by Lillie Vale
I ducked my head, blushing. “Yeah? I feel like the whole town has seen our PDA, but I don’t even care. This feels—I’ve never—” I couldn’t even articulate it. “God, I’ve lost the ability to word.”
“A known side effect,” she said with a wicked smirk. “In the book of Babe and Levi: A Love Story, make sure I get all the credit!”
“Oh, I don’t know if it’s lo—” I stopped. She’d already dumped the tip jar upside down and was busy counting out the coins.
Before she noticed the pause, I started the dishwasher, unplugged all our appliances, and turned the air-conditioning down. By the time the dishwasher was halfway through the rinse cycle, Busy’s was empty.
“Divided up the tips,” said Lucy, pointing to two small piles on the counter. “I know you have a date tonight, so I can close up here, if you want.”
I shot her a grateful smile. “I owe you one.”
* * *
My bike made it up to the lighthouse in ten minutes. When I turned around, right at the crest of the hill, I could see Busy’s below, warm and lit from within with a rosy glow. A second later, the lights flickered off, and I knew that Lucy would be heading home.
Hunching my shoulders against the cool night air, I headed inside.
The faintest whisper of vanilla lingered in the air, a remnant of last night’s candle, along with the morning’s slow-cooker seafood chowder. I had half a loaf of rustic bread on the counter, and in the fridge, a wedge of cheese, a plump handful of grapes, and some crisp romaine lettuce leaves.
I lifted the lid of the slow cooker and inhaled. The savory scent of potato, carrot, and onion cooked in broth wafted upward, along with the coastal freshness of clam and shrimp. I sprinkled in a touch of pepper, putting the pepper grinder down just as the door shut.
“Hey.”
I glanced up to see a pink-cheeked Levi in front of me, tugging off his shoes. “The door was open,” he said.
I turned around to grab bowls and spoons. “Can you give me a hand with the salad?”
“Of course.” He began mixing in shredded cheese and baby tomatoes.
I started sawing through the crusty bread. “I’m kind of nervous about the exhibition,” I admitted, unable to look at him directly while I said it.
It would mean coming face-to-face with Elodie again. I’d been able to justify keeping my past with her private before, but if there was a possibility he’d stay in town …
“Why?” His nose scrunched adorably when the dressing bottle farted out a huge dollop of ranch. “Penny?”
No, but close enough. “No,” I admitted. “My ex will probably be there. I don’t really want to see her.”
I almost wanted him to ask me who it was. I wanted to be put on the spot, so I would have to answer. I stared into his face with anticipation, waiting for him to ask. It would make things so much easier if he asked me straight up.
“I’ll run interference if you want me to,” he said, a glint in his eye.
Disappointment sagged against me. Still, I appreciated the offer and was reminded once again how different he was from some of the guys I’d grown up with here. On my few post-Elodie dates, Neanderthal boys had seemed intensely threatened by my bisexuality, finding reasons to be jealous even when there was zero cause for it. Or, worse, thought it meant I’d put out just because they’d paid for dinner. My skin burned at the memories. I could still remember the crude jokes and wet kissing noises some of the middle school boys made when Penny and I walked down the hallway arm in arm.
Levi stopped tossing the salad. I could sense him looking at me, and with a hint of self-consciousness, I said, “I might just take you up on that.”
He smiled faintly as he put the bowl of salad on the kitchen table.
I pulled the grapes and cheese from the fridge. “It feels like the summer just got started, doesn’t it?” I said. “Seems like just yesterday I was handing you the keys and telling you how to work the wonky dials on the washing machine.”
It had been a strange kind of summer, fast and slow all at once. Beautiful and sorrowful. A summer of possibilities and adventure and growing up. Now, so close to the brittle fall, I felt older all too quickly. It had been the other way around before I’d graduated. Then, summer break had made me feel young, innocent, wild. Not having bedtimes or homework made summer all the more delicious. This summer hadn’t been delicious, but bittersweet. With a start, I realized that in the future, if I ever had to reach back and point to the summer when it all changed … this would be it.
