Girls in Love

by Hailey Abbott

  Drew couldn’t help but laugh, and Lara felt encouraged. She was almost starting to believe her own excuses.

  “I guess I just want to keep things as simple as possible for right now,” she finished. And I want to keep you and Marco as far away from each other as possible, too, she thought. Because she couldn’t just ditch Marco the moment Drew made his surprise appearance, could she? Well, technically she could—but she realized that she didn’t want to. She had an amazing time when she was with Marco. And she still wasn’t sure she forgave Drew for everything.

  Drew nodded. “Okay, Lara,” he said. “You’ve convinced me. As far as the Tuttles are concerned, we’re cousins and nothing more.”

  “Stepcousins,” Lara corrected.

  “Right. Otherwise the way I’m going to kiss you would be really, really inappropriate.”

  Lara looked wildly around. “Here? Now? You want to kiss me? What about what we just talked about?”

  Drew laughed. “Relax,” he assured her. “I can wait until I catch you alone in your bedroom.”

  Lara smiled at him, and reached out and tucked one of his roses behind her ear. “So you’ll pretend you brought these flowers for your mother, I guess,” she said.

  Drew nodded. “You better believe it. Maybe they’ll get me out of doing the dishes tonight.”

  “Good luck with that.” Lara smiled wryly. “She’s pretty strict on the ‘I made it so you clean it up’ rule these days.”

  “Like you need to tell me that,” Drew answered. “Don’t forget she raised me.”

  And then, as if on cue, Clare appeared in the doorway with a pitcher of lemonade in one hand and a plate of cheese and crackers in the other.

  “Who’s hungry?” she asked, grinning at them both.

  “Me,” Lara said, going straight for the cheese. She figured if she ate about a pound of Brie, she might be able to quell the queasy feeling in her stomach that she just couldn’t shake. She stuffed a cheese-smeared cracker into her mouth. If someone would have told her that she’d be kissing a hot Chilean guy one minute and her cute, sweet ex-boyfriend (or was it just boyfriend now?—she was so confused) the next, she never would have believed it. Not on her life.

  “You must have been surprised to see my son appear on the porch,” Clare said to Lara.

  Lara, whose mouth was still full, nodded vigorously. You have no idea, she thought.

  13

  Jessica flipped through the glossy pages of one of Greer’s magazines, half bored and half fascinated by the crap that people tried to pass off as fashion.

  “Look, you guys,” she said, pointing to one particularly egregious spread, in which a pouty-faced woman modeled a dress made out of what appeared to be blue and green feathers. “They’ve dressed this lady up like a freaking parrot, and they’re saying this is the perfect outfit to wear on a cruise! I mean, come on! And look at those shoes she’s wearing. Those are, like, eight-inch heels!”

  But Lara and Greer hardly looked up from their spots on neighboring teak deck chairs. Lara was painting her toenails an electric blue, and Greer’s nose had been buried in a book ever since she returned from a mani-pedi-facial appointment with her mother, Cassandra the cougar.

  “Earth to my cousins,” Jessica said again, but the girls just grunted at her.

  Jessica frowned and looked at them closely. They’d both been acting strangely for the last couple of days. Witness, for example, the fact that Greer was reading an actual book, when she’d never before been seen reading anything longer than an article in Vogue or an instructional manual to her iPhone. And though electric blue toenails were pretty much par for the course for Lara, she was being really weird lately, too. It had started the moment Drew showed up; it was as if she was still so surprised to see him that she couldn’t really be happy about it.

  Feeling slightly ignored (and annoyed), Jessica turned back to the magazine. At least Connor would be coming over any minute. He would rescue her from boredom and grumpy cousins and take her somewhere fun, like the miniature golf course or the horse stables or something.

  They hadn’t exactly talked about the tensions that had arisen at the end of the romantic date that Jessica had planned, but they’d at least told each other that they loved each other face-to-face, and not just over the phone. As Greer would put it, they’d kissed and made up.

  “How Downward Dog Can Change Your Life,” read the headline she turned to next. What in the world is a downward dog? she wondered. Hesitantly, she asked her cousins, and was met with two exaggerated eye rolls.

