.” Parker stepped farther into my brother’s room, closing the gap between them. Clearly he had lost his fear of being eaten.

“I always wanted a B-17G, which has six more guns,” my brother said, and with that they lost me. Since I’d been trying to shake some of my grosser tomboy habits, I should have been glad that I was so easily out-boyed by a boy.

“Before I go,” I informed both of them, because clearly it was okay for my brother to take Parker home now, “I have one more favor to ask of Parker.”

I didn’t talk to Lori again for a week and a day. I tried to stop being mad at her about Parker. I knew Reggie had made up the indecent incident at the movies. Trouble was, when Reggie had suggested it, I had imagined it, and in my mind it really happened. Maybe if I’d been allowed to talk to her, I could have gotten over it, but since my dad gave me the evil eye if I so much as looked in her direction, the whole insult of it continued to dog me.

Toward the end of the week I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called Rachel and asked her what she’d done lately about getting Sean back. Unfortunately for her, or fortunately, depending on what you thought of Lori’s plans (and I did not think very much of them), Rachel was not nearly as proactive as Lori. I could have told Rachel that Sean was patient and vengeful. If she didn’t do something, the summer would end and he would go to college without ever asking her out again. He might even pine away for her, if he had room in his very small heart to do that, but it would be worth it to him if she felt bad about breaking up with him.

So I suggested that she have everyone over to her grandparents’ place on the lake. She would see Sean and, God help her, win him back. I would see Lori.

Rachel’s grandparents’ house was far enough away that my parents and Lori’s dad weren’t likely to cruise by on the geriatric pontoon boat. It was close enough that we could all drive over there in the wakeboarding boat after business at the marina slowed down. It would look casual and spur-of-the-moment. It would not occur to Lori’s dad that Lori and I could get in much trouble there, on the same lake as him, under the watchful eye of extremely old people.

And maybe, just maybe, Lori and I could slip away from McGillicuddy for a few minutes in private.

At least, that’s what I figured. But Lori’s dad was smarter than I thought. Even though he knew I would be there, he allowed Lori to go. But he made her go in her own boat with McGillicuddy, while I drove with Sean and Cameron.

That was okay. I wakeboarded the whole way over, which helped me get out some aggression. Cameron was driving. He kept trying to run me into shore or over big logs floating in the lake. If I were ten, I would have crashed. But I was sixteen, and I had his number. The lake was mine.

e girl was not. At Rachel’s we swam, and we boarded, and we ate, and it would have been a lot of fun if I hadn’t been watching Lori the whole time, trying to look like I wasn’t watching her, wishing I could get her alone.

Rachel’s grandmother already liked me. But she liked Sean more, because he complimented her on her peach cobbler (which was awesome, almost as good as my mom’s, but it never would have occurred to me to compliment an old lady on her peach cobbler) and then insisted on helping her clean up the kitchen. He was really turning on the charm with her, but not with Rachel. us Rachel’s grandmother would ask her a million times a day, Why don’t you date that nice boy Sean? and Rachel would not want to admit that she had in fact broken up with Sean, and Sean had not asked her out again. I knew how Sean worked.

Late in the afternoon, the other guys went inside to watch the Braves game on TV with Rachel’s granddad. I should have been there, and I would catch flak from them later for not being there. However, I was not going to miss a chance to get Lori alone. I lay with her, Rachel, and Tammy on the pier, catching the steeply angled rays of the sun.

Rachel let out a satisfied sigh. “I’m so glad Adam called me and told me to have y’all over.” Lori looked over at Rachel. Lori had her shades on, but I could imagine the shocked look in her eyes.

Rachel wore shades too. However, she was sitting next to me, because we weren’t banned from talking to each other, and we had no fear of McGillicuddy looking out the window and seeing us together. Behind her shades, she cut her dark eyes at me.

Lori didn’t say a word. She turned and gazed out over the broad lake. But I knew she was wondering how deep my relationship with Rachel went behind the scenes. is moved me a long way toward letting go of my anger at Lori about Parker. Now she had some idea how I felt.

