by Lillie Vale
I put the mask back on. Wearing my heart on my sleeve had only brought me pain. Though it galled me to wait on her, I forced myself to say, “Can I get you something to eat or drink?” It would have been on the house before.
“Can you do any of the drinks without sugar?” Elodie asked, tapping her French-manicured nails against the counter. “I’m trying to cut back.” I saw the glitter of the rings she wore, contrasted against the color of her skin. She never used to wear this much jewelry—maybe it was a California thing.
“Yeah, of course,” said Lucy.
“Okay, I’ll have a small caramel hazelnut. No whipped cream, no sugar, and easy on the creamer.”
“Hey, Elodie, c’mere!” John called out, scraping his chair against the floor so he could mime a lewd grasping motion. His father owned the hardware store, and John had gone into business with him last year so Martin & Son could finally live up to its name. “Babe,” he said, grinning at me, “quit hogging her!”
Oh, he was welcome to her.
“Coming!” Elodie trilled right back, spinning around to give him a dazzling smile. But while Lucy prepared her drink, she stayed at the counter.
I could feel the tension strumming between us, and was incredibly grateful when Lucy defused some of it by saying, “I love your rings.”
Lucy’s words broke the silence, and Elodie let a genuine smile pass over her face. She twisted her left hand to give Lucy a better look. Her glossed lips curled into a foxy smile. “Thanks. It’s kind of silly, but I like to reward myself with a little something after I finish a piece.” She tapped the ring on her middle finger, a thin silver band with a turquoise teardrop center. “This was from last month, to celebrate the end of the semester.”
The door of the coffee shop opened and a couple came in with two young children. “I’ll get this,” Lucy said quickly. She skedaddled with a wave to Elodie, leaving me with the rest of her transaction.
I held Elodie’s drink out, but she made no move to leave. She cradled the coffee cup against her chest and bit her bottom lip, looking chagrined. Ignoring the beckoning whines and calls of her friends, she leaned against the counter.
She swirled her straw. “So what have you been—”
“Can I get you anything else?” I asked, determined to play it cool. I wouldn’t have an emotional response to her. Not again.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
Why the hell was that her business? I sucked in my cheeks. It wasn’t fair. Elodie wasn’t allowed to just swan back into my life and expect me to answer her questions. Maybe last year I would have. But I wasn’t that girl anymore. And Elodie, too embarrassed to even say hi to me in front of her mom, was exactly the same girl.
The seconds inched by. Elodie pursed her lips. “Babe.”
That one word threatened to undo my glued-together pieces. I forced myself to keep civil, even as my insides thrashed and nausea rose in my throat.
“Is this about…” She passed a hand over her face.
When I didn’t say anything, Elodie sighed and looked down. “I’m sorry. I … I know you saw me yesterday. I just—I couldn’t. I was with my mom.”
Even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do this, I found myself saying, “You could have just said hi.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I know. Believe me, I felt like such a coward turning away from you, but … you know the deal with my parents. They just wouldn’t—I mean, for God’s sake, my mom’s as Waspy as you can get. She’s so judgmental about stuff like this. And just telling her wouldn’t be enough—she’d want to talk it to death.” Elodie exhaled in frustration before sweeping a surreptitious glance around us. “Sometimes I think she thinks sexuality is a trend. If I’m not ready to put labels on anything, I’m definitely not ready to defend myself to her. Or to anyone.”
“It was just hi, that’s it. She wouldn’t have read anything into it. One word wouldn’t have given you away.” I didn’t want to hear her excuses. “It’s not like I would have said or done anything to out you,” I whispered.
But I could see from the look in her eye that even that would have been too much to ask for.
I paused. “Did you think I would?”
She didn’t answer me directly. “Maybe I did it for myself, too,” she said. Her eyes slid away from me, but I’d already seen the sheen of wetness. She didn’t blink, and I knew why. “I told you before I left that I just wanted a clean break, that I didn’t want to hang on to … to anything from here. And I meant it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t spend the last year regretting it.”
