“All because Jo got stuck in the anchor,” Autumn said proudly.
Jo gave a nervous laugh. “Happy to help?”
“I’m glad Dad and Flo are talking again,” Autumn said, glancing over her shoulder at the furniture still piled up in the living room. “Do you think they’d move the green piano to the theater for me?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask. Try tonight at the bonfire. The Chief loves to look magnanimous at parties,” Cindy said. She caught Jo in a second surprise hug. “Have fun digging in the yard! We’ll see you down on the beach for your big party!”
“I don’t know who she means by we now,” Autumn said under her breath as she and Jo made their way to the backyard. “It used to mean her and Dad, but I think she’s keeping it all for herself.”
Jo snickered. “The royal we suits her. We don’t question the creator of the Henrietta casserole.”
In the backyard toolshed, alongside a dead Weedwacker and mystery cans of paint, they found two cobwebby shovels. Most likely the same shovels they had used to bury the time capsule in the first place.
Without the doghouse to mark the spot, Autumn walked from the back porch forward ten paces and Jo walked five paces from the back fence. The white decorative rocks made walking slippery and loud, every step a crunch or a crack. Where they met in the middle, they planted their shovels.
The sound of rusted shovels breaking the rocks set Autumn’s teeth on edge, making her dig faster to get to the noiseless dirt.
“We couldn’t have buried it that deep,” Jo said. “We were little kids. We were still wearing clothes from Limited Too.”
“You’re right,” Autumn said, taking a digging pause. “We’re probably digging in the wrong place. It’s hard to tell without landmarks.”
They went to the back porch, touched their fingertips to the door.
“Ten paces forward,” Autumn said.
They counted their steps. Stuck their shovels in the ground. Turned over a foot of dirt and nothing. They tried again from the fence. Autumn slammed her heel into her shovel, burying the blade entirely in the earth so that she could flip over a pancake of dirt and rocks. No sign of the buried tackle box.
“Maybe we were taking smaller steps because we were shorter,” Autumn said, counting her steps from the fence again. She stuck her shovel in the dirt at random. “Or maybe we were taking much bigger steps assuming we’d get taller. Who the fuck fills a yard with rocks anyway?”
“They are a lot less flammable than grass,” Jo said.
“Don’t take the rocks’ side!” Autumn snapped, carving another pit in the ground. Dirt and rocks rained down in a noisy mess beside her. “They’re ugly and impractical and getting in our way! This is it. The end of the list. We waited years and years to dig up this time capsule and today it’s—”
It’s time to take what we want and let go, she thought, and glanced back at the house, almost expecting to see her mom watching through the blinds to see the realization land.
Autumn stopped digging and looked up at Jo. “Do you remember when all of my dad’s shirts had dogs on them?”
“The big-dogs shirts?” Jo asked. “The ones that said, like, Top Dog or Last Dog or whatever? Those were, like, all he ever wore. Why?”
Autumn shook her head. “Some things just feel more real when you’re not the only person who remembers them. Can we take a digging break?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” Jo threw her shovel aside and cracked her knuckles. “Why don’t we go back inside and check all the rooms to make sure nothing cool gets left behind?” She surveyed the many holes they’d made. “We can always come back for the time capsule later. The house isn’t sold yet. And if whoever buys it has any sense, they’ll get rid of all these stupid fucking rocks and we can ask to look for our time capsule. I bet you fifty bucks that a townie buys the place anyway.”
“Fifty bucks and one time capsule,” Autumn said. “I’ll take that action.”
BIANCA
It seemed like all of Sandy Point had come down to the beach. The Salty Dog closed early so that all the artists could join in the party around the bonfire, where the party had already started with Phil Freeman’s surf-bros and other shop owners from the boardwalk. Dez and Dede introduced the shop’s new aesthetician to Deb Freeman’s Bunco group.
Standing near the fire with her parents, Jo sipped a can of La Croix. Her hair was curly again and pulled away from her face. Autumn boinged the curl behind her ear.