After a pause, she gestured offshore. “I am going to swim out to that island. Adam is going to swim out to that island also.”

“I am?” I didn’t like being told what to do. But of course I would have swum across the Atlantic to see her. I pulled off my T-shirt, the first time my chest had been bare in a week.

She did the smallest double take but quickly looked away from me again, toward the girls, and pretended to ignore me. “is is all purely for calisthenics, you understand.”

“Of course,” Rachel and Tammy said.

“So I do not want you to look around, see us missing, and sound the alarm that we have been eaten by bryozoa.”

“Bryozoa eats plankton and microscopic stuff in the water,” Rachel pointed out.

“Clearly you did not watch the same space-alien movies I watched growing up.” Lori pointed at Tammy. “And as for you, missy?”

“Yes?” Tammy asked drily. It sounded like she was almost as used to Lori’s plans as I was.

“I can’t trust my brother to keep his mouth shut about this,” Lori said. “We have to make sure he doesn’t see me.”

“I have an idea,” Tammy said in the halting speech and overenthusiastic delivery of someone reading from a cue card. “Why don’t I entice your brother into a dark corner and make out with him to distract him?”

“That is a great idea,” Lori said in the same tone.

Tammy stood and dashed up the dock toward the house. At least some people didn’t have to be dragged into helping Lori with her plans.

“That leaves me with Sean,” Rachel said doubtfully, but I could tell she was trying not to smile.

“And Cameron!” Lori reminded her. “Knock yourself out. Or… I guess you want to get rid of them. I know exactly how to make them forget you exist, if they haven’t already with the Braves game on. Give them a bowl of Fritos and some dip. Always works for me.”

“Wow, it’s that easy? anks, Lori.” Rachel got up and walked toward the house more slowly than Tammy had, watching the windows, undoubtedly hoping Sean would appear, looking for her. No such luck. I knew she held out hope Sean would throw her a bone, and I knew he wouldn’t. I knew exactly how she felt.

“Race ya,” Lori said. Before I could respond, she was gone. She splashed into the water and crawled at a good clip toward the tiny island three hundred yards from the dock.

I dove in after her, caught up with her in a few strokes, passed her, turned over, and did the backstroke right in front of her, kicking up big splashes in her face just to piss her off. I righted myself, treading water, looking for her.

She wasn’t there.

“Sucker!” came from a long way off. I saw her wet blonde head halfway to the island already. She must have passed me by swimming underwater. Now she sank under the surface again.

I swam as fast as I could after her. As I moved nearer to the island, I saw what a genius Lori was and how brilliant a choice the island was for a place to slip away from McGillicuddy. It was possibly even more masterful than my secret make-out hideout. Rachel’s grandparents’ house was at the end of their neighborhood. Beyond it, the shore stretched around endless bends of red mud cliffs and pine trees, with not a soul in sight. e island sat in front of those cliffs, at the edge of the busy river channel, but a DANGER sign indicating shallow water was stuck between the island and the bank, so boats wouldn’t dare float through here. It was private. It was perfect.

I touched bottom and walked through the sand, stirring up bits of mica that glittered like stars in the water. Looking back toward Rachel’s grandparents’ house and their pier, I watched both disappear behind the trees on the island. Now Lori and I couldn’t be seen unless somebody came looking for us.

Lori sat on the sandy, glittery beach of the island, directly in front of the DANGER sign, waiting for me. I waded toward her.

“Why have you been ignoring me all week?” she called. Her voice sounded annoyed. However, she sat leaning on one hand with her long legs folded gracefully, the warm lake lapping at them. With a small wardrobe malfunction of her pink bikini, she could have been a model in one of the issues of Playboy she used to steal from McGillicuddy to study what kind of girl Sean was into, so she could be more like her. In fact, I thought at first that she was teasing me by pretending to be that girl. But as I waded closer, I realized she really was annoyed, and she was seducing me by accident. Hell, I would have been turned on no matter how she sat.

“I haven’t been ignoring you,” I said. “I’ve been obeying my parents.”