I wanted to ask him if he’d heard back from RISD yet, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. I figured if there was something to tell, he would have. A queasy thought occurred to me: What if he had heard back, but just didn’t want to say anything before he absolutely had to? What if, like me, he was holding back? I hated keeping up the pretense of being okay with it, but I also didn’t want him to think I was trying to manipulate him into staying.
Still lost in thought, I ladled soup into the bowls. A layer of orange oil skimmed the surface, sloshing gently against the sides of the white ceramic. Levi accepted the steaming bowls from me while I carried the rest of the food over to my paint-splotched table.
“It’s been a good summer for falling in love,” he said.
I tensed. There it was again, that word. Love. Whether he meant with me or this town was unclear.
We sat down and as I reached for a thick hunk of bread, I said, “Yeah, Oar’s Rest tends to do that to people. The love creeps up on you.” I kept my eyes on him, waiting for a reaction.
Levi brought the spoon to his lips and blew on it. “Yes, yes, it does. It was the last thing I expected when I came here,” he said. “What about you?”
He was looking at me with expectation, but my heart was hammering wildly, echoing in my ears like a wooden spoon banging on the bottom of a steel pot.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting to break up with my friends,” I said, swishing my spoon across the surface of the soup.
“I get it,” said Levi, nodding. He ripped off a small piece of bread, then swirled the soft insides in the soup and took a bite. “Anyway, I’m jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Of the fact that everyone here knows each other, is here for each other,” he said, looking a little bashful. “It’s nice. Like everyone’s family. The way everyone pitched in after the fish fry? That was kind of incredible.”
“Why?”
“Well, most people wouldn’t be so eager to help clean up a dirty street after a festival, you know? No one wants to chase after loose streamers or sweep up trash and food that’s fallen on the ground. But here everyone just rolled up their sleeves and got to work.” He shrugged. “I don’t know where else you’d find that.”
I skimmed the spoon through the half-eaten soup and licked the back. I gave him a soft smile. “Probably nowhere.”
I didn’t need Levi to tell me that this town was special. There were many things you couldn’t find elsewhere. Trees that seemed to whisper lost lovers’ names when the wind blew just right, a beach that swallowed flip-flops and gave back books. Memories containing whole worlds.
That was what Levi forgot. Oar’s Rest held on to memories. Every first kiss, every last kiss. Every tragedy, every miracle. It was greedy for them. We’d talked about it before, but I didn’t think he realized that Oar’s Rest would hold on to him, too. The memories he left behind would be there in every grain of sand, in every wobbly plank on the pier, in every corner of my world. Places like Oar’s Rest were like that—they held on tight, tugged memories close, and gave life to the people who weren’t there anymore.
nineteen
The original Girl with Summertime in Her Eyes hung in the art center. The water-spattered sketch from almost three months ago now seemed like a distant memory. It was wild to think of how many people would view my likeness, brought to life by slashes of watercolor on sturdy white paper, framed in thin black plastic. Once Levi put it up on
Instagram, that number would explode exponentially. He’d immortalized me. Not even Elodie had thought to do that before.
From across the room, Penny stood in front of her mosaic paintings, looking frustrated and embarrassed. Her parents were both animatedly snapping photos at dozens of angles. She said something to them that made them stop for a moment, but then Mrs. Wang went right back to taking pictures, and Penny threw her hands up and spun around.
Our eyes locked. An eternity seemed to hover. Just as I thought she was going to look through me, her face eased into a slow, hesitant smile. Warmth stole across my chest.
It was all the ice-breaking I needed. I pointed to her art, then gave her a thumbs-up. Each canvas depicted an animal from the Chinese zodiac. The dragon was her masterstroke, the ferocity in his face almost popping off the canvas. It must have taken her hours to get the azure-to-jade gradient just right, but she’d pulled it off.
Thank you, she mouthed back.
The moment lingered. Neither of us looked away. Maybe we were both scared that if we did, we’d never be this okay again. But one of us had to make the first move. We couldn’t hold still because we were scared of what might happen. Even if it had been for only a few seconds, the gap between us seemed a little less wide. It would be that way again. I had to trust that it would.
