by Benway,Robin
“Did you text him?”
“No. That’s why I wanted to hang out with you. Because I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Drew patted my hand. “You’ve come to the right place.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
As happy as I was to see Drew happy with Kevin, canoodling at the register over the chocolate bars and day-old bananas, it wasn’t exactly my ideal Saturday afternoon. Still, Drew made good on his promise to get me some sort of frosty mocha whipped-cream thing that was delicious. It eased the pain of hanging out at a table mostly by myself, checking my phone for a text that never came.
“You should text him,” Drew told me when there were customers, and Kevin had to take their order. “Just do it.”
“Well, what do I say?” I ran my thumb over my phone’s screen. “Like, ‘Good making out with your face last night? Let’s do it again.’?”
“Text Caro and ask her. You need all the help you can get.”
I made a face at Drew but texted Caro, anyway. Her response came through a minute later:
Just say what’s up or whatever.
I told Drew when he wandered back to me.
Drew sounded annoyed. “‘What’s up?’ That’s her answer? God, she bugs the hell out of me sometimes. I love her but I want to kill her, you know?”
“I know,” I said, because I did. “That’s friendship, dude. Kevin’s free again, by the way.”
Drew glanced over his shoulder. “Be right back. You better have texted him by the time I return.” He pointed his finger at me, then tapped me on the nose and went back to Kevin, who hadn’t stopped blushing in the hour that we had been there.
I rolled my eyes in their general direction, then texted Oliver before I could stop myself. It took a few minutes to figure out what to say, but in the end, I went with something safe, just in case Maureen was checking Oliver’s phone. “Hey,” a voice said, and I looked up to see Kevin holding a duplicate of the drink Drew had bought me earlier. “Thought you might want another. On the house.”
“The service here is amazing,” I said, then smiled and took it. “Thanks.”
Kevin sat down next to me. “Drew went to use the bathroom but he said I had to check and make sure that you texted Oliver.”
“So you’re up to speed?”
“You made out with him last night but now you’re too scared to text him and he hasn’t texted you yet?”
“Impressive. You are up to speed. And I did text him. I said”—I held up the phone so Kevin could read it—“‘Had a great time last night.’ What do you think?”
Kevin shrugged. “A little boring, but it’ll do. Better than Caro’s response, that’s for sure.” He grinned at me and I could see why Drew was starry-eyed over him. “Thanks for hanging out here, by the way. I know it’s not exactly exciting just watching us talk to each other.”
“No worries, dude. I like when Drew’s happy and he seems happy with you.”
Kevin blushed even deeper and tried to hide his smile by playing with his apron strings. “Is this the part where you tell me you’ll break my legs if I break his heart or something?”
“No. I thought that was already implied. Besides, I figured Caro might have already covered that.”
He nodded. “Last night. She mentioned something about a crowbar . . . ?”
“That’s my girl.”
“Did you text him?” Drew came hurrying over. “Did he text you yet? What did I miss?”
“Had a great night,” Kevin reported. “I told her it was meh.”
“Six out of a possible score of ten,” Drew agreed. He nudged Kevin’s hip with his own. “How long is your break?”
Kevin just smiled and took Drew’s hand in his own. I couldn’t help but watch as Drew laced his fingers between Kevin’s and pulled him a little closer.
I knew my cue to leave.
“Well, thanks for the drinks,” I said, standing up and gathering my phone. “I’m gonna go, though.”
“No, stay!” Drew said.
“There’s scones,” Kevin added. “The blueberry ones, not the gross currant ones.”
“Ugh, currants.” Drew shuddered.
“I don’t even know why we sell them,” Kevin admitted.
“Bye,” I said pointedly, then stood on my tiptoes to kiss Drew’s cheek. “See you on Monday. Use protection.”
“I assume you mean an apron,” he muttered in my ear, but kissed me back. “Be safe walking. Don’t take any rides from strange men.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, then stole his sunglasses off of his head and took a sip of my drink as I headed out. He and Kevin were already halfway out the back door, tripping over each other’s feet and giggling.
I checked my phone. Nothing.
Time to head home.
I was halfway there, waiting for the light to change at the intersection, when Maureen’s SUV suddenly pulled up next to me. Rick was at the wheel and Maureen was talking to someone in the backseat, motioning with her hand about something. The windows were tinted, but I could make out the outline of the twins’ car seats in the middle seats, and farther back, the tousle of Oliver’s hair.
My breath caught before I could stop it.
“Oh, hi!” Maureen said, her voice muffled by the window. Open it, open it, I could see her mouthing to Rick, who dutifully did just that. “Hi, Emmy! What are you doing out here?”
Protest noises started to come from the backseat, and then Rick rolled down those windows, as well. “Hi!” the twins yelled. “We went mini golfing!”
“I hit the windmill!”
“I drank lemonade and threw up!”
“Cool,” I said, desperately trying to get a glimpse of Oliver without being desperate about it. (Way easier said than done.)
He leaned forward when he heard my voice, just so I could see half his face in the window, the other half still stuck in the backseat. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, and before I could figure out what else to say, Maureen interrupted us.
