“Of course it’s not about the other night,” I say quickly, immediately feeling like ten kinds of shit. I reach over in the sand, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. I don’t like the sound of her voice, normally so bright and clear, shaking like that. I’m such a jerk.
She releases an audible sigh of relief. “Are you sure? Because you seem really upset about something. You keep glaring around at everyone.”
“I do?” I’m genuinely surprised, not having realized I was doing any such thing. I thought I was managing to keep my glares reserved for the ocean
She nods, her black curls bouncing. “All day, every time I’ve seen you. You were glaring at me just now. So really, Reed, if you would rather I make myself scarce—”
Well, now I feel even worse. I had never meant to glare at Paige, had certainly never wanted her to feel like I was annoyed or upset with her. Out of anyone on this trip, she’s the one person who’s helped me have the best time. I squeeze her hand again. “I swear I’m not upset with you. I’m really sorry that I was glaring. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. It’s nothing to do with you, Paige.”
“Is it... Sienna stuff?” She sounds almost scared to hear my answer, and I wonder just how whiney I was when we talked it all out the other night.
“Kind of. I... I got a phone call from my father this morning. The label is sending a PR guy to meet with me before the tour. They actually wanted to come down here, but Dad managed to hold them off.”
“A PR guy? Here?”
I shove my fists into the sand. “Yeah. Apparently the label heard about the break up and they aren’t happy.”
“I don’t understand. Why would the label care?”
I push my hands deeper into the cool sand, flexing my fingers. “Because our relationship was good for PR.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. “That’s disgusting.”
I nod and finally turn to her. She’s looking at me, her expression clearly grossed out. “They were planning a bunch of cross promotion, with Sienna’s reality show. There were all these plans for her to meet us out on tour and show us making our,” I hold up my hands and make air quotes, “‘one-of-a-kind’ relationship work.”
She nods slowly. “Okay, I get why they think that kind of exposure would be good for the band. But you guys broke up. So that ship has kind of sailed, right?”
I sigh. “They want us to pretend we’re together. While the show films.”
“What?”
“I’m assuming they’d let us agree to certain terms. At least, I hope they will. How many appearance we would have together. That neither of us could openly date anyone else.” A slight flicker of—what? Sadness? Anger?—appears to flash across her eyes. It makes my chest hurt, and I don’t want to think about what that means. “There could even be an agreed upon end date, a planned, amicable break-up. Sounds romantic, huh?”
“Are you... are you considering it?”
I can’t stand the look in her eyes, somehow hopeful and disappointed at once. It’s like she wants to have faith that I’ll say no, but she’s already thinking the worst of me.
I stare back at the ocean, instead. This is the first day we haven’t had perfect weather—there was rain on the patio when I woke up this morning, and the steel grey of the clouds is reflected in the ocean, the clear aquamarine of the previous days gone now. “I don’t know.”
She doesn’t say anything for a very long time. I think of all the things I confessed to her the other night, about feeling so dissatisfied with Sienna, about never experiencing what Daltrey and Daisy had. What must she think of me, now, knowing that I’m willing to continue a charade of love just to gain points for my band?
But, of course, being Paige, she surprises me again.
Instead of saying a word, she jumps up from the sand instead and extends her hand to me.
I stare up at her in confusion. “What?”
“Come on.”
“Come on, where?” but I’m already slipping my hand into hers and standing, willing to follow her to whatever she has in mind.
“I think,” Paige says thoughtfully, her face a mask of concentration as she surveys the area, “what we really need is a turret.”
“A turret?” Cash asks, squinting at the spot where she’s pointing. “If we add a turret right there it will totally throw off the balance of the entire thing.”
She crosses her arms and glares at him, eyes narrowed. “Um, this is my design, you know. I’ll be the one to decide if something throws off the balance.”
He shakes his head. “Fine. Bring the whole thing crashing down. See if I care.”
She sticks her finger in his face. “That, right there, is exactly the wrong kind of attitude for sandcastle building.”
“She has a point, Cash,” I call from my position a few feet away. I’m in charge of digging the moat beside the west wall. I’ve already been told off by Paige for sloppy work several times, so I’m eager to stay on her good side.
Paige grins at me happily. “See? Reed gets it. A positive attitude is a very important component of the sandcastle building experience.”
“Oh, dear God,” Karen mutters. She’s been on wet-sand duty for the past twenty minutes—meaning she’s in charge of dragging buckets of wet sand from the tide line up to the build site. She used to be in charge of making the ramparts, but Paige decreed she wasn’t taking it seriously enough and demoted her.
“What was that?” Paige asks, eyebrows raised. “Are you questioning my vision?”
“I’m questioning your sanity, you crazy-assed lunatic,” Karen says, making Cash laugh. I shake my head at him sadly—he’s teetering a fine line. If he’s not careful he’ll be demoted too.
“Cash, I believe you’re supposed to be building a turret,” she says pointedly.
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Of course, the turret doesn’t bring the rest of the sandcastle crashing down. I had no doubt—it’s pointless, I’ve found, to doubt Paige when it comes to sandcastle building. She’s like the Frank Lloyd Wright of sand-based architecture, or something.