  “God, Jess, it’s like you live in a cave or something. They do have yoga in Ithaca, don’t they? It’s a very basic yoga position,” Greer groused. She leaned over and took a sip of the homemade lemonade that Clare Tuttle had brought them.

  Jessica stuck her tongue out at Greer, even though it was immature, because she deserved it—but she’d gone back to her book again. “Well, soooooorry for asking,” Jessica muttered.

  She looked impatiently at her watch. Still ten more minutes until Connor was due to arrive, but as far as she was concerned, he couldn’t show up quickly enough. Though relaxing on the big, sunny deck of their beach house should have been as pleasant as spending the day in a spa, her cousins were bumming her out.

  Jessica finished off her own glass of lemonade and then lay back on the lounge chair. She closed her eyes, remembering the moment Connor had first texted her that he loved her. Her heart still skipped a beat whenever she thought of that.

  With just a little effort, she’d managed to convince herself that Connor’s rejection of her advances was just a minor bump in the road of an otherwise perfect relationship. He loved her, and no doubt he was going to prove it very soon.

  She could feel the little smile forming on her lips, and she hoped that neither of her snarky cousins would say something snide about it. It wasn’t her fault she had a great guy, was it?

  Her happy musings were interrupted by the chirping of her cell phone: It was Connor. “Hey, babe,” she said as soon as she answered.

  “Hey,” Connor replied. His voice sounded strange and far away. “Listen, I can’t make it today after all. I’m sorry; can we reschedule?”

  Jessica suppressed a momentary urge to fling the phone across the deck and down onto the beach. She was not in the mood to be rejected again. But she knew that Connor must have a good reason for canceling on her, so she tried to be nice about it. “Sure,” she said. “But why?”

  “Something came up over at the house here,” he said, his voice still faint. “I’ll call you later, babe. Love you.”

  When she hung up, she felt as grumpy as Greer looked. But Jessica refused to be the kind of person who felt sorry for herself. And come to think of it, I’m not the kind of person who lets other people feel sorry for themselves, either, she thought. And so she stood up and clapped her hands together firmly.

  “All right, kids, this is ridiculous. Enough of the bad attitude. Look where we are! We’re on a beautiful Maine beach in summer! And look at us! We’re three gorgeous girls who have no excuse to lie around on a deck pouting!”

  Her cousins gazed up at her, looking vaguely amused by her outburst. When neither said anything, though, Jessica went on. “I am making an edict! The edict goes like this: No Tuttle relation may waste a beautiful day by moping!”

  “I’m not technically a Tuttle relation,” Lara pointed out.

  “Oh, shut up; you are, too,” Jessica cried. “Your mom married Uncle Mike, which makes you a Tuttle whether you like it or not, so you’d better start liking it.”

  Greer raised one groomed brown eyebrow. “Looks like Jess is channeling some kind of positive-thinking-boot-camp-instructor thing.”

  “Damn straight,” Jessica said, stomping her sandaled foot. “So get off your butts. Because we are going to Have. Some. Fun. First stop, the ice cream parlor, where you both will order something big and sweet and covered in sprinkles or else I will personally throw you into the ocean.”

>   At that, Lara laughed. She looked over at Greer. “What do you say, cuz? The kid is pretty convincing.”

  Greer looked skeptical still, and Jessica blurted, “Like I said! Greer, get off your yoga-toned, fake-tanned, True Religion ass and put on those Mary-Kate Olsen shades of yours or you will be sorry.”

  Lara exploded in giggles, and even Greer began to smile. Slowly she stood up and placed the book on the table beside her. “I’ll have you know,” she said, grinning, “that my tan is 100 percent real by now. And Mary-Kate does not wear Chanel sunglasses; she wears Marc Jacobs.”

  Jessica nearly jumped up and down with excitement. “Oh, goody, we’re all up and going,” she cried, immediately dropping the drill sergeant approach. “It’s my treat.”

