Between the Girls (The Basin Lake Series Book 3)

by Stephanie Vercier

  “You’re working really hard out here,” she says, stopping at the edge of one of the dirt piles.

  “Uh, yeah…” I say, swallowing hard, watching as her eyes scan my marked skin, entire areas dimpled or raised depending on how deep the bites into my flesh and muscle had been and how much intervention and time they’d needed to heal. I slide my shirt back on, but Claire has already seen—the damage is done.

  I wait for her to say something, to ask me what all the scars are from, but she just takes a moment, smiles and says, “I came over to apologize about yesterday. I should have called, but my sister thought this would be more personal.”

  “Sure… yeah… but you don’t have anything to apologize for,” I say, my relief at what she left out palpable.

  With my scarring apparently off the table, I can now worry about looking like a dirty, sweaty beast when Claire is absolutely beautiful, her fresh, clean smell pushing against the dirt and grime emanating from me.

  “I kind of do. I’m not sure why Austin keeps bothering me,” she says, her focus on my eyes, “but he does, and I’d completely understand if you wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  “Uh… well, I didn’t… I mean, I don’t mind.”

  She looks as though she’s expecting for me to say more than the fumble of words I manage to get out, but she doesn’t press me and seems pacified.

  “Anyway, like I said, I do appreciate what you did yesterday. I’m not exactly a proponent of fighting, but you were trying to do the right thing. I just need to be sure you know that I don’t blame you for any of it. If anything, I blame myself a little since Austin was only there because of me.”

  “Hey, I know, and it’s not your fault either… not at all.” I’m still a little breathless, more from her than the work I’d been doing.

  “Well, I just wanted to clarify I guess. I know we kind of talked about it in Spokane, but I just wanted to be sure we’re on the same page.”

  “We are,” I assure her.

  She visibly eases, appearing to be satisfied with the outcome of that particular conversation. “What are you doing here exactly?” she asks, looking at the pockmarked earth beside me.

  “Digging stumps out… or at least trying to.”

  She looks back toward the driveway and the garage. “Couldn’t you just wrap a chain around it and hook it up to the back of your Jeep or something?”

  “Eh, tried that before,” I say, my nervousness easing the more we talk. “Back in Denver, we hooked an incredibly stubborn stump up to Dad’s truck and messed up his back bumper pretty bad. He was pissed.”

  She offers a genuine laugh. “Okay, definitely better to do it the hard way then. Hey, you hungry?” She holds up the basket she’d brought over.

  “I could eat,” I tell her, even though I’m still kind of full from the breakfast Mom forced on me.

  “Okay, cool, well my mom put this together—I’d like to say I did, but I’m not that good at doing last minute stuff. Anyway, there’s some banana bread in here if you have time for a break.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I’m trying to decide on the best place to take her when Mom comes traipsing toward us with what looks like a pitcher of lemonade in one hand, some glasses in the other.

  “Hi there!” Mom calls from about thirty feet away, gaining on us.

  “My mom,” I say to Claire.

  She nods, smiles and says, “I figured.”

  “I noticed you driving up,” Mom says to Claire, the outdoor daylight making the paint splotched over her arms more obvious than when she’d been inside. “You a friend of Tyler’s?”

  “Claire Kessel,” Claire says like a full on adult. “I’d shake your hand, but they’re both full—can I help you out?” She sets the basket of food down in anticipation.

  Mom looks impressed. “Certainly. Here, if you’ll each take a glass.” She hands one to me and one to Claire. “And I’ll just pour. You like lemonade, don’t you?”

  “Love it,” Claire says, though I think she’d say that just to be nice even if it wasn’t true.

  While I’d already downed plenty of water, the lemonade is so much better, and I make the entire glass disappear in no time. When I come up for air, Claire is looking at me, having only downed about a quarter of hers.