When she first suggested, in an attempt to get my mind off of things, that this was how we should spend the afternoon, I had been skeptical.
“You want to build a sandcastle?” I asked.
“No, no, no,” she argued, shaking her head sadly at my lack of vision. “I want to build the best, most awesome, kick-ass sandcastle anyone has ever seen.”
“And how do you propose we do that? There’re only two of us.”
“We’ll get your brothers to help,” she said easily, as if there was nothing else in the world they might want to do than spend their afternoon filling up sand buckets like a bunch of preschoolers.
“I don’t think any of them have ever built a sandcastle in their life. How much help can they be?”
She waved away my argument. “Don’t worry about it. I just so happen to be, like, an amazing sandcastle builder. It’s going to be awesome, Reed. I promise.”
I stared at her helplessly. How do you argue against this level of enthusiasm? “We don’t even have any buckets,” I attempted meekly.
She laughed. “Does the super-rich rock star with the full staff to care for his freaking villa think he won’t be able to get his hands on a few sand toys?”
So, she had sent me out to find Martin in the hopes of getting some buckets and shovels while she went in search of my brothers and Karen. Daisy and Daltrey, by virtue of being a hundred miles away, touring a Mayan ruin, were excused from duty. By the time I reached the beach with the sand toys, she had managed to get not only Karen, Lennon, and Cash to help, but several of the roadies and the guitarist of Roadside. Everyone was standing around, looking skeptical. For the first time that day, I allowed myself a full grin. I might not be super excited about the sandcastle building but I was also far from skeptical. If Paige thought she could rally us to build the best, most awesome, kick-ass sandcastle anyone has ever seen, I ha
d faith that she would do just that.
Relations between builders and management seem to improve for a bit. Paige goes around inspecting all of our work, making encouraging comments and generally not noticing the amount of eye rolling she’s generating. When she gets to Cash’s station, however, she frowns.
“What is that?”
“What is what?” I can tell by the defensive note in his voice that this is not going to be good.
“That.” She points. I chance a glance over my shoulder to see that Cash appears to be making a bridge over the moat—about two feet from where the castle gate is currently located. “Why are you building a bridge into nothing?”
“It’s not into nothing,” he argues. “We’ll put the gate here.”
“The gate is already down there.”
I can tell the minute she says it that Cash failed to check the plans for the gate location. But admitting his mistake is far too much to hope for. Instead, he buckles down. “That’s a stupid place for a gate.”
I turn away, not wanting to see the beat down that is about to occur. As I return to my moat I catch Lennon’s eye. He shakes his head sadly at me before going back to work. I know exactly what he means—don’t argue, Cash. Don’t ever argue.
After much yelling, some mud throwing, and an attempt at organizing the builders into a strike, Cash finally relents and moves his bridge. When he’s finished, I hear Paige say brightly, “Lennon, why don’t you take over with the turret building. Cash, I think Karen could use some help fetching more wet sand.”
He takes his demotion like a man, but I can tell from the gleam in his eye that he’s plotting ways to overthrow Paige’s tyranny.
“What in the hell are you guys doing?”
I look up from my spot at the wall to see Daisy and Daltrey standing a few feet from the castle, staring at us with what I’m pretty sure is awe.
“We’re building a sandcastle!” Paige informs them happily.
“Don’t you mean the best, most awesome, sandcastle anyone has ever seen?” I correct.
“You forgot kick-ass,” Lennon adds helpfully.
“Cash—you have sand in your hair,” Daltrey points out.
“I was punished for insubordination,” he mutters.
Daisy looks around at us, her eye wide, taking it all in. Suddenly she snorts, slapping a hand over her mouth. Okay, so maybe her earlier expression wasn’t awe so much as disbelief.
“Don’t laugh,” Karen says crossly. “You know what she’s like. How in the hell were we supposed to say no?”
“It’s actually pretty fun,” Lennon admits. “If, you know, you stay on her good side.”
“You guys are making me sound like a big meanie,” Paige says. “I just want us to create something awesome.”
“Hell, I’m in,” Daltrey says, stripping off his shirt and reaching for a bucket. “Where do you want me?”
Paige claps her hands happily but Daisy takes his arm. “Um, sweetie? What the hell are you doing? I thought we were going to the pool.”
“We can do that later,” he says, surveying the building site. “How many times in our life can we say we were a part of the most awesome sandcastle anyone has ever seen?”
“The best, most awesome, kick-ass sandcastle anyone has ever seen,” the rest of us correct in unison.
He grins at Daisy. “See?”
“Oh, fine,” she mumbles, grabbing a shovel. “Just tell me what to do.”
An hour later I’m convinced we’ve actually succeeded. Our sandcastle is massive; several stories high with twelve turrets, rows of ramparts, two bridges, an attached stable (“for the queen’s horses,” according to Paige) and, if I do say so myself, the best damn moat any castle has ever had.
“What do you think?” I ask her, wiping the sand from my knees. “Are you satisfied?”
“It’s perfect!” She beams up at me. “Don’t you think?”
“I completely agree. I should never have doubted your sandcastle building skills.”
She pokes me in the stomach. “You better remember that next time I suggest something totally awesome for us to do.”