I was the first to look away. And, curiously, the warm feeling didn’t go away.
A second later, Levi’s arms wrapped around my waist. His breath was warm against my neck as he whispered, “You look beautiful.” His hands settled on the white lace of my dress.
Turning around, I pretended to fuss with his black tie. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”
“How long are you going to stand here?”
“Until someone asks me if I’m the model. A few minutes ago a woman behind me kept talking about the sketch, and I was silently willing something about the back of my head to nudge her in the right direction.”
Levi’s lips stretched in a laugh, and he gently bumped his nose against mine. “Do you remember the cave?”
The memory of our first kiss brought a warm smile to my face. “Like it was yesterday.”
“Me too,” he said, touching the back of his neck in a bashful way that I found absolutely, indescribably hot.
The exhibition was a huge success, admiring out-of-towners and locals alike packed into the art center gallery. Statues were scattered around the room: men and women sculpted to scale, and abstract and geometric metal floor pieces and wall art. Some artists had opted to display their work on easels, while Levi had arranged all his watercolors together on the wood-paneled wall.
My own face smiled at me from the canvas, radiant in its happiness. Blonde hair spilling over sun-kissed shoulders, eyes alight with the kind of pervasive happiness that only an artist could capture. My face looked almost three-dimensional, the fine, precise brushstrokes both curving and harshly defined. The colors were subdued, except for the eyes. The eyes—my eyes—looked like a novel condensed into one page, like they’d leeched and muted the pigment from the rest of the canvas. They’d swallowed it all up.
“I love it,” I told him. I would have said more, but his mouth cut me off as it landed over mine. It was a slow, sweet, languid kiss. I breathed in the scent of his skin, the pine and toothpaste smell that made my nose tingle like I was about to sneeze.
By the time we pulled away, a little out of breath, and a lot smiling, I had the ridiculous urge to say Thank you.
“Sorry.” Levi rested his forehead against mine. “I just really wanted to do that.”
I tilted my lips up for a soft kiss, nibbling at the V of his upper lip. Every time he leaned forward and tried to capture my kiss, I moved, inching butterfly kisses over his lips.
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “I love kissing you.” I wrapped my arms around his middle and pressed myself close. I hugged his warmth to me, his soft shirt rubbing against my cheek. A whiff of light, woodsy cologne brushed my nostrils.
His breath hitched. My heart began a frantic thumping, fast as children’s exuberant feet as they ran themselves to exhaustion.
Levi’s laugh ghosted warm breath across my face. “Okay.”
We held the position for several seconds before he pulled away with reluctance.
“Want some canapés?” he asked.
“I’m dying for another one of those stuffed mushrooms,” I admitted, but tugged him back when he started to move away. “Wait!”
Levi lifted an eyebrow.
“Don’t you want a photo?” I pointed to one of his seascapes.
I purposely didn’t say to send your parents because I knew it was a sore spot. They’d wanted to come, but it hadn’t panned out. I knew, even though Levi didn’t talk about it, that he was disappointed.
He pressed his lips together and glanced around the gallery. Many of the other artists had brought their families for the exhibition. Achievements always seemed more exciting when you shared them with people you loved.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” he finally decided. “Where should I stand? Is here okay?”
I took my phone out of my clutch. “No, a little to the left—wait!—no, that’s it—perfect.” I snapped the picture.
“Oh my God, delete that one,” he said, covering his laugh with his hand. “I wasn’t ready.”
“It’s cute,” I protested, but I took another shot.
Levi groaned over my giggle. “Okay, let’s go eat.”
I was introduced to some of the program mentors over refreshments, which somewhat prevented me from scarfing as many mushrooms as I’d have liked. There was no polite way Levi could get out of receiving compliments, even though it was hard to keep a conversation going when I could see how quickly the mushrooms were being depleted.
Levi’s look of misery was almost comical by the time we finally got around to the salmon toast. “Why are there two platters of deviled eggs? Who decided that we really needed two dozen eggs?”
