“Not a word,” Madison said. “He still hasn’t returned any of my calls. I’m definitely getting bad vibes now.”
Ellis’s cell dinged again. Madison raised one eyebrow, but otherwise remained motionless.
Ellis got up and walked into the kitchen. She could see the yellow light burning in the window at the apartment above the garage. I miss you, Ty’s text said. She looked up and could see him now, standing in the window, looking directly at her; she was perfectly silhouetted in the dim kitchen light. The phone dinged again.
DEAR ELLIS SULLIVAN. I CAN’T DO WITHOUT YOU. PLEASE GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE. PLEASE? MR. CULPEPPER.
“Madison,” she called, heading for the kitchen door. “I’m going out for a while.”
“Tell Ty I said not to mess it up this time,” Madison called back.
* * *
At dawn, they sat in the Adirondack chairs, drinking coffee made in Ty’s grandmother’s battered aluminum percolator, watching the sunrise. A lone pair of fishermen stood ankle deep in the water, surf casting, but the beach was otherwise deserted.
“Nice morning,” Ellis said with a yawn, feeling completely at peace.
“Nicer night,” Ty said, putting down his coffee cup.
“Mmm, hmm,” Ellis said.
“Know what would be really, really nice?” Ty asked, pulling her to her feet.
“Again?” Ellis clutched the blue terry cloth bathrobe a little tighter.
“Oh. Well, maybe later. For now, I was thinking that I really, really need a shower,” Ty said. “And if I just had somebody to help wash my back…” He had the bathrobe belt nearly unknotted. He was a very fast worker, Ellis thought.
“I don’t know,” Ellis said uneasily. “Those guys out there…” She nodded towards the fishermen.
“They’ve pulled in two bluefish, just while we’ve been sitting out here,” Ty pointed out. “Those guys are in the zone. They’re oblivious to us.”
He was tugging her towards the wooden shower enclosure, pulling his own T-shirt over his head. He turned on the faucet, opened the door, and stepped out of his boxers. “Come on,” he grinned, pulling at her belt. “You’ll love it.” The bathrobe fell open, and she was just as naked as Ty.
“Oh well,” Ellis said. She let the robe fall to the deck and stepped into the shower.
“One minute,” Ty said, picking up the fallen robe. He put his hand in the pocket and brought out a foil-wrapped condom, holding it up for Ellis’s approval. “Be prepared,” he said solemnly.
Warm water sluiced down on her head. Ty had a bottle of baby shampoo. He squirted some into his hands and rubbed it into her hair, massaging her scalp expertly with long, tapered fingers. She took the bottle from him and returned the favor, running her fingers through his thick, soapy, sun-bleached hair.
They stood under the water, blinking and giggling. Ty took the shampoo bottle and traced a line of amber liquid from her shoulder to her right breast, and then her left. He put the bottle back on the little wooden shelf, and turned his attentions to Ellis. He worked the shampoo into a fine white foam, caressing her breasts, soaping her belly, slowly tracing a line in the soap lower, and lower, finally sliding into her.
They moved together, and Ellis forgot to be self-conscious, forgot to be inhibited, forgot all the rules. “Splinters,” she whispered at one point, as her soapy butt rubbed up against the rough-hewn cedar planks, but that too was quickly forgotten.
They were on their second lather, and the water was just beginning to get noticeably cooler, when Ellis heard footsteps on the wooden stairs.
“Ty!” she whispered.
“Hmm?” He was behind her, soaping her back.
“Somebody’s here.”
“Hmm?” He turned her around and nuzzled her neck.
“Hellooo!”
Ellis froze. She knew that voice.
“Shiiiit,” he whispered. He knew it too. All too well.
“Oh my God,” Ellis breathed. “Hide me.”
“Why?” he whispered back. “What do you care?”
“Ty?” her voice came closer. They could tell Kendra was almost at the top step.
“Do something,” Ellis pleaded. “I’ll die of embarrassment if she sees me like this.”
“Stay here,” Ty whispered. “I’ll get rid of her and be right back.”
Ellis looked down and realized that if Kendra got any closer she’d surely notice two sets of legs inside the wooden shower stall. She sat on the narrow wooden bench and drew her legs up to her knees.