Lita refused to be pushed from the parking lot, using her new all-terrain wheels to walk surely up the planks of the boardwalk, then down to the sand of the beach. She wore her favorite glittery leggings and one of the few sweatshirts she had that hadn’t once belonged to Tito. She tipped her face up to the sky like she could feel the sun’s warmth through the spring chill in the air.
It was a party for Jo, so the mess of fresh clams and crabs that normally came with a beach bonfire was replaced with camping food like hot dogs and s’mores. When Chief Chuck and Ginger Jay arrived, they brought a bushel of artichokes. Cindy Kelly brought onion dip. Florencio brought a party platter of hot wings, compliments of Alfie Jay and the Days morning crew. Eden and her friends showed up in a shrieking, giggling mass, approaching Autumn like she was a celebrity.
It didn’t take long before Lita started holding court and telling her favorite stories.
“You were at Woodstock, Mrs. Boria?” Jo asked.
“Lita, Lita. Everybody young calls me Lita,” said Lita, already moving on to the next part of the story. “I was just a little New York punk, younger and shorter than Bianca is now.”
“Thank you for not saying thinner,” Bee said.
“That would be a lie,” said Lita. “At the time, my husband, Manny, was off on a boat.”
“With the navy,” Bee clarified to the small audience Lita had amassed.
“Who is telling this story, Bianca?” Lita rolled her eyes. “You see how she pecks at me like she’s the mama now? Anyway, anyway, I was living with my hippie friend Tina. She walked with loose hips, like Miss Autumn. She was so fun. But, not so smart.”
Autumn pointed accusingly at her brother. “Don’t say a word.”
“I’d never.” Flo snorted.
“We showed up late,” Lita continued. “To Woodstock! Day two! I was so mad. I had put all my trust in loose-hips Tina, and she got the day wrong. But we were there in time to see my love. Santana. A once-in-a-lifetime concert!”
Jo poured wine into plastic cups for those inclined as she told the story of finding out that it was illegal to drink on the beach in California. Bee ran back to the car to get Lita’s coat and then again to get her own.
Above them, the sky went dark-water blue, reaching out to the sliver of sunlight on the horizon. Sparks flew off the bonfire, zinging past surfers bragging to the owners of Frosty’s about today’s chop.
At seven thirty, Bee’s watch cheeped, reminding her that it was Lita’s bedtime. She looked across the bonfire to where her grandmother was with Mo and Cruz, clutching both of their hands as they knelt beside her, as if paying tribute.
Bianca would never admit it to Bonnie or Lita, but this was something that Square Slice Pizza could never have taught her. The intersection of business and family, how love and art could hitch lives into bowline knots. How hard it was to accept help even when the thing at stake was the well-being of the people you loved most. Or, worse, yourself.
“Bee?” Birdy said, breaking into her thoughts with a wince on his face.
Bianca rushed to put a hand on his chest. “You okay? Is it your leg? Are you standing too much?”
“No.” He chuckled, shaking his head to clear away her concerns. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Is that why you look like you’re in pain?” she teased. She swallowed the last of her wine and set her cup aside to unleash a flurry of pestering index fingers in the ticklish spot of his waist.
“Unfair! I can’t run away from these pokes.” Bir
dy dug his crutch into the sand and wiggled an inch to the side. “I’ve been thinking about the new office.”
Bee abandoned her poke attack. “I am very aware. You talk about dental equipment in your sleep. You woke Lita up the other night moaning about intra-oral cameras. She thought it was something dirty.”
“There are some things I need, but if we leave the office as is and maybe spend a couple days with my parents another time, I was thinking that maybe we could skip Birdy Bash this year. If that’s okay.”
“Skip Birdy Bash?” Bianca laughed because there was no world in which that sentence wasn’t a joke. “Benji and Blakely have already planned your route through the arcades.”
Since Birdy’s gaming systems moved downstairs, Bee could now hear a third of the conversation that happened during the Birdy Brothers’ weekly gaming appointments. The majority of talk seemed to revolve around how hard they were going to party the next time they were all together.
