“I know that,” she said softly. Her eyes were all big and guileless when I glanced over, and I was now officially a jerk.
I couldn’t bring myself to look down at her again as I searched my wallet for money.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ve got it,” I said, my voice too rough.
She gave her order and then placed a hand on my arm, but she didn’t speak until I looked at her. When I did, I nearly turned to putty. All petty hurt and anger were gone once again because apparently this girl practiced witchcraft. Either that or she was just way too pretty for her own good.
And way too understanding. “I didn’t mean to be condescending,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t,” I said with a shrug.
“I was,” she insisted with a disarmingly rueful smile. “And I apologize. I wasn’t trying to suggest that nothing’s changed. Clearly everything has changed…everything that matters.” She gave me a meaningful look that made my throat feel tight because I knew she was talking about my mom.
“It’s okay,” I said, hoping to move on from this oddly emotional moment and get us back on track with easy conversation. “I’m sure it’s weird being back here after so long.”
She nodded. “Lots of memories here.” She leaned toward me and nudged my arm with hers. “Lots of good memories.”
“Is that why you came back?”
Her silence was telling. She’d been avoiding this question all day, but I’d meant what I’d said earlier—It shouldn’t have been such a difficult question.
The pizza slices were placed on the counter and she ran to snatch them up. Either she was very hungry or she was hoping to avoid this conversation a little longer.
I sighed as I reached over her to grab them before she could, and then I carried a tray filled with food and drinks over to an empty table. She dove right into her pizza and for a moment I watched her eat, battling a smile at the sight of her obvious pleasure as she closed her eyes and groaned.
There was no denying she wasn’t a kid anymore, but moments like this she seemed like the living definition of youthful innocence. Maybe that was what I’d been missing all these years. Someone who was so kind and pure that it was impossible not to be affected. Her sweetness was contagious, her big heart impossible to ignore.
Watching her savor her pizza, I had this feeling like I was The Grinch hanging out with Cindy Lou Who. And yes, this was the girl who had forced me to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas with her one summer, no less than twenty times.
Christmas in July, she’d called it.
Hell on earth, I’d called it. Jokingly, of course. Even at twelve I hadn’t wanted to admit that I found a kids’ movie so entertaining. I’d forgotten all about that memory until just now, but it seemed utterly fitting.
Ellie was freakin’ Cindy Lou Who, just…all grown up.
“What?” she said when she opened her eyes and caught me staring. She swiped at her mouth. “Am I making a mess?”
I shook my head and reached for my slice. “Nothing. Just wondering what the big secret is.”
She blinked rapidly. “There’s no big secret.”
“Oh come on,” I teased. “You’re obviously running away for some reason. Are you pregnant?” I looked down at her nearly empty plate. “That would explain the appetite, I guess.”
She glowered at me, clearly not amused, but then lifted the remainder of her slice to her lips with a surprisingly arch look as if daring me to mock her again.
“Okay, not pregnant then,” I said. “Did your parents cut off your trust fund or something?”
She narrowed her eyes and I laughed. She did have a trust fund, that much I knew. Its very existence was a prime example of the many ways she and I lived in totally different worlds. Hers was one filled with opportunity, and mine…well, mine looked a lot like a dead-end. I shoved the thought aside. I was having too much fun teasing her to focus on the disparities between us. “Are you on the run from the cops?” I asked.
She chewed her pizza with a bland look that said are you through?
“Maybe you’re a drug mule,” I mused.
She let out a little huff of amusement as she chewed.
I leaned over the table. “Are you running away from home because of some guy?”
She blushed and I fought off a surge of dark emotions that felt suspiciously like jealousy. I paused with the pizza halfway to my mouth and watched as she dipped her head.
“Wait, seriously?”
Her blush deepened. “No, of course not.”
I stared at her as I took a bite. “Have you informed your face? Because it’s telling a different story.”
She shoved the last bite into her mouth and then dropped her face into her hands. “It’s not what you think.”
“Okay,” I said, leaning back in my seat with a little smirk. I was torn between jealousy over this nameless guy and amusement at her reaction. “Who’s the guy?”
She peeked at me through her fingers. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
I shrugged. “Would you?”
After a heartbeat, she sighed and dropped her hands.
“I mean, if I showed up in your town out of the blue, alone, and without an explanation…wouldn’t you be a little curious?”
“Fair enough.” She toyed with her napkin, her blush deepening again. I think I could safely say she was the only girl I knew who actually blushed. It was cute. Endearing, even.
“I don’t know how to explain.”
“Start with the guy.” Ugh, I sounded way more Tarzan that I liked, but there was no way I could deny this possessive feeling around her. I’d thought my old crush had died out years ago but it seemed that first loves weren’t so easy to kill.
“This isn’t about the guy.”
I frowned at her as a terrible thought occurred to me. Maybe it wasn’t that she was running away because she had feelings for a guy, maybe she was running because she’d been hurt.