Ty shut off the water, snatched up his boxers, and pulled them on. The next minute, he was wrapping the bathrobe around himself and stepping out, firmly pushing the shower door shut.
“Kendra,” Ellis heard him say. “What the hell do you want?”
Ellis looked down at the water streaming off her body. She shivered and saw the fine goose bumps prickling her bare skin. Hurry, she thought. Hurry!
44
“Tyyyy,” Kendra’s voice was shrill, teasing. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“You always manage to catch me at a bad time, Kendra,” Ty snapped. “It’s barely 7 A.M. What the hell do you want?”
“If you’d return my phone calls, you’d know what I want,” Kendra said, totally unfazed by Ty’s rudeness. “Ryan and I want to talk to you about buying Ebbtide.”
“Talk to the bank, not me,” Ty said. “It’s out of my hands, as you well know.”
“We could help each other,” Kendra said sweetly. “You need to get out of debt, and Ryan and I are looking for a beach house. A beach house with age and character, just like Ebbtide. But we’d like to just take a look around the place before we make an offer. I’m thinking it’s gonna need an awful lot of work, and we’d like to ballpark it before we get to auction.”
“Nothing doing,” Ty said flatly. “Go away.”
“You don’t have to give me attitude,” Kendra said. “I’m not the bad guy, you know.”
Ellis hugged her knees tightly to her chest. The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, and the morning air was still chilly. As chilly as Ty’s voice.
“Sure you are,” Ty said. “You and your asshole husband are a couple of vultures, circling around my house, looking to swoop in and snatch it away from me. And if you think I’m gonna actually help you do that, you’re dumber than I thought.”
“I’m dumb? I’m not the one who dropped out of law school and threw away a brilliant career as a lawyer. I’m not the one who walked away from a marriage the first time it hit a bump in the road, because my fragile little ego couldn’t take a dose of reality. And I’m certainly not the one who’s fixing to lose his house, and everything else, because I refused to face facts and cut a deal with somebody who could save my bacon.”
“You’ve got an interesting take on history, Kendra,” Ty drawled. “I wonder if ol’ Fuckface knows you regard him as ‘a bump in the road.’”
“Stop calling him that,” Kendra snapped.
“Stop showing up at my house, uninvited and unannounced. Stop calling me, and stop leaving me messages,” Ty said. “And now, get the hell off my property, before I call the cops.”
“I’ll go,” Kendra said, and Ellis heard her feet moving across the deck. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“But throwing me out doesn’t change anything, Ty,” she taunted. “Ryan and I will still be on the Dare County Courthouse steps on the fifteenth, and we’ll have our checkbook out. And there’s not a damned thing you can do to stop us. We’re gonna buy Ebbtide, Ty. And when we do, the first thing we’ll do is kick your white trash ass right to the curb.”
“Beat it,” Ty said. “Now.”
The footsteps were rapidly retreating. Evidently, Ty looked as menacing as he sounded. Ellis heard an engine roar to life, heard the accelerator being floored, and then, the eminently rewarding sound of Kendra’s tires, spinning ineffectively in the crushed shell driveway.
Ty chuckled. He walked over to the shower stall and poked his
head inside.
Ellis was curled in a ball on the bench, her knees pressed to her chest. She managed to smile up at him through lips turned blue. “Y-y-you d-d-da m-m-man. Now, could I please have a t-t-towel?”
45
Ellis heard the thrum of the vacuum cleaner as soon as she opened the front door. Dorie was running it across the worn rug in the living room. She waved at Dorie, and walked into the kitchen to find Madison waxing the floors. Upstairs, Ellis found Julia flitting about among the bedrooms, her arms full of new linens, pillows, quilts, and throw rugs.
“What’s going on?” she asked, catching Julia coming out of her own room. “What’s all that stuff?”
Julia pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Getting the house styled up for its big moment. And this,” she said, pointing with her chin at the stack of linens in her arms, “is lots of stuff to girly up the bedrooms. Booker and I did a little shopping at HomeGoods last night. A lot of shopping, actually.”