  Linking arms, the cousins strolled down the path toward town, chattering about Jessica’s inspiring temporary bossiness and whether Lara’s electric blue toenails made her look edgy or like she had frostbite.

  Pretty soon they found themselves outside Izzy’s Ice Cream, a cute little beach shack painted in rainbow colors that looked almost edible itself. Flowers spilled out of window boxes and Izzy’s fat old gray cat, Jellybean, lay purring in the sun.

  “I’m going to get peppermint, mint chocolate-chip, and double-fudge mint,” Jessica declared. “It’s going to be a total mint explosion. A mint nuclear bomb!” She felt a little giddy.

  Greer perused the menu that Izzy had tacked up outside his shop for the times when the ice cream line got really long. “He has sugar-free sorbet,” she mused.

  “Don’t you dare,” Jessica warned.

  “She’s right,” Lara chimed in. “Bad moods can only be truly countered by full-fat, 100 percent sugary ice cream. It’s, like, a law of the universe or something.”

  “Fine,” Greer sighed, giving in. “I’ll have a coffee milk shake. And I’d better feel happier immediately, or else.”

  Jessica straightened her shoulders, standing up to her older cousin. “Hey! I make the threats around here!” she said and then immediately succumbed to a fit of giggles.

  “Careful, there, Tiger,” Lara cautioned, putting a hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “You look like you might crack a rib.”

  When Jessica finally got her laughter under control, she looked around, beaming. She was feeling great, and she could tell that Greer and Lara were feeling a lot better, too. She was happily congratulating herself for her excellent idea when she saw something she’d never expected to see.

  Connor.

  Connor, who’d canceled on her because “something had come up,” hurrying out of Izzy’s with a double scoop of chocolate ice cream.

  And another girl.

  Jessica’s jaw dropped, and Lara and Greer turned to see the cause of the rapid change in her demeanor.

  “Oh, my,” Lara whispered, and Jessica heard what sounded like a snarl coming out of Greer.

  The girl’s glossy red hair was tied back with a ribbon, and she wore a cute yellow sundress and a rope of pearls around her neck—like she was dressed up for a date, Jessica thought. She recognized the girl as Lily Fitzgerald, a friend of Connor’s she’d met at Chace Warner’s party back at the start of the summer. Connor had said that Lily was one of his best friends, and Jessica, of course, had taken him at his word. But did a guy really cancel on his girlfriend to hang out with someone who was just a regular friend? Jessica didn’t think so.

  Her mind felt suddenly foggy with confusion, and she had no idea what to do. She stood there dumbly, the money for the ice cream getting damp in her clenched fist.

  “Go up and ask him, ‘What the hell…?’” Greer whispered, giving Jessica a little nudge.

  Jessica felt her legs move woodenly forward. She saw Lily laugh and put her hand on Connor’s arm, and she saw Connor smiling back at her.

  Jessica couldn’t believe it. She knew she had to find out what was going on. The trouble was, she couldn’t seem to move anymore, and before she knew it, Connor and his “friend” had vanished down the steps to the beach.

  14

  The hot July sun beat down on Greer’s shoulders as she stood on the Pebble Beach Athletic Club tennis court, clutching her racquet tightly with both hands as if she planned to use it as a weapon.

  Which she did, in a way, she thought grimly. Because today was another lesson with her mother and Hunter, at whom she was still mad. Anger made Greer competitive and determined, often to good effect. (Her rage at her backstab-bing classmate Brie Marshall, for example, had meant that Greer got the much better grade in AP History.) Today, of course, Greer’s antagonist was Hunter; she’d be damned if she was going to let that blue-eyed Romeo show her up on the court, even if he had been hired to be her teacher.

  Strong backhand, powerful serve, she thought to herself. Strong backhand, powerful serve. She repeated it enough so that it became a kind of mantra.

  It was clear that Cassandra Hallsey was not feeling particularly competitive, however. She was too busy batting her eyelashes at Hunter and laughing at all of his lame jokes. (Greer wasn’t really listening, but there was one about three blind mice and a bottle of tequila that prompted her mother to bray with laughter.) Cassandra was also wearing way too much makeup for a tennis lesson, Greer noted. With her flawless, perfectly powdered skin, dark eyeliner, and ruby lips, she looked like she was ready for a St. John photo shoot—not two hours on an asphalt court under a blazing summer sun.