  “My mom put this together for you.” Claire bends to lift the basket, but I intercept her, not wanting to just stand around while the ladies do all the lifting. And it’s actually kind of heavy, loaded down with what looks like jars of jam.

  “That’s so sweet! I’ll have to meet her sometime.”

  “She’s a high school teacher over at BLH. She’s got Tyler in one of her classes.”

  “Oh, does she? Hopefully she doesn’t have anything bad to report.” Mom looks at me with a teasing look in her eyes, but there’s also something in them that is deeper, concerned, like she’d expect Mrs. Kessel to share something bleak about me.

  “Doubtful. He’s in advanced chemistry with me… and he’s a really good lab partner.”

  “Partners? Well, that’s lucky.” Mom is really eating this up.

  “Not every day,” I say, not wanting Mom to read too deep into this and embarrass me. “Just when they group us up. Claire’s going to be a doctor, though. Her and Nick put me to shame.”

  “Oh, yes, Nick—he’s in your class too.”

  “He’s a great guy,” Claire adds in.

  “I’m glad Tyler is being surrounded by greatness,” Mom says with a lightness in her voice that has to go all serious when she says, “I’m sure you noticed his black eye?”

  Of course Mom would have to go there.

  Claire eyes me carefully. She hadn’t only been quiet about my scars but also about the bruised eye.

  “Does it hurt?” she asks me.

  “I’m fine… really.”

  “I don’t want him getting into fights,” Mom edges in, making me feel like a five-year-old. “I realize you don’t want to hear it from me, but maybe Claire here can remind you.”

  Claire’s face flushes an immediate red. She must interpret, just as I do, that my mother assumes I got into a fight because of her.

  Still flushed pink, she focuses on my mom and says, “Of course. I’ll do my best to keep him out of trouble.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Mom says. “Now, I should probably get out of your way. Would you like me to take the basket in?”

  “I’ll do that, Mom,” I offer, not wanting to saddle her with the lemonade, the glasses and the basket.

  We start to walk toward the house, and Mom is being just quiet enough that I have a sinking feeling I’ll be hearing plenty about Claire from her later. After Laney, she’s not exactly trusting of girls my age, and the fact that I’d already gotten into a fight over her doesn’t bode well.

  When we reach the car Claire drove over in, she says, “Hey… I guess I should be getting home. It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Duncan.”

  “You too,” Mom says.

  “You really have to go?” I lift my brows, thinking Claire was coming inside with us—I’m more than disappointed at the idea she isn’t.

  “I suppose I could hang out… if it’s okay?” She looks to my mom.

  “Oh, well of course it’s okay!”

  “Great.” I’m relieved and let out a breath so big that I think both Mom and Claire must hear the whooshing coming out of my lungs.

  Mom and Dad both thank Claire for the basket, though Dad’s introduction and interaction with her are brief. As he excuses himself to head out to the garage, he gives me this meaningful look, one that is either telling me I need to stay away from a girl as beautiful as Claire or that he’s impressed and that I should dive right into the deep end again. I’m guessing it’s the former, and I’m sure as shit not going to ask him for clarity.

  Once Mom is back to painting and keeping an eye on her Supernatural marathon, giving me and Claire some “alone time,” I cut off some slabs of the banana bread her mom made so we can take them outside
and eat on the deck. There isn’t much scenery, just some scrubby pine trees, patches of long grass and fields of farmland mixed with desert scrub that stretch out for as far as we can see.

  “This is really good bread,” I say, all that digging giving me an appetite again.

  “I’m glad you like it. I think it’s my grandma’s recipe.”

  We both take long drinks of lemonade we’d topped off inside, and I’m about to say something lame about how refreshing it is when Claire breaks in with, “Would you like to go swimming with me after this?”

  My automatic response should be a no, but I pause.

  In the close to five months that I’ve now lived in Basin Lake, I have yet to actually swim in its namesake, even though it’s big and probably one of the few fun things to do in this town. And because of that, I figure there will be a lot of people there on an unseasonably hot day like this, guys shirtless and girls in bikinis, and me basically in board shorts and a T-shirt and refusing to go into the water.

