Ever Near (Secret Affinity Book 1)

by Melissa MacVicar

  “Boys!” Mike yells from the bottom of the stairs.

  Charlie and Brendan roll back and forth on the floor, pulling and tugging on each other’s shirts and arms. The Dowlers’ dog, a yellow lab named Zeke, arrives with Mike.

  “Stop!” Mike hollers.

  And thankfully, they do—kneeling and panting for breath.

  My mother joins the party, her red hair in a high ponytail, her scrubs exchanged for yoga pants and a revealing pink workout top that clashes with her hair. Only my mother could look this cute at forty. Carrie O’Neil is an adorable little pixie with pale skin, a thin face, and heavy mascara. I’m not sure why she bothered to come up, though. She isn’t allowed to interfere in the boys’ stuff. Charlie and Brendan are solely under Mike’s jurisdiction in this new arrangement.

  “What’s going on?” Mike asks.

  Charlie points at his brother. “Brendan’s trying to take the jeep.”

  “Whose turn is it?”

  “Mine,” Charlie says, wiping his hand across his face, still doing the alpha dog stare down with his brother. Way sexy. Like way. Saber-toothed tigers, here we come.

  “Then take the Pilot, Brendan. I can’t have you two beating each other up over a car!”

  Mike, like Brendan, is supremely blond and exceptionally preppy. Charlie, on the other hand, is darker and bigger than both of them. I assume he takes after his mother’s side of the family, and I chuckle sometimes when I think about what strangers must think when they see us all together. They probably assume I’m the black foster child that this nice white family rescued from the gritty streets of some impoverished inner city. No, I want to say to them. I belong to the redhead. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the Southie in her voice. Pay attention, and you’ll see the hard edge in her smile and in the way she plants her feet when she stops to talk to you. Back in the day, my middle-class father was a step up for her.

  Someone needs to explain the cool factor of the jeep to Mike. Taking the Pilot is like taking the family station wagon. But Mike and the boys don’t talk about their problems. Apparently, having a Y chromosome means you grunt and push and shove each other instead. And true to form, Brendan doesn’t argue. He just storms off.

  “You ready?” Charlie asks me as he stands up.

  Mom and Mike flick their eyes to me and then back to Charlie.

  Crap. “Yeah, I’ll be down in a minute.”

  I retreat to my room and shut the door. We need a story, a united front. We haven’t thought about what to say when we’re going to a party together. I stop at my full-length mirror. I’ve straightened my hair so that it’s even longer than usual, but I can see that my repeated efforts with the flatiron might be a lost cause. Curls are already reforming around my temples. I check the rest of my look: makeup, jeans, flip flops, and a tank top make me beach-party ready. My bra is sort of showing, and it’s turquoise blue. Plus, this tank top rides up to show off my back and stomach when I bend over or reach up. I admit that I can be kind of a provocative dresser. I like to look good. I like to make the boys look at me.

  As I’m looking in the mirror, I touch my key charm that hangs on a chain around my neck, resting just above my cleavage. The small silver skeleton key has a wheel-shaped handle. I wear this necklace all the time because it belonged to my great-aunt. Aunt Livvy died when I was little, but Gram is sure I’m supposed to have her sister’s necklace. The wheel pattern is an Irving thing. Or actually, I guess it’s a Ferguson thing because that was Gram’s maiden name. If black people had coats of arms like Scottish clans or British royalty, the Irving/Fergusons’s would be this wheel. That’s why I have my quilt and why I have the key. The weight of it around my neck always makes me feel less alone.

  “Where are you going?” Mike asks Charlie outside the door.

  “I’m taking Jade to Ally’s. Then I’m going to Nick’s.”

  Good story. I need to remember that story.