“Most of the games at the Dave and Buster’s resort are two-player. My brothers will be fine,” Birdy said, unconcerned. “You don’t want to wait another year for Hawaii, do you?”
“N-no,” Bee said, her heart cautiously alight.
As he turned toward the sunset, Birdy’s eyes closed like he could feel the warmth in the fading light. “Between being home for almost two months and changing offices…I just don’t want to miss our chance. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. I never thought I would spend more time with Lita than with you, but since I’ve been stuck downstairs, that’s definitely been true. I’m tired of sleeping without you. I don’t want to take that for granted again once I get it back. We already took two weeks off work in November. Let’s go away and sleep next to each other and not take breaks to hang out with my cousins.”
“You want to go on our honeymoon this year? Instead of Birdy Bash? Is this the pain meds talking?”
“Pretty sure this is love talking. But with, like, a heaping side of cabin fever.”
Bee stopped his mouth with a kiss. “Let’s look at tickets right now.”
JO
The fire had been expertly extinguished by Chief Chuck. Jo had hugged more people in one night than she had in her entire life. It felt a little bit like attending her own wake, but in an uplifting way.
She had held on to Autumn and Bee the longest, hoping that they could feel, in the best hug she could muster, how much she treasured this moment.
“Friendship centipede,” she said to them.
“That can’t be our thing,” Bianca said.
“Too late,” Autumn said with a giggle that could have been a sob. “We’re sewn together by the butts of friendship.”
Jo let everyone else leave first. The Birdys hurried to get yawning Lita into the car with Flo’s help. Cindy Kelly bragged to Autumn about getting invited to Bunco. Phil and Deb walked up the beach to take the stairs into their neighborhood. Eden caught a ride with the Broadway Club.
Jo looked out at the ocean. I surfed you this morning, she thought. How fucking weird is that?
“Jo!”
She turned to find Florencio leaning against the anchor. His hands were on his hips, like he was about to ask her to drop and give him twenty.
His mouth flopped open and closed, at a momentary loss at having caught her attention so easily.
“Are you going to climb it?” Jo asked, pointing up at the anchor.
He shook his head. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry you’re leaving town. Days won’t be the same without you clogging the bar with milk-shake orders.”
Jo smiled. “It’s truly the Cream Dream I’ll miss most. Do you think I could get an actual TGI Friday’s to make it for me?”
“I bet you could talk them into it.” He walked down the lawn and put his fist out for a dap.
She dapped him up. Neither of them moved to leave Bee’s front yard.
“I’ve really liked spending time with you,” he said. “Getting to know you not as just my sister’s friend.”
“Oh,” Jo said. “Thanks, Coach. Likewise.”
“I don’t want you to go without telling you that.” Florencio huffed a sigh, tugged his hair taller. “That I liked helping with your lists and making sure you didn’t die climbing the anchor and seeing you fish electronically. I like seeing you every day or almost every day, even if you’re just drinking water and taking up space at my bar. But sort of no matter what I do, I can’t vibe you out. You want to chat me up, wear my clothes, talk about my parents. And I guess there’s a chance that you want a third best friend and I’m down for the job, Jo. But I would prefer that it not be platonic because you are a fucking smoke show.”
Jo stared at him, stupefied to speechlessness. Her brain was doing its very best, chugging uphill toward the very concept that she was, in fact, being Bridget Jones’d right now.
Florencio Kelly was the one who liked her just the way she was.
“Wait,” she said, her voice tremulous. “You’ve really been flirting with me this whole time? I sort of thought we were keeping our skills sharp.”
“Skills?” Flo asked. His forehead wrinkled in offense. “I’m a person, not a whetstone.”
“This isn’t like a formal flirting arrangement?”
“Where I pretend to be into you and everybody in town knows it?”
“Um…” Jo looked helplessly back toward the parking lot, then back at Flo. “Yes?”
