Small Town Hearts

by Lillie Vale

  “And of course, the coffee here is better than anything back home,” Levi added.

  “There’s no way that’s true.”

  “I’m telling you that it is,” he said softly. This time, it didn’t take an accidental graze for us to touch. His hand hesitantly reached out, his eyes on mine the whole time.

  I curled my fingers around his, tiny thrills springing up my wrist. “Careful,” I murmured, before I could think better of it. “Any more flattery and I might just hold on to you for good.”

  “Maybe I’d let you.”

  We stood in silence, savoring the rare breeze that blew our way. It was balmy and warm and did nothing to alleviate the wetness on my brow. Using the back of my free hand, I smoothed it backward into my hair.

  From here, the town of Oar’s Rest resembled a labyrinth of houses and a warren of winding streets. Colorful paint peeked out, everything bright and happy like in a storybook.

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said.

  I hid my ridiculously happy grin. “Yeah, it is.”

  Birds arced above us. The salt breeze drifted toward us, and the sand, smoothed by the lacy waves of the tide, shimmered with flecks of mica.

  I chanced a peek at Levi. His face was serene, tipped upward. Maybe without my friends, I should have felt bereft, but I didn’t—not with him here. The thought brought an unbidden smile to my lips. Embarrassed, I tamped it down. It felt wrong somehow to be happy in this moment when things seemed so irreparable with Penny. I pulled my hand away from him under the pretense of messing with my ponytail.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Levi, breaking the unhurried silence, “but you don’t feel like a stranger to me. Even though, you know, you sort of are.” He threw me a quick glance. “I’ve never—I mean, this hasn’t ever happened to me.”

  I thought about Chad and Penny and wondered if we really knew each other as well as we thought, or if we’d just gotten content with being friends out of habit. I shifted on my feet. “Maybe we knew each other in another life.”

  “Nah,” said Levi. “Trust me, I’d remember.” He playfully nudged my shoulder.

  My bare skin tingled at the unexpected, pleasurable contact. I wanted him to do it again. And again. And again. It startled me how young I felt right then. Not the kind of young that made someone go head over heels, wanting to tattoo someone’s name on their shoulder or anything like that. But for the first time in years, I wondered what it would be like to kiss someone other than Elodie. The taper of his neck made me uncomfortably, wonderfully aware of how much I wanted to press my lips to the warm hollow under his jawline.

  “You wouldn’t,” I said. I meant it to sound like a joke, but it came out like a challenge. My body prickled. What was I doing? I couldn’t flirt with a summer boy!

  He caught my eye, the breeze ruffling his hair just right so he looked like he was in the frame of a movie. “Yeah,” he confirmed, voice grave and studious. “I would.”

  My reservations whooshed out of me.

  We shared the moment, smiles lingering on both our faces, until it was broken by Lorcan’s shout of “Hey, Babe!”

  I headed back to the shack, squeezing my way through the throng of people, to accept the newspaper-clad bundle Lorcan handed me. “Bon appétit,” he said, handing me a bunch of napkins.

  “Thanks.”

  “Who’s he?” Lorcan asked with frank interest. He wiggled his eyebrows in Levi’s direction. “Doesn’t look like one of Penny’s friends.”

  “He’s here for the residency at the art center. He’s, uh, Penny’s mentor.” I immediately wanted to kick myself. He was more mine than he was Penny’s. Then I wanted to kick myself again. Levi wasn’t a rope in a game of tug-of-war; he belonged to himself first and only.

  Lorcan’s eyebrows shot up. “And you’re dating him?” Even he knew how well that would go over with my possessive ex–best friend.

  “It’s a date. One. Dating would imply plural dates.” I cleared my throat. “And we’re just hanging out, it’s really casual.”

  “Then why are you so pink?”

  “It’s hot over here! Your firepit is making it about a hundred degrees!”

  “Sure, sure. Blame it on the heat,” he said with a grin.

  “And this is why we’re sitting all the way over there, so I don’t have to worry about you embarrassing me.”