  Chapter 3

  I suppose if you live out west somewhere, some place landlocked like Nebraska or Kansas, a beach party on Nantucket sounds like the coolest, most amazing thing in the world. Well, I can tell you that in reality, a beach party on Nantucket is no different than any other teenage party anywhere else in America. Yes, the roaring Atlantic Ocean is nearby, and there’s usually a bonfire, but otherwise, it’s just random groups of teens drinking, smoking pot, and trying to look cool. In the dark.

  “Devonte isn’t answering,” Ally says, peering at her phone as if she could will a message to appear. Strands of her honey-blond hair blow around her face.

  We’re standing close to the bonfire so we can see each other. Charlie’s a few feet away with his best friend, Nick. Everyone tries to stay on the safe side of the blazing wooden pallets, but the wind is a fickle beast. It’ll blow in the completely opposite direction every once in a while and douse us with smoke and flying ash. When this happens, we dart away like a flock of birds, waving at the debris-filled air.

  “How’d the move go?” Ally asks, finally giving up on her phone-staring.

  “Fine. Weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Weird like I have brothers now.” My tone exaggerates my annoyance with this. My new situation really isn’t that bad, but I like to play up any trauma—real or imagined—my mother creates for me.

  “And weird like you’re crushing on one of them?” Ally grins, waggling her eyebrows at me.

  “Shut up.” I feign more annoyance by squinting at her.

  Ally knows all about my Charlie issues. I thought Charlie was cute way before my mother even knew how to spell Dowler. I knew about him back in eighth grade. Ally and I would sneak over to the high school after dismissal and cruise through the Hall of the Whale so the high school boys would notice us.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Ally says just as her phone pings. She emits a small squeal as she reads it. “It’s Devonte. He’s by the dunes. That way.” She points down the beach.

  We head that way, and Devonte sees us coming. He charges Ally like a buck in heat, tackle-hugging her to the sand. You would think he’d been at sea for three years. Her screech of delight pierces the night air. I leave them to their wrestling match and sit on the incline of the dune with the other kids in Devonte’s group, which is sort of my group too but only because of Ally. A few of them greet me with head bobs and “Heys.” Right away, I decide I like the dune because it’s a good spot to watch the masses clustered around the bonfire.

  You should know that Ally is my very best friend in the whole entire world. Since like forever. Since Wee Whalers. That’s the preschool we went to, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. Even before we were drama-music girls. Even before we both ended up with single mothers. Before everything, there was Ally. How lucky is that? I’m not a very lucky person overall, but in the best-friend department, I am.

  Ally is a pageant-faced girl with a size-fourteen body—all curves and breasts and over-large blue eyes in skirts and tight T-shirts. Devonte’s as brown as a coffee bean, and she’s as pale as cream but with freckles—the sort of couple that would have been lynched back in the day, but now they could pose for a plus-sized, politically correct Hollister advertisement and be all the rage.

  They join me on the dune after a sufficient amount of making out. Not that I resent their PDA. Best friends understand love. Sipping my bitter keg beer, I try to find Charlie in the crowd. I spot him near the fire with the other jocks and the soccer/lacrosse girls. His height gives him away. I sometimes feel like a giant of girl at five-eight, but Charlie is mammoth, listed as six-foot-three in the Nantucket High basketball program.

  My mother made me go to his games last winter. I pretended to hate it, but what I really hated was my mother dating Mr. Dowler. Only I could have that kind of luck when it came to crushes. Seeing Charlie in action, though, made the games tolerable. In fac
t, they were fantastic because Charlie on the court is a force to be reckoned with.

  In real life, he doesn’t seem to know how to handle his body. He’s constantly in motion, searching for the right way to position himself—leaning on ledges, tipping in chairs, hunching over desks. He clasps and pulls on his hands, mussing up his hair or rubbing the back of his neck. I don’t want you to think he does these things because he’s hyper or weird. He’s not. I think it’s because he’s sort of shy, which has the effect of making him even cuter.