“No. That’s not a thing. That would be…like, beyond prank show and into gaslighting.”
“A real life ruiner,” Jo agreed. “So, this is…”
Flo closed the distance between them. Rested his hand against her hip.
“The opposite,” he said.
Jo’s breath caught. “The opposite meaning that you actually like me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She set her hand on the nape of his neck, letting her knuckles brush through his dark silky hair. “Even though I call you Coach.”
“Even though.”
Jo set her forehead to his, momentarily forgetting that they were directly in the center of town, alone with the ocean. The warmth of his skin on hers, the smell of him so close was making her reckless, hungry. She rubbed her nose against his. “Why didn’t you do anything before? The night with the keg? Before I climbed the anchor. I get why you wouldn’t want to after.”
“You were drunk as fuck. I’m not going to hook up with a drunk girl. Tonight you’re sober enough for your parents, my parents, and Bianca to let you drive home by yourself.”
“Chivalrous.”
“Yeah, I’m basically a knight for wanting real consent.” He caught her hand and folded their fingers together.
“You were so sure we were gonna have sex?”
“You lose a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
She caught his mouth, inhaling the surprise on his breath. She kissed him expecting to compare it to other kisses with other people, to flashback to Wren and her recently bruised heart. But kissing Flo was wholly original, wholly here in this moment. Actively holding her and kissing her back and grinning like an idiot about it.
She stroked the squareness of his jaw with the pad of her thumb. “Let’s get out of here, Coach.”
He smiled against her mouth. “Yeah?”
“I need to be home by sunrise,” she said. She kissed him again, once, twice, and nipped at his bottom lip. “I’m moving tomorrow.”
AUTUMN: BROTHERFUCKER!
BIANCA: Excuse me?
JO: ?
AUTUMN: My mom saw a white Mini parked at Flo’s last night. And this morning!!!!
BIANCA: Oh dang
JO: Okay I don’t deny it
Can we be cool about this?
AUTUMN: You humped my brother!
Tell me nothing because he is my brother but also tell me everything in that you are my best friend and I at least require a thumbs up or down to know how to feel about this?
JO:
BIANCA: Not thum
bs up enough to stop you from moving, tho
JO: Florencio is many things, but he is not a living wage in the city
BIANCA: No man is
And with that: bon voyage, sweets
AUTUMN: Drive safe! Text us when you get there!!!
“Hotel California” was blaring behind the closed door of the downstairs bedroom, drowning out the lunch alarm on Bianca’s watch as she crept inside. Lita was curled up on top of her blankets, already dressed.
“It’s lunchtime, Lita,” Bianca said, waking her. “Did you have a nice morning?”
Bianca had started what she was secretly referring to as Lita Speed Dating. Different Lita-sitters came in and out of the house at the same time each day to spend their time with Lita however they—but mostly however Lita—liked. Shortly after taking Lita out to the bonfire, Bee had put out an email to all of Lita’s people, opening the doors to the house. Lita needed friends—who could be trusted with her schedule and needs—and Bianca needed help making sure that Lita’s life felt full.
The response surprised her. Where she had expected obligatory apologies or outright silence, there had been enthusiasm. The artists from the shop, old-timers on the Boardwalk Association, neighbors, Tito’s friends and their widows.
People had missed Lita as much as Lita had missed people.
“Yes,” Lita said, pausing to yawn. “Dez introduced me to a wonderful new show. The Real Bitches of LA.”
Bianca let out a startled giggle. “That can’t be the name.”
Lita’s brow furrowed and her nails went searching for her reading glasses on her bedside table. “No, I think that’s it. I had her write it down for me….”
Bee, touched that Lita had made an effort to use her memory notebook—which normally sat around forgotten in a drawer—agreed to program The Real Bitches into Lita’s bedroom DVR. She sat down on the mattress next to her grandmother and scooped up the remotes.
“I was thinking we could invite Dez and her kids over,” Bee said. “You haven’t met the baby yet. They could come to family dinner some Sunday.”
The Throwback List Page 31