“We’re heading home now! C’mon, we’ll give you a ride! Open the doors, Rick, let her in.”
“Careful in the backseat,” Rick said as I started to climb in. “There’s some random golf balls rolling around back there.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to climb over the twins without actually touching them, since I wasn’t sure which one had been sick, and also without tripping over myself in front of Oliver.
“There’s room next to Oliver,” Maureen said, directing me from the front seat.
“I think she’s got it, hon,” Rick said.
“Well, I’m just making sure.” Maureen threw me a grin in the rearview mirror. “Enough room back there?”
I fell into the seat next to Oliver, squeezed in by bags of supplies: extra clothes, snacks, books, and tiny pink shoes. He looked like a giant next to all of it, but when I sat down, he smiled at me and grabbed my hand, squeezing so tight that all I could do was squeeze back just as hard.
“Hi,” was all he said.
“Hey,” I replied. Our voices were cool, like we said hello to each other all the time, like we weren’t holding hands in the backseat of his mom’s car, hanging on for our dear lives. “Did you get a hole in one?”
“I got a hole in one!” Nora screamed, trying to turn around in her car seat despite the harness, and I casually threw my bag over Oliver’s and my hands before she could see. Oliver laughed, then hid it with a cough.
“You okay, sweetie?” Maureen asked from the front. “There’s water in the cooler if—”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Oliver said.
“I got a hole in one, Emmy!” Nora finally settled for just craning her neck around at a terrible-looking angle. “It went in!”
“Awesome!” I told her. “Did you get a sticker?”
“Yeah, but it’s on my shoe.”
>
“Of course it is.”
Oliver’s grip on my hand hadn’t let go and I knocked my knee against his, raising my eyebrow in that subtle, universal gesture that means, “You okay?” He just nodded, so I let it go.
“Did you get my text?” I asked him. “Because I, um, I texted you. Today.”
“Hey, Mom?” he called.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Did I get Emmy’s text today?” There was an edge to his voice, like this wasn’t a question he should be asking.
Maureen sighed heavily from the front seat. “Honey, you’ll get your phone back on Monday before school. We talked about this. He missed his curfew last night, Emmy.”
“Let him explain it, Mo,” Rick murmured from the front seat.
“No phone until Monday,” Oliver told me, his voice cheerful but his eyes anything but happy. “So no, I did not get your text. And I couldn’t text you, either.”
That last sentence went over everyone’s heads but mine, and I smiled despite myself. “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
“Right?” Oliver asked. We were speaking our own language at this point, grinning like idiots at each other. “What did your text say?”
“Oh, I just wanted to know if you had a good time last night, that’s all.”
“I had a great time,” he replied. We sounded like we were performing a skit about the two most blandly cheerful high school students in America. “Really great.”
“Emmy, can you please tell Drew that next time Oliver needs to be home by eleven?” Maureen looked at us again through the rearview mirror, her “mom face” firmly in place. “I don’t know what his parents think is appropriate for a Friday night, but Oliver’s curfew is eleven o’clock.”
Oliver knocked his knee into mine this time. I didn’t need a body language expert to explain what he meant. “Yeah, of course,” I said. “Drew’s not great with time.”
“You just don’t know what could happen,” Maureen said, and the double meaning in her words made everyone, even Molly and Nora, go quiet for the rest of the ride.
Oliver never let go of my hand.
Once we pulled up into their driveway, I had a plan. “Hey,” I said as the twins started to frantically unbuckle themselves like their car seats were on fire. “Do you have that book that I loaned you for English?”
Oliver didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, yeah, totally,” he said. “Come on up, I’ll get it for you.”
“You’re so sweet to loan him your things from last year,” Maureen said. “Molly, no, do not eat that Cheerio from the floor. I said no.”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s not a problem.”
As soon as we were out of the car, and while Rick and Maureen fumbled with the girls and empty juice boxes and bags, Oliver and I disappeared inside and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “I am so sorry!” he whispered, even though we were the only ones in the house. “She went ballistic when I came home last night.”
“What’d you say?”
“Just that Drew and I met up at the movies.” We hit the landing and booked it into his room. “And it let out later than I thought it would. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention you at all.”
“God, thank you. My mom would—”
“I know, I know. Basement, Dickens, gruel.”
“Exactly.” I closed the door behind us, then turned around and smiled at Oliver. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, then gathered me up and kissed me hard.
It took all the coordination in my body to hang on to his sweatshirt sleeve, but I managed to stay upright. He tasted even better than he had the night before, this time without the fog of alcohol between us, and I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer, dizzy with the sort of longing that was now hitting me like a freight train.
“I was kind of freaking out,” I admitted when he pulled away for a second. “I thought . . .”
“You thought I was a douche canoe,” he finished.
“Yeah, kind of,” I giggled. “But not anymore. Quick, hurry, before they find us.”