Meanness burned inside me. “You feeling sorry doesn’t change anything.”
“No, no. Of course not.” She seemed startled. “I … I should join my friends.” She lifted her cup, still unblinking. “Um, I’ll see you around, I guess.”
“I guess,” I echoed, watching her drift back to her table. The tips of her dark brown hair skimmed the waist of her high-rise shorts, swaying as she walked. She might have gotten her dark curls and light brown skin from her dad, but the extent to which she cared about other people’s opinions was all from her mom.
“Thank God I missed all that,” whispered Lucy as she joined me behind the counter. She dumped a tray in the sink and turned on the faucet. “You could cut the tension with a knife. ‘CalArts, that’s what we in California call it.’ Jeez, how pretentious.” Lucy punctuated the sentence with an eye roll. “And what was all that clandestine whispering going on between you two? Why did she say—were you two, like, together together?”
“It was nothing. Just some stupid drama from last year that we never really resolved.” It wasn’t my secret to tell, anyway. I hoped Elodie could feel the holes my eyes were boring in the back of her head. “Trust me, Lucy. I couldn’t care less about her. The sooner she goes back to California, the better.”
* * *
“Hey, sweetie, what’s going on?” was the first thing Mom said when she answered her cell phone. Then, fainter, “Abby, it’s my daughter. No, no, don’t pause it.” Mom’s breath came across the phone line, along with the distinct sound of a closing door.
“Did I interrupt your movie?” I asked, punching buttons on the microwave to reheat last night’s dinner, four-cheese macaroni with truffle oil.
“No big deal, sweetheart. Abby’s just nursing a bit of a broken heart, and you know Katherine Heigl movies always cheer her up.”
“What happened?”
“Her fiancé doesn’t want to settle a date for the wedding.” Mom dropped her voice. “The wedding might be off.”
I vaguely remembered meeting Abby’s fiancé. Nondescript sort of dude with serious commitment issues. Something that Mom had agreed with, and Abby had willfully ignored. “I would say I’m sorry to hear it, but I think she’s probably dodged a bullet.”
Mom’s sigh sounded heavier over the phone. “Sometimes a roommate just has to listen instead of saying ‘I told you so.’”
When I turned eighteen, Mom decided to move to Bar Harbor. She and her friend Abby worked on cruises from May to October, and in the winter months, Mom made jewelry for the Etsy shop she ran. By the summer, she would have hundreds of pieces ready for the charmed tourists in Bar Harbor and Oar’s Rest, too.
When Mom was a little girl, her mother had taken her beachcombing and had shown her how to make jewelry with their finds. Sand dollar earrings, cowrie shell necklaces, sea glass pendants, and silver spoon bracelets. The first spoon they found, probably washed up on the beach from someone’s summer house, Gran taught Mom to bend into a cuff bracelet. She wore it to this day, claiming it was an antique and would probably be the only thing of value in my inheritance.
“So, um, I guess you’ll be sticking around Bar Harbor for Abby, then?” I asked, shooting a wish into the universe that she would be coming home soon. I wanted my mom, but I didn’t know how to ask for her.
“I should be able to stop by sometime next week before my ship leaves.”
It wasn’t the answer I wa
s looking for.
“Maybe you and I can even go shelling, if you’re free,” Mom added, as though it was my schedule that made it hard for us to get together.
The microwave beeped and I swung open the door. The aromatic fragrance of steamed cheese and earthy truffle wafted out. I poked a fork into the center of the macaroni before carrying it out to my small dining table.
“Yeah, Mom. Sounds good.” My words felt about as empty as her promise.
She didn’t want to end the conversation, intent on grilling me for details about our tenant, but I told her my dinner was getting cold and I’d FaceTime her later. By the time I hung up, my macaroni was lukewarm.