  “Moi? Never.”

  I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. “Bye, Lorc.”

  “See ya, Babe.”

  I left Lorcan to his customers and maneuvered my way back to Levi, the makeshift basket of shrimp extended in front of me like a sacrificial offering. “Dinner,” I said. “The best meal you’ll ever eat.”

  “As long as it doesn’t have legs, I’m in,” Levi said, and I laughed.

  We hustled to the picnic tables, narrowly dodging a Frisbee, a dog, and a scampering child in the process. “Watch out!” I called.

  With Levi on one bench and me on the other, I put the still-scalding basket of shrimp between us in no-man’s-land. “Dig in.”

  He slid one of the bottles to me. “Cheers. To new friends.” He held his bottle by the neck and tilted the wide bottom toward me in a toast.

  “To new friends,” I repeated, tapping my bottle against his in a gentle clink. I felt a lot more confident making this toast the second time around.

  eight

  Fingers sticky, we found clean corners of the newspaper to wipe our fingers on when we ran out of napkins. Any second now, the night would come to an end—and I didn’t want it to.

  “I can’t believe I was nervous about La Mer.” Levi blew out a breath, his cheeks puffed. “I’d seen the lines here before, but you know how I feel about seafood.” His eyes crinkled in a smile. “But this … it’s amazing.”

  He glanced toward the boats moored at the dock, eyes flitting around until he found what he was looking for. I followed his gaze to Penny’s houseboat, stiffening.

  “So, tell me if I’m wrong, but did something happen between you and Penny at the party last week? I hope it wasn’t because I showed up with you.” Catching the panic on my face, he shook his head. “No, sorry. It’s not my business.”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s just stupid friend stuff.”

  He nodded slowly. “Stupid friend stuff or stupid friend stuff?”

  Penny didn’t really feel like a friend right now. She just happened to be in the same town as I was. One sliver of hope—there was only so long you could go, brushing against the same people, before you finally had to admit you were more than just strangers.

  “Long story,” I said. “Some friendships just … start to fall apart after high school.”

  “It’s not weird that I’m mentoring her at the art center, is it?” he asked, taking a swig of his soda.

  I shook my head. “Not for me.” My stomach twisted as I thought about a possible reason for his question. “Why, did she … did she say anything to you?”

  “No. I just saw her and that guy who ate your cookies head to her houseboat with some other people a while ago. She saw us, but she didn’t come over. Or wave. She just … kept going.” He shrugged. “Thought it was worth asking about.”

  Penny was with Vince. No wonder Chad was worried she was moving on with other people. “It’s not about you,” I said. “I don’t think it’s really about me or Penny, either.” I tried to hold the question back, but not hard enough. “So … what do you talk about?”

  It was weird not talking to Penny. Not knowing the ins and outs of her day, the things that made her smile and the things that made her mad. Despite the fact that I’d dropped by her houseboat a couple of times hoping for reconciliation, she’d turned from fire to ice. I knew she was inside, I’d seen her, but she refused to open the door. Even though I pounded against the door, even if I begged. She wasn’t ready to thaw yet. Our Cold War wasn’t over.

  He shrugged. “Anything, really. Art, movies, cat videos.” He paused. “She’s invited me down to he
r houseboat a couple of times to hang out. I kind of thought you would be there.”

  It sounded like they were friends. A little curl of jealousy tugged at me, but I didn’t know whether it was toward Levi or Penny.

  “Maybe I’ll see you there another time,” I said lightly. He didn’t have to know I wasn’t welcome there anymore.

  “I can let you know if I’m going,” said Levi. “That way we can meet up.”

  The back of my neck burned. I couldn’t even imagine the humiliation of showing up with him and being turned away. Or worse, if she made a scene in front of Levi and the whole awful story came tumbling out into the open.

  “Mmm.” I made a vague sound of agreement, hoping he wouldn’t push further.

  He didn’t.

