Girls in Love

by Hailey Abbott

  Drew’s brow furrowed with concern. “Do you need to go home?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but you stay here. I’m just going to go home and go to bed.” She leaned over to kiss him good night, and then she fled the party as fast as she could.

  Chace Warner, who was standing on the front porch holding a fistful of sparklers, bade her a drunken farewell. She waved to him as, one by one, the sparklers fizzled out in his hands.

  She felt a little like a sparkler herself—briefly shining and bright, and then cold and cheap and useless. You’ve gotten yourself into a real mess this time, Lara Frances Pressman, she thought. And then she disappeared into the cool July night.

  19

  NOT UP 2 PARTY – SORRY – T2UT. XOXO.

  Jessica stared at her phone in disbelief. Connor was bailing on Chace’s party? It was totally unlike him to miss a chance to hang out with all of his friends. Connor was the kind of guy who’d go to a party even if he had mono, chicken pox, or any number of communicable diseases. She knew for a fact that he’d checked himself out of the hospital AMA (against medical advice) with a broken foot, just so he could make it to his older brother’s graduation bash. (“And I even danced once I got there!” he’d told Jessica gleefully.)

  She sighed and glanced down at the outfit that she and her cousins had spent nearly two hours assembling: a sleek, fitted cotton Calvin Klein tank paired with a flirty little ruffled skirt, Nine West strappy platforms, Lara’s necklace, and the multicolored bangles that she’d gotten on sale (for three dollars!) at Forever 21. Her hair had been pulled back into a messy, effortless-looking twist (which had naturally taken plenty of effort to perfect), with wispy golden tendrils framing her face.

  It was such a shame to waste all that fashion, she thought. Without Greer and Lara to help her, Jessica was fairly certain she’d never look this put together again.

  NOT GOING IF UR NOT GOING, Jessica texted back. U BETTER HAVE A GOOD EXCUSE THO.

  Her mother breezed by in the hall, carrying a tray of drinks for the grown-ups, who were gathered down on the beach. “Aren’t you supposed to be gone already?” she chirped.

  Jessica didn’t bother to answer. Instead she got up, squared her shoulders, and strutted down to the garage. She wasn’t going to sit at home and mope about missing Chace Warner’s birthday. She was going to find out exactly why Connor didn’t feel up to the party.

  Twenty minutes later, she was parked outside his house in her mom’s Volvo, feeling sort of like a creepy stalker. But she told herself that she was only doing this to make sure he was okay. What if he’d suffered a concussion while surfing that rendered him permanently disinterested in soirees and get-togethers? What if he’d gotten sunburned so badly he had temporarily lost the use of his legs? What if—and she hated herself for thinking this, but she couldn’t help it—what if he’d gotten a call from Lily and had decided to spend time with her instead?

  She tried to shake that last unpleasant notion from her mind by turning on the radio. All the stations were set to oldies and easy listening. Jessica had to search around to find a DJ who was playing songs that weren’t twice as old as she was.

  As the familiar sound of a Beyoncé number piped through the speakers, Jessica leaned back and waited. Darkness had fallen, and the windows of Connor’s house glowed warm and welcoming. She saw the silhouette of a cat in one, and the outline of a big houseplant in another. She watched as a shadowy figure, probably Connor’s dad, passed from one room on another holding what looked like the handle of a broom.

  Yes, she was definitely a creepy stalker.

  Just as she was getting ready to start the car and go home, she saw Connor emerge from the front door. Judging by the bounce in his step, it wasn’t sickness or a concussion that was keeping him from the party. She watched as he got into his convertible Carmen Ghia and pulled out of the driveway. She ducked down in the front seat as he passed by.

  Feeling highly suspicious, she followed him, keeping what she hoped was a good distance from his vehicle (her experience tailing someone was limited to watching episodes of Law & Order). He drove into town, past Ahoy, where a party was going full force, past Izzy’s, past crowds of people enjoying the summer evening. Finally, Connor turned into the parking lot of Dave’s Super Supermarket.

  Grocery shopping? Jessica thought. He blows off a party to go grocery shopping?