I leaned over the table. “Who is he and what did he do?”
Her head shot up and her eyes widened in surprise at my gruff tone. “Nothing. He didn’t do anything. No one did anything.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “So you’re just here to say hello? Your parents don’t know where you are and your best friend is pissed—”
“Blake’s always pissed,” she mumbled.
I crossed my arms. “Time to explain, Ellie.”
“Um…”
I clenched my jaw as I tried to rein in my anger. “Did some guy hurt you?”
“No!” Her wide eyes and quick response told me she was telling me the truth.
“So you didn’t run away because of a guy?”
She shifted in her seat and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Not really. I mean, I wasn’t running away from anyone.” She wrinkled her nose up. “Except maybe myself.”
I stared at her for a moment because oddly enough, I knew exactly what she meant. There were more times than I could count lately when I’d wished I could escape myself…escape the life I was trapped in—the never-ending cycle of bills to pay and jobs to work, with no hope of freedom in sight.
But that wasn’t the case for Ellie, and it was impossible to hide the surge of bitterness in my voice. “What do you have to run from? You have it all, right?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yeah. I—I guess I do.” Her smile looked forced. “I told you it was stupid. I guess I was just…” She clammed up again and I bit back a sigh of exasperation.
“You were what?”
She shrugged. “Lost.” She still wore a small smile, rueful and just a little sad. “Stupid, right? I mean…” She threw her hands out wide. “I mean, I have everything, right? Parents who love me, in their own sort of way. And friends who care about me. And plans for college, and money to get there, and...” She trailed off with a sigh. “I must sound like such a spoiled brat to you.”
I didn’t answer, because yeah.
She totally did. I’d have killed to have my mom around, and money for college, and everything else she’d just named.
She gave her head a shake. “You know what? You’re right,” she said, even though I hadn’t actually spoken. “I have nothing to complain about. I have no real problems.”
“Uh huh.” I didn’t know whether to be irritated or amused that she was putting words in my mouth. “Why did you feel lost?”
She let out a long exhale and her shoulders sank. “I broke up with my boyfriend.”
I arched a brow. “The same guy you were with the last time I saw you?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Lucas. I broke up with him in the fall—”
“Why?”
“Because…” She shrugged. “Because he didn’t see me. I don’t know how else to put it.”
I swallowed down a wave of rage. Even at fourteen and never having met the kid, I’d known he wasn’t good enough for my Ellie. Even back then I could tell by the way she talked about him that he didn’t appreciate her the way he should.
The way I did.
“So you broke up with him,” I prompted. “Good for you. He was probably an egotistical ass.”
She let out a short laugh. “How did you know?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Lucky guess.”
“Right after that, I started dating this guy Ryan.”
I hate Ryan. It might have been an unreasonable response, but I was certain of it. I hated the guy just because of the way her eyes dimmed at the mention of his name.
“Did he hurt you?” I demanded.
“No,” she said quickly. “I mean, not really. I thought he was something that he wasn’t.”
Like worthy, no doubt. “So what happened?”
“I broke up with him, too.”
I gave a short nod. “Good.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding quickly as she twisted her napkin. “It’s just that…after he and I ended it for good, I was…I was alone.”
I stared at her, trying to comprehend the problem. The Ellie I knew had never struck me as one of those girls who needed a boyfriend to be happy.
Of course, I’d known her when she was a kid, and relationships weren’t even on her radar. But still, she’d always been fiercely independent, even as a kid. She’d been courageous and adventurous, and... People didn’t change that much, did they?
“You didn’t like being alone?” I asked, the skepticism clear in my voice.
She sighed. “No, it wasn’t that. It was just that… It was just…” She licked her lips as her eyes darted around the room, as if she could find the right words somewhere in this little restaurant. “It was the first time in a long time that I was on my own like that, and I…”
I watched her swallow.
“I didn’t like what I found.” Her gaze dropped to the table before she lifted it to meet my eyes. “I didn’t like who I’d become.”
My mouth went dry at the vulnerability in her eyes. At the way she was opening up before me—no secrets, no façades, no barriers. This was the way it had been between us. A real, honest connection. Maybe it was because of our childhood tie, but the way she looked at me now—I realized no one had looked at me like that since she’d left.
I’d never looked at anyone like this. I’d never let anyone in this close.
“What didn’t you like?” I asked, trying to maintain some sort of grasp on this conversation as my heart rate soared.
She licked her lips again and I tried not to notice. “My friend Blake,” she started. “Blake has a strong personality. She’s a…” Ellie pursed her lips as she clearly struggled to find the right word.
“Witch?” I suggested.
She gave me a warning look. “No. Blake’s really quite thoughtful when you get to know her. But she always knows what she wants. She’s always had strong opinions and a forceful personality and—”
“She sounds charming.”
“She is,” Ellie insisted. Her fierce scowl was really quite adorable when she was defending her friends.
“Okay, fine.” I leaned back in my chair. “So Ms. Charming knows what she wants. How is that important?”