Oliver pulled me closer, tighter than ever this time, and kissed me again. The only way I could describe what kissing him felt like was, like the last day of school, knowing that months of freedom and sunshine lay before you, the feeling that you could do anything you wanted and time stretched out in endless possibilities. That’s how I felt in his arms, like the future was limitless just because he was there. He was finally there.
We heard the door from the garage slam open, followed by, “Girls, do not slam the door!” We pulled apart once again. “Quick, which book do you want?”
“I don’t care, anything,” I said, and he shoved a copy of Mrs. Dalloway at me. “Wait, wait!” I whispered. “Come here, your mouth.” I pressed my thumb against his lips, wiping away my lip gloss. “Bonne Belle Lip Smacker in Dr Pepper just doesn’t match your skin tone,” I teased, and he kissed my thumb.
“Tastes good, though,” he said.
“Oh my God, you need to shut up right now.” I kissed him again, then pulled away and straightened my shirt. “You good?”
“Um, yeah.” He laughed. “This is way better than miniature golf.”
“Glad to know where I rank,” I told him, then clutched the copy of Mrs. Dalloway to my chest. “See you at school on Monday?”
“Absolutely,” he whispered back, then I left his room and went back downstairs, dodging Maureen and going out the front door, only letting the empty cul-de-sac see my face-splitting smile, my ridiculous happiness.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Over the next week, Oliver and I kept to a pretty steady routine of going to school, going to the beach for more surfing lessons, kissing, making out in the backyard, and basically lying to our parents about all of that. (Except for school. That, unfortunately, wasn’t a lie.) Caro came to the beach a few times with us, since Drew was busy hanging out with Kevin at Starbucks or at soccer practice, but after the second time, she got bored. “I’m the third wheel,” she said on the way home. “I’m turning your bicycle into a tricycle.”
“Or we could just be three unicycles,” I replied. Oliver was in the front seat next to me, his hand on my leg as I drove with the window down, trying to dry my hair as fast as possible.
“Or we could be a penny-farthing,” Oliver said. “Maybe we could put Caro in a sidecar.”
“A penny what?” Caro and I both said at the same time.
“You know, that old-fashioned bike that had one big wheel up front and then a little wheel behind it?” Oliver mimed riding a bike, which, let’s be honest, didn’t help to clear up the confusion.
“Yeah, no, I’m not that,” I told him. “Can you roll your window down? I need more air.”
“You were saying about the sidecar?” Caro yelled, her voice nearly being drowned out from the sudden gust of wind. “It’d probably be less windy out there than it is in here!”
So after that, it just became Oliver and me. His surfing wasn’t really improving, but we spent most of the time bobbing up and down on the boards, talking instead of practicing.
But on Friday, when our parents thought we were doing another group project for AP Civics at Caro’s house but Oliver and I were actually down at the beach, he was subdued, almost tired. His eyes were heavy, his words soft. “Hey,” I said as we floated next to each other, our legs churning in the water. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” he said absently.
“You’re doing the dude sulk,” I told him.
Oliver laughed. “The what?”
“You guys always get pouty and sullen.” I poked my lip out and slouched down, trying to make him laugh for real this time. It worked. “What’s wrong?”
Oliver, though, just looked behind him and watched as a wave started to form. “You think I can get this one?”
I glanced at
it. “Probably. You’re getting good.” And he was. He had already ridden to the shore several times that day, hooting and hollering with each successful wave.
“I’m taking it,” he said, then swung his legs out of the ocean and back onto the board as he started to paddle.
“Oliver, wait,” I said as he started to move, and he deliberately reached out and splashed me, leaving me sputtering.
“Oh, you’re going down,” I said, racing to catch up to him. It wasn’t too difficult—his arms were longer and stronger, but I had three years’ worth of experience—and we rode in together, almost like we were moving as the same person.
Afterward, we sat on the beach together, our wet suits drying on a rock next to us as we huddled together underneath a blanket that we found in the back of the minivan. “Your car needs a name,” Oliver said. “Something with personality.”
“Stealth Fighter,” I offered. “Secret Mission.”
“Barely Running,” Oliver said, and I laughed and pretended to choke him.
“Get your own car if you don’t like mine!” I cried.
“Oh, Emmy, I would if I could,” he said, and the sadness I had seen in the water was back now, clouding his eyes like a storm.
“What is it?” I asked. “What happened?”
Oliver shrugged and picked up some sand to run through his fingers. “I guess some national crime show called yesterday. They want to do a feature on my dad and . . . you know, everything.” Oliver brushed the sand away, then waved his hand, the kidnapping just a pesky fly that could be swatted away. “My mom thinks they could find my dad that way. ‘National exposure,’ that’s what she said.”
“And you don’t want to,” I guessed.
“It’s, like, I can move on or I can stay stuck here. I can’t do both. She wants to me to adjust to school, to her new family, to be normal—whatever the hell that even means—but then she wants me to go on camera and talk about how my dad kidnapped me ten years ago? I just want to let it go.”
“You don’t want to find your dad, though?”
Oliver looked down at me, his face as sad as I had ever seen it. “I want that more than anything in the world. But not like this.”