  But on the basketball court, Charlie is someone else entirely. He knows just what to do with himself. He jostles and slams into opponents under the hoop, barks out orders for his teammates to follow, and dribbles and runs with ease down the polished wood floor of the gym. His game face, an expression of fierce determination, makes me wonder how he could even be the same person who ambles through the halls of school like a lost puppy.

  On the dune, the conversations consist of summer jobs, college visits, and parents being annoying. I entertain myself by trying not to lose Charlie in the crowd. He’ll become obscured in the mix then pop back into view like a seal in the surf before evading me again. When I can see him, he’s sticking close to Nick, and occasionally, one of the soccer/lacrosse girls will hug him or touch him on the arm. Charlie dated one of them last winter, the proper, socially appropriate thing for him to do. Chelsea Abner. Yeah, Charlie and Chelsea… blah. I don’t think he actually liked her all that much, though. Or he just couldn’t be bothered to follow the multitude of rules involved in dating one of them. I heard Chelsea talking about him in the locker room after they broke up. Charlie didn’t call or text or visit enough. He didn’t remember her schedule and wait for her at the right times. He didn’t get her the right present for her birthday. So Chelsea was forced to let him go. She said these things as if he were an employee she’d taken on who hadn’t lived up to expectations.

  I’m on the other side of Ally, away from Devonte’s crew, so no one bothers me during my Charlie stalking. That’s one bonus of being a tagalong.

  I remember that I was going to ask Ally if I could sleep over. Sleeping at Ally’s will help me avoid Lacey and allow me to get some sleep. But before I get the chance to make my request, blue lights flash up at the beach access road, and someone on a bullhorn announces, “This party’s over. Time to go home.”

  Chapter 4

  People start running. It’s more like slow jogging because they’re drunk, and the sand hinders effective movement, but everyone is fleeing nonetheless.

  “I’m gonna find Charlie,” I tell Ally, springing to my feet.

  “I’ll go with Devonte!” she calls after me.

  I head against the flow of bodies, which is always a bad idea, especially in the dark. I narrowly miss two stumbling girls.

  “Jade!”

  “Right here!” I stop and wait for him, hoping he can find me without having to play a bumbling game of Marco Polo.

  Luckily, he appears practically right in front of me. “Come on.”

  Taking my hand, he kind of drags me along while I struggle to keep up with his long-legged strides. My brain registers that we’re holding hands and that the contact is not really necessary. But just as a small smile is forming on my lips about this unexpected bonus prize of the party ending early, I step in a hole and go down in a heap. My cheek hits the sand, and I emit an embarrassing groan-like noise. More of a honk really—a goose with acid reflux. Just call me Grace.

  “Oh, crap!” Charlie reaches down to help me get up. “You okay?”

  I grab his hand again, so he can heft me to my feet. “Yeah. Fine.”

  He doesn’t let go as we start moving again—a double-bonus-prize night for little old me, I guess. We walk slower, though, and other kids stream around us, swaying and staggering down the beach in a parade of ridiculousness. But the funny thing is that no one is chasing us. No cops on ATVs. No cops at all. They’re just up on the access road with their blue lights and their bullhorn, and as long as the masses are streaming away from the scene, it’s all good with them.

  “We could go up there,” I say, gesturing at the dune and the nearest darkened house perched on it. Summer homes on the beach usually only see people two months out of the year, and this one is definitely still empty.

  “Okay.” He veers in that direction.

  We dodge other kids on our way across the sand, our hands still locked together. They fit nicely, too, his warm and callused, mine sort of thin and smallish—comparatively speaking. We find the homeowner’s stairs leading up the dune, and he lets go of my hand. Will he take it back when we get to the top? I know I won’t try for his. I’m not that bold. Sometimes I am with other boys, but I could never be that way with Charlie.

  We reach the top and walk across a flat expanse of lawn. He doesn’t reach for my hand again. This is sort of disappointing but also kind of expected. The drama of running away is over. When we get to the house, we sit on the top step of the porch, keeping a safe foot of space between us.