  She considered following him inside the cool, fluorescent-lit store, but then decided to stay outside. After all, it was one thing to pursue him in a car, in the dark, and another entirely to trail him up and down the soup aisle.

  When he reappeared five minutes later, he carried a brown paper sack, the contents of which she couldn’t guess. It had better not be some more ice cream for Lily, she thought bitterly.

  And so once again she tailed him along the quiet Maine streets as the moon rose in the sky and the bats began to circle in the air. In the distance, she heard the boom of fireworks. She was so engrossed in her pursuit that she paid no attention to where Connor was heading. So when he stopped his car and got out, she was shocked to see that it was in front of her very own house.

  Thinking quickly, she kept on driving for a little while, and then she circled back and pulled into her driveway.

  “Hey you,” she called, seeing him mount the steps to her front door, “what are you doing here?”

  He turned and greeted her with a giant smile. “Hey yourself,” he answered. “Where’d you come from?”

  “I just got home from…I went to Ahoy to see if Drew was there,” she lied.

  “Cool,” he said, obviously seeing nothing out of the ordinary in that. “Well, when you said you weren’t going to go to Chace’s party, either, I realized I’d have the chance to see you alone. Which was what I wanted in the first place. I brought you something.”

  She took the paper sack from his outstretched arms, and looked inside to see a box of Hostess doughnuts (her favorite guilty pleasure) and a beautiful bouquet of delphiniums and freesias (her absolute favorite flowers). “Oh,” she gasped, “they’re wonderful!”

  He was smiling at her so happily that it erased all doubts about Lily from her mind. No guy could be this sweet and still be a cheat, she told herself.

  “You’re the best!” she said, meaning it.

  Connor hugged her tightly, then took a step back and shrugged. “What can I say? I am a very excellent boyfriend. Possibly the very best there is anywhere,” he said pompously.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she answered with mock seriousness. “You might have to show up with some serious jewelry to earn that title. Have you seen that crystal necklace my brother got Lara for Christmas?”

  Connor put his hands over his heart. “What, that gorgeous ring I got you from the gumball machine the other week wasn’t enough?”

  She swatted his arm playfully, and then motioned him to come inside. “Let’s go up and sit on the deck,” she said, and he took her hand and squeezed it.

  Thankfully the porch was empty, and so they cuddled together in one of the big lounge chairs. The cool breeze sighed through the beach grasses. Way out in the water, they could see the twinkling lights of ships sailing through the night to far-off destinations.

  “So how come you didn’t want to go to the party?” Jessica asked, burying her face in his neck. He smelled like sunshine and soap. “You said you’d see me tomorrow.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “I just didn’t feel like going, but I didn’t want to stop you from having fun.” He pulled her closer to him. “But now we can just be together without a lot of crazy people running around. We couldn’t do that at Chace Warner’s house. It’d be like trying to have an intimate moment at Maine’s version of the Playboy Mansion.”

  She looked up and met his steel-gray gaze. “I really love you, you know,” she whispered. She decided not to ask him about the sex thing tonight—to, for once, just let her worries go.

  Connor’s smile was so big she thought his face would crack. “I
love you, too,” he replied.

  And then they didn’t talk anymore, because they were making out like two teenagers in love. Which was exactly what they were.

  20

  Greer shoved her wedge espadrille sandals into her locker at the Pebble Beach Athletic Club and then slipped on her tennis shoes. It was too bad one couldn’t play tennis in heels, she thought, because sneakers were so boring—even her pearly John Paul Gaultier ones, which she’d snagged for a mere eighty dollars at the Barney’s sample sale.

  At least she’d started to enjoy her tennis lessons, though. Ever since her hookup with Hunter at Chace Warner’s birthday party, things had been going much more smoothly on—and especially off—the court. Her backhand was much better, and her mother’s tendency to swat the ball into the net instead of over it had almost been completely conquered.

  Of course, Cassandra was still drooling over Hunter and every other male under the age of fifty, but Greer had mostly learned to ignore it. She just wants to have a little fun, Greer would remind herself whenever she saw her mother flirting. She just wants to have a little fun. It had become a kind of mantra.