“Because Lucas was the same way,” Ellie said, her voice growing softer and that blush creeping back into her cheeks. “And Ryan.”
I frowned too because I saw where this was heading and I didn’t like it. “So? You surrounded yourself with strong-minded jerks,” I said. “I don’t see why that has you feeling lost.”
She tilted her head to the side, that open look making me feel exposed because when she was being this honest, there was no way I couldn’t be just as truthful…with her and with myself. “Don’t you?” she asked quietly.
I knew what she was getting at, but I let her say it. It seemed like maybe she needed to say it, to get all this off her chest. Her gaze flickered over my shoulder and she watched the people ordering at the counter as she spoke. “I guess at some point along the way it just became easier to go along with their ideas and their wants.” Her voice was so soft it nearly broke my heart. She sounded so innocent and sweet and…good.
“They saw me a certain way, and so I…” She shrugged helplessly. “I went along with it. I was the loyal friend, and the supportive girlfriend, and the perfect daughter, and the straight-A student, and…and…and I forgot who I was.”
Her gaze met mine with such intensity that it made my heart stop and my whole body still. “I got so good at playing the role others cast me in that I forgot who I really was.” Her lips quirked up in a humorless smile. “Pathetic, right?”
“Not pathetic.” I said it so quickly my voice came out all raspy and low. I leaned forward and tried again. “It’s not pathetic at all.”
She arched her brows in a look of disbelief.
“It’s true,” I said. “I think a lot of people go through their whole lives that way and never question it. You might have lost track of yourself for a little while there, but you were brave enough to stop and face it. You were strong enough to break up with guys who didn’t appreciate you, and go your own way.”
She blinked rapidly and I saw the tears she was holding back. “Really? You really think that?”
I reached for her hand. “I do. And Ellie…”
She gave me another one of those looks—one of those I-can-see-into-your-soul kinds of looks, and I almost lost the words. “You might feel lost, but you’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I see you.” That was the only explanation I could give, but it felt like the truth. The girl I’d been spending time with all day? This was the Ellie I remembered. There was nothing weak about her, nothing lost and nothing dimmed. She was pure energy and joy and kindness and adventure.
She was still my Ellie. The girl who’d stolen my heart.
It was rapidly becoming clear that she’d never given it back.
She blinked furiously again but this time one of the tears fell slowly down her cheek. She brushed it aside with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry. I’ve been feeling so crazy lately, and I thought coming here would…”
I raised my brows in question when she trailed off. “You thought coming here would what?”
I didn’t know why I suddenly felt so on edge. Like whatever she said next could change everything.
She lifted one shoulder. “I thought coming here would help me figure things out.”
I nodded, oddly disappointed but trying not to show it. I mean, what had I expected to hear? “And? Is it working?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said with a laugh. “Ask me after this bonfire.”
Chapter Six
Eleanor
We took our sweet time getting to the bonfire which was farther south on the beach than I’d ever been. The sounds of the boardwalk were muted by the sound of the waves, and even the lights from the north end of town looked faraway, leaving the moon to light our path on the water’s edge.
We talked a bit, but mostly we walked in silence, and I could on
ly imagine what Deacon was thinking. He was probably wondering how he’d gotten stuck with a pathetic basketcase who had no idea who she was. I mean, who even thought things like that let alone said them aloud?
It could have been worse, I supposed. I could have spilled the fact that I hadn’t been running away from a guy, I’d been running toward one.
Him.
I might’ve had some idea of revisiting the nostalgic sights of Sterling Beach, but I’d been more focused on seeing Deacon than on riding the Ferris wheel.
Of course, I hadn’t said any of that because how could I? It was weird enough that I was here, on my own. And it was on me to figure out where things had taken a turn these past few years. It wasn’t fair to lay that at his feet, not when he so clearly had issues of his own. Real issues, like paying the mortgage and grieving for his mom. My own problems seemed unbelievably trivial in comparison.
Deacon broke the silence by pointing out the fire that was just starting to brighten up the evening sky in the distance. “That’s our party.”
I nodded, shyness stealing over me. I did well in groups—I’d learned at a young age that the key was to get people talking about themselves. Everyone loved a good listener. But being good at it didn’t mean I wasn’t a little intimidated to meet a large group of people I didn’t know.
“Who are these guys?” I asked. “Friends from school?”
He gave me a lopsided grin as we shuffled through the sand. “Some of them. Some are from the club, and others are just locals with nothing better to do on a Saturday night.”
I nodded. “Thanks for letting me tag along.”
He surprised me by ducking his head as if embarrassed. “I’d have taken you out to do something else, but honestly, Ellie, I don’t really know what girls like you do.”
“Girls like me?” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah, you know…” He waved a hand at me in a way that was far from flattering. “Tourists.”
I shoved his arm. “Hey! I’m not just a tourist. I’m a friend too…right?”
He gave me a funny look. “Sure.”
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