  I wanted to ask him if he’d seen Elodie at the center, but I couldn’t. I may not have wanted to think about the future, but I definitely wanted to keep my past and present as separate as possible. And if tonight had told me anything, it was that, summer boy or not, I definitely wanted Levi in my present.

  “I don’t want this night to end,” I said.

  “I don’t, either.” Levi smiled as he wiped the corner of his mouth. “I’m glad you said yes to going out with me. Eating out is always more fun with a friend.” He glanced back in the direction of Lorcan’s crab shack, where business was finally winding down. “Do you and your mom still come here a lot?”

  “We used to, but now not so much,” I said. “She’s home a lot more in winter, but summer and fall she belongs to the cruise line.”

  “Does it get lonely?” He lifted his hand to gesture to the lighthouse.

  “No, I have Pen—”

  Silence hung between us.

  “I have Lucy, Tom, Busy’s. And you,” I said. “New friends, remember?”

  Levi chuckled. “I’m yours.”

  Playing along, I asked, “And what if I decide to keep you?”

  “I might let you,” he said gravely.

  It was just banter-y banter. He didn’t mean it. He was a freshly minted eighteen-year-old; he couldn’t make a decision just like that. Not when he had family and friends back home, college to decide about. Glum at the realization, I balled up the rest of our trash. “How’s the house and everything? All of it okay?”

  “Yeah, perfect.” His throat bobbed as he took a long sip. “Except for one thing.”

  “What?” I ran through the entire checklist of things I’d made sure were in order before he arrived. I couldn’t think of a single problem.

  He mock-shivered. “The sounds here are different. Creepier. Like at night, when the rumble of someone’s air-conditioning kicks in, or the shadows that jump around on the walls when noisy drunks stumble by the house on their way home. The house groans and creaks sometimes. It’s a little disconcerting. Those are the things you never notice in the city.”

  “Seriously? Old houses groan a little bit, you know.” I smiled around the mouth of the Moxie bottle.

  “Seriously. That’ll teach me to read Stephen King late at night.”

  “You know he lives nearby, right?” I asked. “And some of the movies were filmed in Maine, too.”

  “What? Really?” He blinked.

  “Yeah. I don’t think his house was marked on your map, but I could take you.” I peeked at him from under lowered lashes. “If you wanted.”

  “I want,” said Levi, each word emphatic and eager.

  “I don’t read a lot of horror myself, but I’ve never been weirded out by scary stuff,” I said. “Even though I’m on my own, I like living up there at the lighthouse. Because it’s like I’m alone, but also not alone. I can see everyone right below me. I can even see my mom’s house—your place.” I blushed a little, admitting that. “Though I’m technically watching over them, it feels more like they’re watching over me. Does that make sense?”

  “It does, actually.”

  I tapped a fingernail against my bottle of Moxie. “How are you liking the residency so far?”

  “It’s pretty great.” Levi’s eyes lit up. “I know I’m here as a mentor, but I think I’m learning as much as the mentees. Back home, it was me painting by myself. Here, I’m part of a community. There’s always someone I can talk to, bounce ideas off of. Learn something from.” He cleared his throat. “That stuff makes a difference.”

  I thought about the watercolor he’d been working on at the lighthouse. “What I saw of your work was pretty great. And I know Tom and Ralph were super impressed with your sketches.”

  His smile was adorably shy. “Thanks.”

  “Can I ask you something about RISD?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did you apply anywhere else?”

  He shook his head. I could tell that he didn’t see what I was getting at.

  “Um, it’s just … you said you wanted to see if there was anything else you were passionate about, too. Can you do that at an art school? It doesn’t seem like you’re actually getting away from anything.”

  “I…”

  I wasn’t prepared for the look of panic on his face. “Ignore me,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I didn’t even—” He broke off, swallowing hard. “I’m an idiot. You’re right, I’m—I’m not—I didn’t think this through. I just drove up here a day early, running away, and it turns out what I’m running to is the same thing that I thought I would be getting away from.”

  “You’re not an idiot. You’re eighteen. Give yourself a break.”