“I will definitely keep it in mind.” I can’t seem to stop smiling down at her. She has that lit-up thing going on in her face again, that easy happiness that always strikes me as so effortless and natural for her.
Her eyes suddenly soften a bit, growing more serious. “Did it help? Did you have a nice day?”
It actually takes me a minute to figure out what she’s talking about. The conversation with my dad seems like days ago, not mere hours. That sick, heavy feeling has faded to a distant ache. “I had a great day,” I tell her honestly. “Seriously. Thank you, Paige.”
“Yay!” She throws up her arms triumphantly. “My mission is accomplished!”
Laughing and caught up in the moment, I grab her in a hug. She giggles against me, making my chest vibrate, as she hugs me back, tight. I place her feet back on the sand, grinning widely.
For some reason my heart is pounding faster, and I realize that she’s leaning into me a little, her wide eyes searching mine, her lips softly parted. Suddenly it’s like all the energy in my body is straining toward her, pulling me forward like a magnet. I want to kiss her, I relize. Need to. And she wants to kiss me back.
“Hey, you guys!” Daltrey calls, breaking the moment. I pull away, feeling dazed, wondering what just happened. I can’t remember ever having such a strong physical reaction to someone’s touch before. Paige has taken two steps away from me and appears to be breathing heavily, her eyes averted.
“We’re going to take a picture,” he continues. “We need to memorialize this creation for all of posterity.”
“Besides which,” Karen adds, her eyes on the clouds. “It’s about to rain and the entire thing is going to get washed away.”
“What?” Paige squeals, looking up to the sky. “Oh, no! It can’t rain, not after all that work!”
“Let’s just take the picture,” Daltrey says. “Then we’ll know it’s not lost completely.”
We call Martin down from the house and all gather around the sandcastle. “Paige should be in the middle,” Cash says. “Since it was her design and all.”
She beams at him and we all take our places. “On the count of three,” Martin calls and I grin into the camera, trying not to think about what just happened.
After the group shot is done, Cash grabs the camera and takes some close up shots of various features. Just as he’s finishing up, the first drops start to fall.
“Shit!” Paige looks like she’s close to tears. “I can’t believe this!”
“You know what, this is fine,” I tell her bracingly. “Our sandcastle was too epic to remain in this world.”
“Exactly,” Lennon agrees. “It’s, like, so awesome it could only exist for a few perfect hours. Like Brigadoon.”
“What the hell is Brigadoon?” Cash asks.
“You know, the town that disappears? It’s a musical.”
Cash stares at him in horror. “A musical? Dude. You are in a rock band.”
Paige still doesn’t look appeased so I try a different tactic. “You know what’s a totally essential part of the awesome sandcastle making experience?”
She shakes her head.
“Jumping in the ocean to get all the sand out of your bathing suit.”
“It’s raining,” Karen points out.
“Psh.” I wave my hand dismissively. “There’s no lightning, it’s perfectly safe. Besides.” I meet Paige’s eyes, smiling encouragingly. “You haven’t lived until you’ve gone swimming in the ocean in the rain.”
Cash shrugs. “I’m in.”
“What the hell,” Daltrey adds. “You’ll get wet anyhow.”
I look at Karen who glances at Paige’s still crestfallen face before sighing. “Fine. I’ll swim too.”
I meet Paige’s gaze, raising my eyebrows a little bit, as I wait for that smile. “What do you say? Ocean swimming in the rain?”
“No fair!” Daisy yells, chasing after her. Soon everyone is running toward the waves, squealing and yelling as they jump into the cold water. The rain is really coming down now, bouncing off the top of the water to hit us from several angles at once. I catch Paige pretty easily, my legs being so much longer than hers, and dive into a wave. As I go under, the last thing I see is her face. She’s laughing, an impossibly large grin shaping her features.
It’s hard to believe it’s raining, I think to myself as I slip under the waves. Looking at a smile like that, it almost feels like the sun is shining.
Chapter Eleven
Paige
“What the hell is going on with Cash?” Karen asks, not bothering to hide her stare. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so... sober.”
I look in the direction she’s staring to see that Cash is, in fact, quite sober. He’s leaning against the wall of the villa, his arms crossed, staring morosely out at the party.
“I mean,” Karen continues, narrowing her eyes at a pair of girls dancing a few feet away, “those two girls are practically humping each other right in front of him and he isn’t even looking.”
Daisy winces a bit. “Remember the dive shop girl?”
“How could we forget,” Karen mutters. “My room is in the same building as his, you know. It’s hard to ignore the screaming every night.”
“Well, apparently she was interested in more than, uh, how he could make her scream. Dan called today—the tour manager—and the girl’s story is going to run in US Weekly in a few days.”
“She sold her story?” I cry and Daisy shoves her hand over my mouth, looking worriedly in Cash’s direction. He doesn’t appear to have heard me over the music though, so she removes her hand and leans in a little closer.
“Yeah. Got a nice big check, I’m sure. Cash is feeling a little betrayed by the female gender, I think.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Karen murmurs, still staring at him. “I mean, it would be more sad if he wasn’t such a womanizing man-whore, but still... kind of sad.”
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