  Greer, on the other hand, had gone for the natural look—not that she didn’t have makeup on, of course. She had applied numerous products, including concealer, sunscreen, blush, bronzer, and mascara. But the point was that she looked barefaced, as if she’d popped out of the shower looking just that beautiful.

  “Remember that you want to aim the ball to the far side of the court,” Hunter was instructing them. “You want to make your opponent run so he or she gets tired more quickly. By making them run, you are controlling their actions, which means that you’re controlling the game itself.”

  “That strategy will appeal to my daughter, no doubt,” Cassandra noted. “She’s a bit of a control freak. Would you believe she tried to get me to change my outfit? She said my skirt was too short.” And here Cassandra playfully stuck out a long, lovely leg and gave Hunter an eyeful. He looked admiringly at Cassandra’s toned calves.

  Ugh. Her mom was officially crossing the line. If she could just stop flirting with Hunter, who was young enough to be her son, and focus on the game, then they’d all be better off.

  Maybe, Greer thought, she should have mentioned to her mother that she and Hunter had…well, history. Not that she’d divulge any details, of course, but the suggestion of, say, a kiss at a party might discourage her mother from practically shoving Hunter’s face right in between her perky, augmented breasts.

  Just then, Hunter served, lobbing an easy one in Greer’s direction. Greer slammed it back to the far side of his court, just as he’d been suggesting. Take that, she thought fiercely. When Hunter returned the ball, Greer made a mad dash for it—even though it was heading for Cassandra—and spiked a low, mean shot that landed just inside the white line and then bounced away.

  Greer one, Hunter zero, she thought.

  Hunter pointedly did not praise her technique. Rather, he saved his compliments for Cassandra’s shots, which were not half as strong or as well aimed as her daughter’s. Cassandra tittered and giggled, lapping up the attention like a cat starved for milk. Or a cougar, Greer amended silently.

  As the lesson progressed, it began to seem like Greer and Hunter were locked in a silent battle that neither would acknowledge to the other. She served as hard as she could, and he sent her shots flying back at her. Every time Hunter missed, Greer laughed inside, and every time she missed, she cursed. After half an hour, they were both sweaty and breathless, but the only communication between them was the occasional challenging glare.

  Cassandra, naturally, was oblivious to it all, and she was having a fantastic time. “Oh, look how strong you are!” sh
e’d cry when Hunter would return a ball. To which Hunter would say something sickening like, “Grace is as important as strength, and you, Ms. Hallsey, have the grace of a ballerina.” Then he’d look over at Greer with a smug grin on his face and she would mime barfing onto the tennis court.

  Because really, it was disgusting.

  “Earth to Greer,” her mother said, waving her racquet in front of Greer’s face. “We’ve got to practice here! Our time’s almost up and we need to get a few good volleys in. That woman—Monica, the one who still goes to Aspen?—is improving every day, and I’m not going to let a fishwife like her beat me.”

  Hunter idly bounced a ball on the other side of the court.

  “Hunter, darling,” Cassandra cried, “don’t you think Greer needs to step up her game a bit?”

  “Oh, I think she’s pretty good at games in general,” Hunter answered. He shot Greer a look as if to say, Games like hiding in azalea bushes and trying to get me to hit on her cousin.

  Greer had had about enough of him. She picked up a tennis ball, tossed it into the air, and served it hard, right into Hunter’s leg.

  “Ouch,” he said, reaching down to rub it.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said sweetly. “Maybe I’m not as good at games as you say.”

  Cassandra hurried across the court to make sure Hunter was okay. She’ll want to kiss his boo-boo and make it better, Greer thought. She decided not to stick around to see if Hunter would let her, so she picked up her racquet and her bottle of Evian and headed toward the locker room, a jaunty swing in her step. Hunter was a jerk all right. But he was no match for Greer Hallsey.