  “But you’re right, Babe. I didn’t think any of this through. I was rebelling against a decision that I somehow wound right back up at. I chose RISD. Not my parents, not my agent. Me.”

  “That still doesn’t make you an idiot. You can apply somewhere else, if you want.”

  He still looked a little shell-shocked. “Or I could just do what everyone wants me to do.”

  “Everyone but you.”

  “If I do what I want, I’ll spend years running around for a degree, and maybe I’ll never be as good at anything as I am at art right now.”

  “Potential doesn’t go bad, remember?” But he didn’t seem to believe in those words anymore. I could see it in his face. “So what if you waste a year? Two years? Four? You have everything you need to succeed. You’re smart, talented, tenacious. Way more driven than I was when I was your age.”

  “Which, for the record,” said Levi, “was just a year ago, Grandma.”

  “Sorry.” I blushed. “I wasn’t pulling the I’m-older-than-you card, I swear. I’m just saying that you … you have it. Whatever the it-factor is, you do. You do, Levi.”

  “What if I don’t want to waste any time? What if it’s easier to just walk the path that’s charted for me?”

  In that moment, it wasn’t Levi with me, but Penny. Penny with her dark glittering eyes and her fear of never being anything more than the slurred-together PennynChad package deal. If she’d told me she planned to break up with Chad, I hoped I would have had the courage and selflessness to say the same thing to her.

  “It would probably be easier in the short run,” I agreed. “But if it’s already charted, you’re not really going to discover anything new, are you? Success, or anything, really, doesn’t come with a pushpin. You can’t just stick a destination into a map and think there’s just the one route that gets you there. And if you wind up right back where you started … well, that’s okay, too. We get to come back from our mistakes. We have to believe that’s possible. We’re too young not to.”

  This time, I took his hand. And there was no hesitation. Not in the way I squeezed or in the way he held on tight.

  It took several moments for him to speak. “So you’re my Yoda now, basically. All wise and shit.” He rubbed distracting circles over my hand in a way that made me feel totally boneless.

  Mouth dry, I said, “Your Yoda, I am.”

  Then, in a swift change of subject, he asked, “Are you seeing anybody?”

  “Whoa! Smooth.�
�

  He broke into a chuckle. Eyes lingering on my face, he said, “Just making sure there wasn’t some boyfriend in the wings who was going to kiss my ass for taking his girl on a date.”

  I tried not to smile and failed spectacularly. “Kiss? I think you mean kick.”

  He blinked slowly. “That’s what I said.”

  I wasn’t buying his wide-eyed, innocent act, no matter how cute he made it look. There were two things I was suddenly very sure of: This was definitely a date. And judging by Levi’s Freudian slip, he was as into me as Lucy had thought.

  “Riiiiight,” I said. “I must have misheard.”

  His grin spread slowly over his face until there was no mistaking the chemistry between us. “Must have.”

  He was still looking at me with expectation, so I swallowed past the swimming serpents in my throat. I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to taste him. A shiver danced down my back. And judging from his slip, he wanted to kiss me, too.

  This was getting dangerous. Changes had never been for the better, not in my experience. Breaking my own rule and kissing Levi right now would be a big change. And in the end, no matter what the rest of this summer brought us, I would lose him like I’d lost everyone else.

  I gently extricated my hand and cleared my throat. “There is no jealous boyfriend waiting in the wings to beat you up. I haven’t been serious about a guy for a while. My ex and I … She was a year ahead of me in school. But she didn’t really believe in long-distance relationships—so she went to college, I stayed here.” I waited to see if he would show any reaction. He didn’t.

  “Sorry.” He made eye contact with me. “That sucks. I know what it’s like to have someone move on without you.”

  “What happened? If you want to tell me, I mean.”

  “A girl I liked in high school made me think that she liked me, too.” He locked his fingers together like a cradle. “I thought she was my girlfriend, but she actually wanted to be some other guy’s girlfriend. I was just some dude she kissed a few times to make him jealous.”