“But, who’s gonna pay for all of it?” Ellis asked. “Ty’s broke.”
“Don’t worry,” Julia assured her. “The price tags are all intact. As soon as these guys leave, I’ll take it all back for a refund.”
“Can you do that? Is it legal?”
“It’s not like anybody actually slept on the stuff, Ellis,” Julia said, rolling her eyes.
“Where’s Booker?” Ellis asked.
“If you were coming from Ty’s, you probably walked right past him,” Julia said, ducking into the hall bathroom. She began folding and arranging a stack of fluffy, white bath towels. “He’s out in the garage, trying to get the lawn mower started. Which I can’t wait to see—Booker using a lawn mower.”
“And all of this is for the movie people?” Ellis asked. “I was gonna just make sure all the beds were made, but Julia, this is above and beyond the call.”
“It’s nothing,” Julia said. She opened a shopping bag and lifted out a clear-glass apothecary jar, which she began filling with sun-bleached seashells from another shopping bag. She placed the jar on the back of the toilet tank, then stepped back to critique her handiwork.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Too fussy?”
“Very pretty,” Ellis said. “But is all of this necessary?”
Julia shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt, right? And anyway, we’re kind of having fun. It’s like getting ready for a big, important party. Besides, this is not all selfless. If Simon’s people use the house for the movie, Booker gets a nice finder’s fee. And if they make a movie here, maybe I can snag a job working for the set dressers. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
“If, if, if,” Ellis said worriedly. “So much riding on this.”
“The house is going to look fabulous,” Julia assured her, steering her towards her own room. When Ellis opened the door, she almost didn’t recognize the space that had been hers for nearly a month. The yellowing sheers at the windows had been replaced with simple, white-cotton curtains with ball fringe, caught back on the sides with lengths of rope. The threadbare bedspread was gone too, and in its place was a quilt in soft sea-glass shades of blue, green, and aqua. Three fat pillows were plumped at the head of the bed. The cheesy art in the room, blurry prints of lighthouses and ducks, had been replaced with large, atmospheric, black-and-white photographs of Ebbtide, the dunes, and the beach right outside their back door.
“Booker?” Ellis asked, touching one of the frames.
“Yup. We had some of his shots printed at Kinko’s, and then we stuck ’em in frames from Kmart,” Julia said. “He does nice work, doesn’t he?”
“They’re gorgeous,” Ellis agreed. “Do you think he’d sell me copies of some of these? They’d be a great souvenir to remind me of Nags Head and Ebbtide.”
Julia gave her a curious look. “Do you need a souvenir?”
“Too soon to tell,” Ellis said. “Now, give me a job.”
“Easy. Booker says the thing that will sell the producers on the house is the amazing light, and the location, of course. So we need to wash all the windows, which it doesn’t look like has happened since the Reagan administration.”
“I’ll hit the inside windows, but I’ll have to get Ty for anything requiring ladders,” Ellis said.
She went down to the kitchen and filled a bucket with ammonia and water, and found a stack of old newspapers to wipe the windows. While she was texting Ty, Dorie walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table, her cell phone in hand, a stunned look on her face.
“Anything wrong?” Ellis asked, her heart racing. “The baby’s okay, right?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. The baby’s fine. I’m just … shell-shocked, I guess. Stephen just called.”
Ellis sat down in the chair opposite Dorie’s. “What did he want?”
Dorie had both hands resting lightly on her tummy. “He said he was just checking in, he wanted to see how I’m doing. He asked about the baby, you know—if I’m showing yet, if it’s kicking yet, et cetera.”
“That’s kinda sweet,” Ellis said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“He’s hired a divorce lawyer and started proceedings,” Dorie said, her lower lip trembling. “And … he wants to buy out my share of the house.”
“Really? That’s good, right? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Dorie’s eyes filled with tears. “I guess. It’s just sort of sudden, you know? I thought I was going to have to be the one to get the ball rolling, because Stephen is such a procrastinator, but all of a sudden, he’s in a big hurry to get all these papers signed and get shed of me.”
“You were the one who was insisting on the divorce, Dorie,” Ellis reminded her. “And you just told me yesterday that it’s time for you to get on with your life. You’re even dating. Sorta.”