* * *
After doing the dishes, guilt reared its ugly head when I realized I’d made a vague commitment to go to Penny’s party. Even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, I felt like I should. I took my cookies with me as a peace offering for when I came clean about what had happened with Chad.
I decided to walk down to town instead of biking. I needed to work up the courage to talk to Penny, which would have been a lot easier to summon if I knew what I planned to say. In Oar’s Rest, friendships lasted forever. Tom and Ralph had been friends since they were three, and I’d always hoped for that same kind of bond with Chad and Penny. I wanted a lifetime of watching fireworks from the houseboat, eating sweet strawberry granitas on the boardwalk, measuring my life in cups of coffee and summer freckles.
But graduation had changed everything. I’d been content to stay at Busy’s, and had ignored the college financial aid forms the guidance office sent home. Looking back, I don’t know what I’d expected to happen. That all three of us would stay immortalized at seventeen, preserved like mosquitoes in amber, teenage Lost Boys who never grew up, maybe.
I’d never expected everyone’s path to take them in a different direction—away from me.
The walk to town took a little over twenty minutes. A curve of the road overlooked the beach, with just enough room for two cars to pull up. One car was empty, guidebooks and a clipped bag of potato chips in the back seat. In the second car, a young couple was kissing in the front seat.
These tourists were the first harbingers of summer. In a few days, Oar’s Rest would be theirs.
“Hey!”
The door of the grocery store closed behind Levi. In his hands were two shopping bags, a baguette and some leafy greens poking out the top.
“Hey,” I called out.
He jogged across the street to meet me. “I had a really good time yesterday.” He put the bags on the ground. “I was about to cook dinner tonight. Would you like to join me?”
Hesitation danced on the tip of my tongue. I should say no. Just as the houseboat would always hold the memories of sleepovers and Fourth of July fireworks and too much beer, the places I shared with Levi wouldn’t belong to me anymore. That was the risk of summer boys. They always outgrew summer.
But here was Levi, looking at me like he wanted me to say yes. And I wanted to, even if it meant breaking my own rule. I wanted to know who I could be when it was just me—when I wasn’t a package deal, a buy-one-get-one Chad and Penny. I wanted to know who he was.
“I already ate,” I said. “But I could watch you eat?” Realizing that sounded weird, I added, “I mean, I could keep you company.”
We shared an awkward smile over my little stumble. Well, I’m sure mine was awkward. He just seemed happy.
Belatedly, I realized I’d just overwritten my plans for Penny’s party. If I wanted to get the three of us back together—my perfect summer back, too—then I couldn’t get sidetracked by whatever this thing was between me and Levi. Even if I wanted to. I hated to dim his smile, but at the end of summer, he would leave. My friends would still be here. They, not him, needed to be my priority.
I hefted the weight of the cookie platter in my hands. “Actually, I may have said yes too soon,” I had to admit, face scrunched with ruefulness.
Levi’s face fell, but recovered quickly.
“It’s just … I told a friend I’d go to her party tonight. But you could—you should come.” I pointed to the docks. “It’s the houseboat with all the lights.”
He lifted his bags. “But what about—”
“We can drop them off first.”
“Is it okay that I just show up with you?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
And the flush of heat that crept over my skin had everything to do with the temperature, and nothing at all to do with the adorable boy standing in front of me.
Nope, nothing at all.
* * *
It was warm and I could feel the beginnings of perspiration on the back of my neck. The sun was streaked with the colors of clementine skin and blood oranges. The first stars were almost visible.
Even from the beach, I could hear the raucous laughs and music coming from Penny’s houseboat. It wasn’t a modern monstrosity of plastic and glass, something out of a millionaire’s playbook. It was rustic wood, painted electric blue, with yellow trim and smudged windowpanes overlooking scrawny flower-box petunias.
I could see people milling about on deck, drinks in their hands. Everyone glowed with the sun. The pier stretched ahead of me, boats moored on either side. Wrist-thick rope coiled around sturdy wooden poles, anchoring the boat to the dock.