  “I’m not sure,” I finally answer, accepting that she’d seen my scars and hadn’t said anything but not wanting to risk the reaction of strangers or people I’d recognize from school.

  “It’s a really secluded spot,” she offers, reading my trepidation well. “Nobody else would see us there. It would just be you and me.”

  I ease and let out a breath. “Okay,” I finally say, convinced by an assurance I see in her eyes. “I’d like that.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CLAIRE

  Mom let me have the car for the day since Clark was coming over, so I insist on driving Tyler out to the lake. It might have been easier for his Jeep to traverse the rocky, gravel roads that lead to the different spots the locals use, but I just park the Volvo far enough up the main gravel road so as not to do any damage.

  “We have to walk from here,” I say to Tyler, turning off the ignition and sliding the keys into my bag.

  “Yeah, sure.” He doesn’t seem to mind and gets out of the car as quick as I do.

  “This is the side of the lake for the locals, where we had the bonfire, just down that way.” I point to the right where the main gravel road veers. “But you and I are heading this way,” I say, going left and leading him down a rutted path. I try not to think of the times Austin drove his truck down this very same path with me and those nights I was under the impression that I loved him.

  “So, where we’re heading… is that where you, me and Nick had our own little bonfire?”

  Tyler has sunglasses on, the aviator kind, and along with his chiseled features, his height and those strong wide shoulders of his, I find myself more than a little in awe of him. Before we’d left his house, he’d gone in and washed up, changed into a clean shirt and board shorts and has some kind of light body spray on that makes me want to draw long breaths of him in.

  “Yes, that’s it,” I say, thinking back to that night he’d been so quiet and how he hadn’t wanted to join us in the water. After seeing him shirtless in his yard today, I understand why.

  Over the years living in Basin Lake, I’ve seen countless guys shirtless out here, all of them with different body types, but I’d never seen one so… brutalized. I’m deeply curious as to how all of those scars got there, from both a clinical and personal perspective. I want to ask him, but I don’t want to embarrass him. Then again, I’m not sure how long we could go without talking about something that has so obviously impacted his life.

  He walks with continued ease before suddenly stopping. “I think I hear voices,” he says with amplified worry, almost like we’re on the run from cannibals or something.

  I stop along with him and attune my ears. “They’re down there.” I point right, just making out some distant forms up the beach. “Down at the more popular spot where the beach is better. Like I said, it will just be you and me where we’re going.”

  At that, he relaxes again. “Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “I guess I’m just not feeling very social today.”

  “No biggie,” I tell him, sort of liking the idea that I’d seen him vulnerable, like he’s sharing that part of himself with me, maybe without even knowing it.

  We march through a thicket of trees, and then back through some scrub before we hit another thicket, then wind through the rutted pathway that turns toward the lake.

  “See,” I say, the beach now in view along with the charred remnants of the wood we’d burned the other night. “That’s where our bonfire was.”

  “Hey, you’re right—looks totally different during the day. No stars out.”

  We walk over the warm, rocky sand.

  “You were looking up at them, the stars I mean.”

  “You noticed?” He takes my hand to balance me as we step over the sun-bleached log we’d sat against during the bonfire.

  I feel myself blushing again, like I did when his mother asked me if I’d noticed Tyler’s black eye. “Not like a stalker notices things, but yeah, you seemed pretty captivated.”

  He laughs, takes off his sunglasses, and we both ease down, our backs against the log. “I just like them… the stars. I don’t know any of the constellations really, but sometimes I just like to look up. It reminds me how fucking small all of us are.”

  “Tiny specks of dust in a huge universe. And I like to look up too.”