  And her mother did seem to be in better spirits, which was nice. When Cassandra wasn’t being obnoxious, Greer actually enjoyed getting coffee or doing yoga with her. And when she was being obnoxious, she just focused on tuning it out; she told herself that her mother wasn’t her problem.

  Greer attributed her uncharacteristic peace of mind to sun, sea, and…sensuality, to be delicate about her relationship with Hunter. Not that Greer and Hunter spent all their time horizontal—far from it. Just last week they’d bicycled to a neighboring town, where they’d traded in their bikes (temporarily, that is) for a couple of horses so they could take an oceanside trail ride. Greer, who was an accomplished equestrian but a terrible cyclist—after all, New York City was hardly prime biking territory—had done very well cantering down the beach on her bay gelding, but had managed to wipe out twice on her little Schwinn. Hunter had the opposite skill set, and it was an unending source of amusement for Greer to watch him bouncing up and down in his saddle, clutching his mount’s mane in a desperate attempt to keep from sliding off. When he let go of his horse just long enough to shake his fist in mock anger at her, she nearly howled with laughter.

  And two days ago, they’d driven Sadie all the way to the aquarium, where they had been able to touch starfish and sea urchins (Gross, Greer had whispered as she felt the cold, rough surface of a pink starfish) and watched trained dolphins do tricks in exchange for little silver fish. Hunter had threatened to buy her a T-shirt that said Gut Salmon? but she told him she’d rather walk naked down the middle of the street than wear such a thing. “I’d like to see that.” Hunter had smiled, and she had given him a playful shove that devolved, somehow, into yet another lip-lock.

  Not that everything was 100 percent perfect: Hunter may not have been the player Greer thought he was, but he was an incorrigible flirt. He made waitresses blush with his charm and his compliments, and he had the ticket taker at the aquarium panting after him like a dog in heat. But, Greer reasoned, flirting was harmless. As Hunter had told her over and over again, she had no reason to be jealous of anyone. And as she told herself, she’d certainly done her share of flirting in life, so she could hardly blame him too much.

  All in all, she felt the way she’d once felt with Brady—that things were working out, that summer was a perfect time for romance, and that she might even love Hunter a little.

  No matter what, though, she refused to be all gushy-gooey-gaga over him the way Jessica had been over Connor ever since she got the Lily business sorted out. Greer shuddered a little at the thought. Her cousin and Connor Selden were so disgustingly cute together, so disgustingly in love, that they ought to hand out barf bags to anyone in their immediate vicinity.

  Her phone beeped then with a text. Speak of the devil—it was Jessica. Greer opened up the picture message. In the photo, Jessica and Connor were each grinning hugely and holding up a giant stuffed-animal version of the iconic Maine lobster.

  “Barf,” Greer muttered to herself. Naturally, though, she wrote back 2 CUTE U 2!! Her vaguely misanthropic and cynical tendencies aside, she didn’t want to be the one to rain on their young-love parade.

  She looked at her watch—it was almost time for her lesson. Rather than being her usual five fashionable minutes late, she decided to head out to see Hunter early. Maybe they could get a couple of volleys in before her mother showed up draped in diamonds and a cloud of perfume. Or maybe, she thought, feeling naughty, they could sneak into the locker room for a little pregame private time.

  But the court was empty, which surprised her, because Hunter was always early. Had she gotten the time wrong? She checked her watch again and reassured herself she hadn’t. She stood around idly for a while, enjoying the sun on her face and bare arms, until she began to get impatient. Where was he? And where was her mother?

  After another few minutes, Greer decided to ask the large, unfriendly woman at the PBAC front desk if Hunter had called in sick. She left her racquet on a bench and walked toward the entrance to the athletic club.