Everyone saw us coming. Against the warm gold of the sun and the sand and everything in between, Levi’s white tee and my white sundress stood out like beacons. Several shouts of Babe! heralded our entrance.
Lucy, dressed in a navy-blue crop top and skirt, waved from Lorcan’s crab shack. She used a napkin to swipe at her forehead. People were sprawled on the sand, waiting for their meals. Summer nights were busy ones for a one-man operation, and Lucy helped him out whenever she could.
The sizzle of fire-grilled lobster and shrimp married with the tang of salt water carried over with the balmy breeze. My mouth watered. Grilled seafood was my favorite smell in the world—freshly ground coffee beans came a close second.
“I love this view,” said Levi, pointing to the colorful shacks and cottages dotting the beach. “These are all the original fishermen’s cottages, aren’t they?”
He’d been reading some of the pamphlets I’d left in the house for him. My heart blew up. I liked him even more.
He closed his eyes, letting the last rays of sun warm his face, lips curved into a beatific smile. His face radiated the same kind of wonder and appreciation that I felt every day in this town.
“The town is pretty strict about maintaining the authenticity,” I agreed. “There’s lots of regulations about renovations and paint colors and stuff.”
I pointed to Lorcan’s restaurant, La Mer. “Eaten there yet? It’s the best fresh-caught crab you’ve ever had in your life.”
“Never eaten it. Too many, uh, arms and legs.”
I laughed, relishing the revolted expression on his face. “You eat drumsticks, right? Chicken wings? Exactly where do you think those come from?”
“The freezer section,” Levi said, shooting me a grin.
We were close enough to the houseboat for people on board to turn and wave at me energetically. I raised my hand in return, spotting Penny’s glossy black head as she wove through the crowd like an eel.
“Babe!” Her shriek carried across the air. Her skinny arms went around me in a bone-crushing hug. “You’re here!” She released me from her hold long enough to stare deep into my eyes and go in for a peck on my lips, her signature greeting. Her pupils were dilated, eyeliner smudges at the outer corners of her lids and Twiggy-esque clumps of mascara on her lower lash line.
Her eyes landed on Levi with surprise, then slid to me in question.
“This is Levi,” I said. “He’s renting my mom’s house for the summer.” I gestured to my friend. “Levi Keller, Penny Wang.”
“Whoa, small world.” Levi ran a hand through his hair. He gave her a smile. “Hi, again. Sorry for crashing like this. Cool party.”
I looked between them. “Sorry … you’ve met?”
“He’s going to be my mentor at the art center,” said Penny. “We just got the email today about our matchup. I had no idea you’d be so—” She laughed. “Young.”
Levi’s smile grew. “Yeah, the word mentor makes me think of an old dude with glasses.”
“And probably a dweeby sweater,” said Penny.
Ice broken, I relaxed. For a moment, I had thought Penny wouldn’t like my bringing Levi along. I wasn’t in the habit of just showing up with people.
“Hey, I baked these for you.” I handed her the plate of cookies.
Her face brightened. “Thanks!” Before I could stop her, she turned to one of the guys and said, “Hey, Vince, could you just put these out on the counter for everyone?”
I opened my mouth, but it was too late. He’d already taken the plate from Penny with a wolfish gleam in his eyes. A second later, he’d stuffed one in his mouth.
Those cookies were for her. They were her favorite. I hadn’t wanted them to be put out as a party snack. But I knew they’d all be gobbled up by the end of the night.
As Vince ambled to the kitchen, Penny sized Levi up. “You want some weed?”
Levi started.
“The drinks are back there,” said Penny, pointing behind her. “Coke, wine, beer, you can pick your poison.” She shot him a teasing grin. “Tap water if you’re not into having fun.”
My eyebrow twitched. There were more ways to have fun than getting blackout drunk.
“Uh, okay. Can I get you ladies anything?” Levi gave me a faint smile.