  Charlie lets out a small sigh of relief. I’m relieved as well because tonight is one of those muggy evenings with too much wind that makes you hot and cold at the same time. I unzip my hoodie and shrug it off because this is a hot moment. Below the dune, the beach stretches like a white smudge of chalk toward the black ocean. A navy blanket lit by stars floats overhead.

  Charlie glances at me. “This sucks.”

  “I know.”

  But really, it doesn’t. Being alone with Charlie doesn’t suck at all. The sound of the waves fills the silence between us. They rumble and roll, some drawn out over several seconds, others like short bursts of energy. I can almost picture what each one looks like from the noise they make. I try to think of something to say, something that would make this moment we’re having even better, but nothing good pops into my head. I look at him from the corner of my eye, noticing the way his elbows rest on his knees, his body slightly hunched. I can make out his profile despite the darkness. He must notice me looking too, because he turns my way, a small smile playing on his lips.

  The eye contact makes my heart speed up. I’m thinking I should look away when our phones vibrate in unison. We both reach to see who messaged us.

  I peer at mine and tell him, “Ally’s all set. She’s going with Devonte.”

  “Okay. Jenna’s looking for a ride.” His fingers fly over the keys, typing a response.

  A little spurt of jealousy twinges in my chest. Jenna? Damn. I didn’t know they were anything to each other, and I don’t want to share him with her right now. “Think we should try walking to the car?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  He finishes his text, and we get up to go. There’s almost no moon, so it’s difficult to see where we’re going.

  Charlie shuffles along just ahead of me, first on the lawn and then the shell driveway. His cargo shorts hang low on his hips, his baseball hat turned backward on his head. He puts his arm up to warn me when the ground is uneven. “Careful,” he says.

  I’m tempted to reach out and cling to the thin cotton of his T-shirt, but I don’t. That would be teasing and acting like I want to hook up. And rationally, I know hooking up with Charlie would be a very bad idea. Our parents would freak. Kids at school would think we were gross. And if we broke up, he’d still be across the hall every single night.

  His phone beeps again. Jeez, Jenna, get a grip. He’s busy right now. Charlie looks at the screen but doesn’t send an answer. We reach the end of the driveway and pause to try to figure out which way the jeep is from here. The line of cars from the party extends in both directions along the access road, and the distant lights from the police down the beach don’t provide much illumination.

  “I think it’s this way,” Charlie says.

  He takes a left, and we encounter other people lurking around and trying
to find their cars too. Laughter and voices, both low and high, float on the air like music. Their hum blends with the thump of a speaker and the rush of a car’s tires on dirt. The road is uneven beneath my feet, and the scent of newly blooming rosa rugosa along the roadside overtakes the smell of the sea. I fall behind.

  Charlie stops and turns back to me. “You okay?” His voice is soft but deep.

  “Yeah.”

  He puts his hand on my back when I reach him, pressing me forward. Warmth from his palm spreads through my tank top, sending sparks up my spine, before he breaks the contact to hit his key fob. Headlights blink a few cars up the road. We climb in quickly and pull out our phones to check for texts.

  “Everyone’s going to Long Pond,” Charlie says.

  “Everyone?” His everyone is not anyone I would normally hang out with.

  He’s tapping away on his phone. “Yeah.”

  “Are we taking Jenna?”

  “No. She’s with Nick and Brendan. We’ll meet them there.” He drops the phone in a cup holder and starts the car.

  “Are you guys going out?” As soon as the words leave my lips, I cringe at how they sounded. Weird. And by weird, I mean slightly high-pitched as if I’m desperate to know the answer. Yeah, I need to get a grip on this crush thing.

  “Me and Jenna?” He wrinkles up his face as though the idea is somehow ludicrous, as if him dating a pretty soccer/lacrosse girl who texts him for a ride and hugs him by the bonfire is the craziest thing in the world. Ha!

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I’m not going out with anyone.” He glances over at me every few seconds as the jeep bounces down the dirt road.