“Okay, I’m seriously going to make you some sriracha deviled eggs one day. You’ll convert.”
He made a face. “Doubt it.”
As I popped an hors d’oeuvre into my mouth, Levi put a hand at the small of my back. “Your friends are coming over,” he said.
Lorcan and Lucy, both dressed in black, had glided across the room to join us. Lucy’s smile sparkled brighter than the glittery pins in her upswept brown hair. “I saw your paintings,” she said. “They look so good.”
“Thanks,” said Levi. “I’m glad you like them.” He bumped fists with Lorcan.
The four of us moved through the room, recognizing some familiar scenery and faces along the way. A goateed guy in his late thirties—“That’s Aaron, the pretentious one of the group. He’s always name-dropping all the artists he knows,” Levi whispered—was monopolizing Ralph in a steady stream of chatter. The black-and-white photographs Aaron had taken of Oar’s Rest were stark in their simplicity, black waves crashing against rock. With some masterful photo editing, he’d created an underwater kingdom below. Tentacled creatures and hideous mermaids swam between the bones of sailors who couldn’t let go of their treasure hoard.
“Beautiful,” I whispered to Levi. “But eerie.” I wouldn’t want to look at them for too long.
Next to the photographs was an array of canvases propped up on easels. At first glance, they looked like feverish charcoal scribbles. Almost none of the white canvas was visible. Elodie stood behind them. Her eyes were on me, hard. I didn’t want to stop in front of her work; I didn’t even want to look at it. Her work was always evocative, if disquieting. It was like staring into the sun. Blinding and uncomfortable.
“The metalwork looks really nice,” I tried to say, pulling Levi away, but Elodie called out crisply, “Levi!”
Fear pushed against me. Please, please, if she hasn’t told him about me yet, don’t let her do it now.
“Hey, Elodie.” Levi changed course, and we came face-to-face with her paintings.
; Or rather, we came face-to-face with me. Lucy couldn’t hold back her shock, hand flying to her mouth. Of the eight canvases in front of us, four were of me. The charcoal looked frenzied, angry. My face was brought to life in an abstract of angry geometry, tumbling strokes of unrestrained, uncontrolled passion streaking across a white canvas. Was that how she felt?
My breath became stilted the longer I looked at myself. If the drawings had been of anyone else, I might have said they were incredible. The first charcoal sketch was of me at Busy’s, hand wrapped around a cup. The smile was in my eyes, and the care in each tendril of hair, each freckle on my nose … it wasn’t just art. It was deeply personal. The second and the third were of me in the sand. One was an aerial shot where I appeared to be asleep, the other was a day I remembered I’d been building a sandcastle with Levi. She hadn’t included him in the scene.
But the fourth charcoal, that was the one that made my stomach tighten and cramp. It was the day we’d broken up. Behind me was the lighthouse, just barely visible, houses dotted below in minute detail. My face looked stricken, pale, even though there was no other way I could look on canvas. Despite the lack of color, the look in my eyes was vivid, inviting me into the pain on my face. The pull I had to the sketch was undeniable.
This sketch was softer, almost reverent and tender. Where Levi’s painting of me played it safe, Elodie’s looked like it was designed in emotional free-fall. My stomach tightened, twisted, plummeted. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to soften the fall.
I remembered the sting of my tears, the way the chill kissed my cheeks raw and pink. The circling gulls over the lighthouse, the fishing fleet in the distance. I remembered the muted gray of the day, El’s hair whipping into a bird’s nest, her crying as she told me I deserved better. I’d felt like when she ripped away from me, she’d taken all the color with her. The gulls’ cries had taunted me as my legs buckled and gave out. As I sank to the ground, grief tumbling over and over in resounding crashes.
I felt exposed, laid bare. Everything I’d felt that day was mirrored in her canvas, as though she was trying to tell me that she understood. That she wasn’t as impervious or unaffected as I’d thought. Next to me, Levi stiffened. Vaguely, I realized Lucy and Lorcan had edged away.