“ere’s a first time for everything, I guess.” She squinted at me and put up one hand to shield her eyes. A shadow covered half her face. e sun was peeking around my back and blinding her.

I held my ground, squishing my toes in the glittering sand, and made small movements back and forth, just to bug her. e sun was hidden by my body. en it hit her full force in the eyes. Then it went into hiding again.

She closed one eye. “I don’t buy it. You’ve been avoiding me. You’re still punishing me for going out with Parker. And that doesn’t make any sense to me, because I sent McGillicuddy over to tell you the Parker thing did not work with my dad at all. McGillicuddy came back and said you just shrugged!” I shrugged again. “How could you and I have talked about it without somebody seeing us?”

“You managed our trip into the woods okay.”

“And we got busted.” Since her eyes were watering, I figured she’d had enough of my game with the sun. I sank down in the water in front of her and leaned back on my hands in the sand.

“I guess I’ve been expecting more out of Mr. Daredevil, Mr. Devil-May-Care.” She sat up straight and looked me dead in the eye. “I’m so glad you finally called Rachel and arranged this excuse for us to see each other today.”

She knew there was more to this, and she expected me to sing. Who did she think she was dealing with here, Cameron? I hoped I played this cool, but I did look away. I wanted to keep her on her toes, wondering if there was something going on between Rachel and me, so she’d be a little bit jealous. But she was my friend, and I felt guilty.

After eyeing me silently for a few more seconds, she finished, “Otherwise, I might not have been able to tell you what I did for you until it was too late for you to take advantage.”

“Take advantage?” I looked pointedly at her cleavage. “What you did for me? It must involve underwear.” As fast as one of my brothers, she shoved me. I lost my balance and fell backward into deeper water. She jumped on top of me and dunked me. Yes, I got dunked by a girl, but only because we had trained her well, and she had surprise on her side.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I grabbed her arms above me in the water and lifted her whole body onto my shoulders. She bit off a squeal—remembering at the last moment someone back at the house might hear her. I heaved her as far as I could from the island. By the time she swam all the way back again, water spilling from her long hair, I was sitting exactly where she’d been sitting on the beach before. I was king of this mountain.

She walked up the beach until she stood directly over me. e water from her hair streamed into my eyes. “You are going to be so sorry when you find out what I did for you.”

“I doubt it.” I laughed. “It felt pretty good to throw you.”

“Parker knew all along that my dad saw through him, but he failed to inform me of this. So I got some payback.” I wiped the water out of my eyes and moved a few feet to one side, out of range of her dripping body. “I definitely do not want to hear about your payback with Parker.”

“Yes, you do.” She followed me, stood over me again, and wrung out her hair on my head. “You know, his grandparents’ yacht club puts on the Fourth of July fireworks display.”

Now I had an inkling of what she was getting at. I couldn’t help smiling as I put both hands over my head to shield myself from the water. “And?”

“And you’re going to help.”

The splashing had stopped. I looked cautiously up at her. “I am?”

She was standing where I’d stood before. With the sun brushing the tops of the trees onshore directly behind her, I could see her only in silhouette, but I could tell by the movement of her hair that she nodded.

An explosion went off in my heart, followed by a few smaller percussions like a Roman candle. Lori was driving me batty with her plans, but it wasn’t every girl who would go out of her way to get you what you wanted most in the world, besides her. Especially when it involved explosives. I breathed, “I love fireworks.”

“I know!” She jumped up and down with excitement, and the silhouette of her hair bounced in long wet clumps. “But I understand you didn’t want to hear this, and then you threw me into the deep water for no good reason, which hurt my feelings, so I’ll call Parker and tell him no thanks.” I reached for the center of her silhouette to grab her wrist. Instead I grabbed cloth, which gave as I tugged on it. The waistband of her bikini.

“Hey.” She sounded a lot less outraged than she should have. I was the one embarrassed.

“I can’t see you.” I rose on my knees until my head was out of the sunlight and I could see her grinning down at me. Then I grabbed her wrist and pulled her down on top of me.