  There was a little gazebo on the club’s grounds, a quaint cedar structure nearly covered in flowering vines—wild roses, wisteria, and some other flowers Greer couldn’t name. She’d seen couples in there, cuddling after their workouts (which, honestly, she’d always found a little gross—wouldn’t you want to be clean before you snuggled up to someone?). As she passed it, she saw that, as usual, there was a couple in its shady enclave. The woman was leaning over the railing with her back to Greer, and the man was rubbing her back tenderly.

  “That feels so good,” she heard the woman say. Greer froze. The voice was intimately familiar.

  She leaned over and squinted into the gazebo’s shade. And who did she see but her mother—being lovingly massaged by Hunter.

  The anger Greer felt then was so powerful it nearly blinded her. She wasn’t surprised at all to see her mother in a compromising position. After all, she’d been flinging herself at men all summer, while Greer had been trying her best to live and let live. But it was one thing when her mother threw herself at a golf pro, and it was another thing entirely when she threw herself at Greer’s boyfriend.

  And that was leaving aside the issue of Hunter’s complicity. She was even madder at him than she was at Cassandra.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” she hissed, her fists clenched.

  Her mother whirled around, a startled look on her face. “Greer!” she cried. “I was going to meet you on the court!”

  “You mean after you got your little love session on?” Greer yelled. She was certain that she’d never been this mad before. She could feel her whole face burning in anger.

  “Hey,” Hunter interjected, coming toward her. “Calm down.”

  “Don’t you tell me to calm down,” Greer hissed. “And get your paws off my mother.”

  Hunter held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “She was hurt, Greer,” he said quietly. “She hurt her back returning a serve.”

  Greer turned to her mother, who was looking at her with a deeply wounded expression. “Greer, honey,” she said, “it’s true. He says I pulled my latissimus dorsi muscle.”

  As she saw her mother’s heavily made-up eyes fill with tears, Greer’s certainty that she had caught them in the midst of something deceitful began to crumble.

  “You—” she began accusingly, and then stopped.

  Her mother stepped gingerly out of the gazebo, clutching her lower back. She didn’t seem to be able to stand up straight.

  “I’ll just go on into the clubhouse,” Cassandra whispered. “Maybe you two have something to talk about.”

  Greer turned back to Hunter, who was staring at her in disbelief. His blue eyes were dark and troubled.

  “I thought—” she said.

  He shook his head. “No, you didn’t think. You just jumped to a conclusion because you’ve never
really trusted me.” His voice was low and cold. “I really thought things could work out between us, Greer. But now I see that’s impossible. Because I refuse to be with someone who automatically assumes the worst about me. I don’t need that in my life.”

  And then he turned and walked away.

  Greer watched his retreating back. Mute with sorrow and embarrassment, she felt the prick of tears in the corners of her eyes. She threw the tennis ball she’d been carrying as far as she could. It hit a distant tree with a loud thwack.

  “With an arm like that, cutie, you should be playing baseball, not tennis,” remarked a guy in a PBAC sweatshirt.

  Greer glared at him. If she’d had another ball, she would have thrown it right at his leering face. Instead she gave him the finger, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

  21

  “What do you think, gold or blue?” Lara asked, holding up two silky ruffled tanks. She was having the worst time getting ready for the big barbecue that Connor’s family held every August. She’d ripped the dress she’d planned on wearing and spilled Coke on her second-choice skirt, so not being able to decide between the two tops was the least of her worries. (And indecision seems to be a problem of yours lately, piped a little voice in her head. Who will it be, Marco or Drew? Gold or blue?)

  “Blue,” Jessica answered.

  “Gold,” Greer said without looking up from her magazine.

  Lara rolled her eyes. “Greer,” she admonished, “you can’t give advice if you’re not even looking.”

  Greer flipped a page and affixed a little Yes! sticker next to a gauzy beaded gown. “Oh, but I can,” she replied. “My fashion sense is so impeccable I can just feel that the gold is better.”

  “Oh, please!” Jessica squealed, nudging Greer with her toe.

  Greer rolled over onto her back, languid as a cat. “Seriously, though. Blue tank and blue eyes equals boring. Gold tank and blue eyes equals wow. It’s obvious.” She propped her long legs against the pearl-colored wall and tucked her hands behind her head.