  His eyes are genuine and kind, and we don’t talk again for a little while. We both just sit against the log, absorbing the warm rays of the sun while taking in the gentle waves lapping on the shore, the animated voices of far off swimmers, the chirps of birds and the distant sound of motorboats at the north end of the lake.

  Relaxed and comforted by Tyler’s proximity, I decide to risk asking about the scars. “You don’t have to tell me about them… the scars,” I say, “but you can if you want to.”

  He looks at me, his eyes momentarily surprised. I’m readying an apology, hoping I haven’t messed things up by asking him too soon.

  “Okay. But not right now. I just want to have fun.”

  Totally understandable.

  “Fair enough.” I jump up, relieved that he hasn’t taken any obvious offense to my question and glad that I’ve put it out there that I’m interested in knowing. “I’m going to head in, but you have to turn around, just for a minute.”

  “And why is that?” He grins.

  “Because I don’t have my suit. I’m unprepared, and it’s still weird stripping down to your bra and underwear in front of a guy you haven’t known all that long.”

  “You did at the bonfire,” he says, raising his eyebrows.

  “But I had a proper bikini top and bottoms. Just turn around, Tyler,” I say playfully.

  “Fine.” He grunts out a sound of displeasure, gets to his feet and turns toward the thicket of trees behind us.

  “Okay, getting naked,” I tease, easing out of my sundress and my wedge heels—never a good choice for walking through treacherous landscape—and then I’m running into the water.

  “Not fair,” he bellows, still looking toward the trees.

  “You can turn around now!” I’m almost fully submerged, and my head is the only part of my body bobbing out of the water, water that isn’t anywhere near as warm as it looks.

  “That was quick!” He slips out of his shoes and walks to the shore, getting his feet wet. “It’s cold,” he says.

  “Yep, but it feels good!” I want him to come in. I don’t want him to feel weird about what’s beneath his shirt, but I’m not going to pressure him.

  “I’m tempted,” he says, looking up and down the shore.

  “You should be! It’s amaaazing out here.” I move closer in, jumping up and down from the lakebed. It’s not until I see Tyler focusing on my chest that I realize my boobs are bouncing up and down, breaking the surface with every move I make.

  “Turn around!” he says, just as I’m getting over him staring at my chest.

  “Why do I have to turn around?” I question, wanting to take this back-and-forth further
but not daring for fear the wrong words might make him self-conscious.

  “Just do it,” he jokes back.

  “Fine.” I push off from the silt and rocky lakebed and swim out a little further, turning onto my back and floating… weightless.

  I’m in my own little world, my eyes closed so that I don’t look up into the sun, and I’m happy, really, incredibly happy to be at the lake alone with Tyler.

  “You can look now.” His voice is so close that it startles me.

  “Oh, hey there.”

  He’s maybe six feet away from me when I rotate my body back around so that my feet are again pointing toward the bottom of the lake. His dark hair is mostly still dry, his broad shoulders and the upper part of his well-defined chest just visible under the water.

  “It feels good. I’m glad you talked me into it.”

  “Everyone eventually gets talked into it. If you live in Basin Lake, you pretty much have to go swimming, and I might actually miss it when I leave.”

  “For Seattle.” He paddles closer to me.

  “Hopefully. I’ll be doing some serious finger crossing that I make it there.”

  “I’m sure it will happen for you,” he says almost wistfully.

  “Did I tell you I was there for a wedding this past summer for one of my sister’s old friends?”

  “No. I definitely would have remembered that.”

  I like the way he says that, like he remembers everything I tell him.

  “It was so cool. I met this guy who’s in med school, and he wouldn’t shut up talking about it, which was pretty much great considering my life goals.”

  “A guy?” Tyler’s brown eyes darken ever so briefly, his shoulders tensing.

  Is he jealous?

  “Yeah… well, his name is Denny. He was really informative, but so was his girlfriend, Court—they’re both going to be doctors, so they told me I could ask them stuff anytime I wanted, kind of like my own personal mentors.”