“Which is really sad,” she grunted as she fell, “because Parker was excited by the idea. He’s afraid of fireworks. e yacht club hires a professional company to put on the show, but Parker’s grandparents make him help every year. It’s almost enough to make him give up his annual summer trip down from Birmingham.” With one hand I made a ponytail out of her wet hair and directed her lips toward mine. I kissed her.

“Mmph.” She struggled to move her lips away from mine. “It would have been perfect if you’d done Parker the favor of taking that chore off his hands. Oh well.” While she was talking, talking, talking, I wrestled her down onto the beach and put some of my weight on top of her so she would shut up, and I kissed her again.

is time it worked. I heard her sigh through her nose. I felt her relax under me. Not many girls would engineer a chance for me to set off explosives, and not many girls would enjoy kissing me on this beach. I thought it was nice, but I’d kissed enough girls to predict what they’d be complaining about at this point. e sand was somewhat muddy. Bugs buzzed in the forest surrounding us and might come out to get us at any second. Boats groaned in the river on the other side of the island. ey could come roaring around the side of the island without warning and wreck on the DANGER sign. Even Rachel, who put up with a lot, tended to be jumpy about these sorts of things.

Only Lori viewed them like I did, as part of every summer afternoon. She opened her mouth for mine and traced her short fingernails down my back. is made me shudder, like it always did. I wanted to be strong and unaffected every time we touched each other, but the truth was, Lori could do things to me. e only way to keep the upper hand was to do things back to her. I kissed her until she forgot about tracing her fingernails on my back. I worked my way up to her ear. Her arms went limp in the sand.

A motorboat came closer and closer. e sound stayed on the other side of the island. We lay still together, listening to it reach the peak of its volume, then fade as it went on its way downriver. But the spell was broken. I thought we had a few minutes until McGillicuddy would notice we were gone, but not so many that we could risk getting into it again and losing track of time, which we clearly had a problem with.

She looked up at me—not into my eyes, but at my chin—and seemed fascinated with rubbing her thumb on my stubble. “It makes a crispy noise,” she said.

“Admit you like it.”

“It hurts.” She rubbed her own red cheek. Luckily we’d come over here in the boats, and if her dad asked her about it, she could claim windburn. She pushed my chest, and I let her sit up. en she looked out across the water toward where the dock and the house would be if we could see through the island, but she put one hand on my thigh. On the inside of my thigh, slowly moving up. This told me she was thinking the same thing I was thinking: We probably should be wrapping this up, but we weren’t done with each other.

We should skinny-dip. at’s what would happen if this were a movie. But I’d never actually known anyone who’d skinny-dipped, or admitted to it. I probably would have done it with my brothers at some point in our lives, except Lori was always around.

at was exactly my problem now. I would have given anything to see her naked, but that would mean she’d see me naked, too. I might have been the impulsive one in my family, but even I had my limits.

“Want to get naked?” she asked.

“No,” I said instantly. After I’d thought for a second, I realized my first answer was the right answer for once. No, I did not.

“Me neither,” she said.

I sighed with relief, then tried to turn it into some kind of offended gasp. “Why’d you ask, then?”

“You seem hell-bent on putting the last nail in the coffin,” she said. “Nothing would get us in more trouble than being caught naked.”

“We wouldn’t get caught.”

“How can you say that?” She threw her wet arms wide in exasperation. Drops of water followed her fingertips, glinting in the sun. “We get caught every time we’re together.”

I clamped my hand over her mouth and whispered, “That’s because you’re yelling.”

She pulled my hand away and cupped it in both of hers. She studied it, squeezed it, ran her fingers up and down my fingers. en she looked at me and said, “I’ve missed you.”

I let my head sink until my lips touched her hands, but my eyes never left her green eyes. Love hurt. Honesty made it hurt worse, and I could hardly stand it.

I scooted away from her in the sand and gazed at a few white clouds, purple on their undersides in the late afternoon, in the brilliant blue sky. “is is only happening because of twenty-first-century society,” I said. “Two hundred years ago, your dad would be glad to hand you over to me.”

“Would he, now.” She pushed me until I lay down on my back in the sand.