“Connor and I aren’t really dating,” Dorie protested. “I didn’t even let him buy me dinner last night. I paid for my own.”
“Have you kissed him?”
Dorie blushed.
“Maybe Stephen wants to get on with his life too,” Ellis said.
“Oh sure, he gets to have his life all neat and perfect,” Dorie said. She looked up at Ellis. “He’s leaving Our Lady of Angels. He’s been offered a job at Savannah College of Art and Design, in the development office. He says it’s a big pay raise, and something he’s always been interested in. I guess that’s how he can afford to buy me out.”
“That and the fact that he has a rich boyfriend,” Ellis reminded her. “Anyway, a raise means he won’t be making the same crappy salary you make. If he’s working at SCAD, it’ll mean he can afford to pay a decent amount of child support.”
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Dorie said bitterly. “He’s the one who screwed up our lives. He got me pregnant, and he cheated, and he walked out. Now, he gets the house, he gets a great new job … and what do I get?”
“You get to be a mom,” Ellis said softly. “That’s more important than a house, or a job, or money. Right? You get what you’ve always wanted: a child. None of that other stuff matters. You will be a fabulous mother, and Stephen will always have to know that he walked away from sharing a life with you and his child.”
“You make it sound like a Hallmark card,” Dorie said, sniffing. “What if I screw this up? I know I made a lot of noise about wanting this baby, but Ellis, I’m terrified. I don’t know if I can do this all by myself.”
“You won’t screw up,” Ellis said. “And you won’t be by yourself. For better or worse, you have to let Stephen be a father to this baby. And you’ve got Willa, and Nash, and the rest of your crazy, screwed-up family. And Connor, it sounds like. And us. You’ve got us, Dorie. You know that, right? We’ve got your back. Always have. Always will.”
“Willa!” Dorie said. “I almost forgot. Willa knows about the baby. Stephen ran into her this morning, and he just assumed I’d told her, and so he said something about her being an aunt. He said she nearly dropped dead of a heart attack.”
“If only,” Ellis said. “Oops.”
<
br /> “So now I’ve got to call her and tell her the whole sordid story,” Dorie said, slumping in her chair. “And then she’ll tell Phyllis, and there’ll be this big shit-storm.”
“You could just do an end run and call your mother yourself,” Ellis suggested. “Sort of a preemptive strike.”
“Nuh-uh,” Dorie said glumly. “I’ll face Phyllis when I get home. And not until.”
Dorie propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her fists. “I am not looking forward to having this conversation with my sister.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t called you,” Ellis said.
“Oh, she has,” Dorie said. “Repeatedly. I just haven’t chosen to call her back.”
“Coward,” Ellis said.
“Yup, that’s me.”
* * *
“He’s here,” Julia announced at six that evening, walking into the kitchen where the girls were congregated. Dorie was making guacamole and Ellis was squeezing limes for margaritas. Madison was coating the rims of newly purchased glasses with a mixture of lime juice and salt. “Booker just pulled into the driveway. He and Simon are walking around outside, talking.”
“Look,” Ellis said, dropping a halved lime onto the countertop. “My hands are shaking. I can’t believe how nervous I am.”
“Relax,” Julia said, tossing her hair. “He’ll love the place. Hell, I love it, now that we’ve got it all pimped out like this.”
“You did a great job, Julia,” Dorie told her, tossing the diced avocados with some of the juice from Ellis’s limes. “I never thought this house could look so good.”
“I’d make a movie here,” Madison added. “Hell, I’d live here, now that you’ve fixed it up like this.”
“It’s no biggie,” Julia said lightly. “Any idiot could do what I did. Clean windows, waxed floors, some potted geraniums and ferns on the porch.…”
“All the furniture rearranged, new curtains in all the windows, new rugs, new art, flowers in every room, the deck pressure washed, the whole yard landscaped, porch rails repaired,” Ellis said, ticking off the day’s accomplishments on her hands. “I’m exhausted just talking about it. And I think Ty’s totally overwhelmed by the change. I think he’s actually starting to think this movie thing just might happen.”
Summer Rental Page 34
