by Beth Reekles
Because I was trying to prove to myself that I could handle everything this summer. We’d graduated high school now and would be heading off to college soon. We were growing up and I could handle this. I had a job. I was pulling off the epic bucket list of our childhoods to create the perfect summer. I’d gotten into Harvard, dammit.
This was just a bake sale, that was all. A couple dozen cupcakes. No big deal.
Brad woke up just as we were adding sprinkles on top of the frosting. He gasped when he found us in the kitchen, then beamed and cried out, “Lee! I haven’t seen you in forever!”
“Oh, charming,” I scoffed, already abandoning the cupcakes to start getting Brad’s breakfast together.
He noticed. “I can pour my own juice, Elle.” And then: “No! That’s too much milk! You’re messing up the oatmeal!”
“You never complained about the way I made you oatmeal before,” I muttered. He stomped over to scowl at the oatmeal I was making and pouted at me.
I definitely wasn’t this difficult when I was his age.
When I put the milk back in the refrigerator, I noticed a mostly empty bottle of rosé wine chilling in there and my nose wrinkled. Since when did Dad drink rosé? And in the middle of the week? Dad’s idea of a drink was two light beers on a Saturday night or maybe, if he was feeling fancy, a glass of red wine.
And then it hit me.
“Was Linda here this week?” I asked Brad.
“Yeah,” he said, apparently not in the least bit bothered. “Hey, can you add some honey to my oatmeal? She did that the other morning and it was great.”
“Wait, she was here in the morning? Like, she spent the night?”
Brad pulled a face at me, like he didn’t get why it was such a big deal, like I was acting crazy. “Uh, yeah. She, like, passed out on the couch watching a movie.”
Lee hastily turned a chuckle into a cough and waggled his eyebrows at me. I glared back at him. Her wine was in the refrigerator, she was messing with the way we made oatmeal for Brad, she was staying overnight….Wasn’t this all moving way too fast for someone Dad had just been on a date with, like, a week ago?
(Except it wasn’t just a week, was it? It had been going on since, like, spring break, by the sound of it.)
“Sure,” I mumbled, slamming the refrigerator door closed. “I can put some honey in your oatmeal.”
Brad ignored me completely after that, in favor of chatting with Lee (well, at him, really). He kept talking to Lee, barely stopping to say thanks, when I put his breakfast down in front of him.
I left them to it, finishing off the cupcakes and carefully packing them back into the Tupperware—setting a couple containers aside to take back to the beach house, obviously.
“Okay! Do not forget to bring the containers back, okay? They’re Levi’s. If you lose them, they’re coming out of your allowance. Dad said so.”
Brad pulled a box toward him to scrutinize the cupcakes. “You don’t get the frosting as good as Levi,” he grumbled.
“What’s your problem?” I snapped. “Are you still jealous because Dad won’t let you come to the beach house? I told you, maybe you can stay one night. If you’re good.”
Lee clapped Brad on the shoulder. “Psst. Hey, don’t worry, little guy. I got this. We’ll talk them around.”
“Thanks, Lee.”
A little while later, we took Brad to the baseball camp he was spending a few weeks at during the day, and it was still early enough that we decided to pull into the 7-Eleven for Slurpees.
“Howdy there, folks, what can I get you this fine morning?”
I spun around with a grin. “Levi!”
He was stacking boxes of tampons on a shelf and grinned back. Levi was tall and lean, with kind of gangly limbs and curly brown hair, a pointed chin, and warm eyes. He had a wide, friendly smile—the kind that made you feel like you’d just made his day.
Sometimes, though, I got the feeling that he didn’t smile at everybody like that.
(It was still awkward to remember Thanksgiving, when I’d kissed him. But we’d both forgotten all about that by now—or at least put it way behind us.)
“Levi, my friend,” Lee announced, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking on his heels, “put down the tampons! We require ten of your coldest Slurpees.”
“T-ten? You bring the rest of the gang, too, or something?”
“It’s from our bucket list,” I explained as he put the last boxes on the shelf and walked us over to the cash register and the Slurpee machine. “And I want the blue one.”
“Guess that means I’m red.” Lee sighed.
Levi knew all about the bucket list. I’d obviously told him everything, but we’d also been posting a bunch of our escapades so far online so our friends could keep up with all the madness.
“Aah,” he said, starting to pour the first one. “Is this for the great brain-freeze contest?”
“That it is,” I told him with a grin.
“You don’t think three each is enough?”
Lee gave a dramatic sigh, and we turned to each other, both leaning an elbow on the counter. “I thought you said this guy was cool.”
“All this time,” I agreed, shaking my head in dismay, “and he’s still underestimating us.”
“All right, all right. Ten ice-cold Slurpees it is. You guys know it’s not even ten o’clock, right?”
“I feel like he’s trying to make a point. What about you, Shelly?”
“Yeah, but I’m just…not…getting it.”
Levi laughed. As he lined up our drinks, we told him about the successful cupcake decorating—even if Brad hadn’t been too impressed with it.
“But look at that piping. Look!” I waved my cell phone in his face.
“Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would be so proud,” Levi deadpanned. Lee pulled a face, missing the joke, but I laughed. Lately, Levi had gotten way into The Great British Baking Show (or, as he insisted on calling it, Bake Off). “Let me just ring you guys up and then”—he looked around the store, which was empty save for his colleague mopping an aisle—“bottoms up, I guess.”
Lee paid, Levi agreed to take some photos, and we stood facing each other, first Slurpee in hand.
“All right. You remember the rules?”
“No stopping or you’re out.”
“No time-outs.”
“Three…two…”
The cold hit me in a heartbeat, sending a shock right up between my eyes. But I had this. Lee and I stared each other down as we guzzled the Slurpees. I gave him my best stink eye. He kept waggling his eyebrows and crossing his eyes in an effort to distract me.
It wasn’t working, though. We moved on to the second Slurpee within a second or two of each other, but I made it to my fourth while Lee was still struggling through his second.
When he was halfway through his third and I was starting on my fifth, he gave up, dropping the mostly empty cup onto the counter and sinking against it with a groan. “You win, you win. I admit defeat. Uuuugh.”
Just to make a point, I finished the last of my fifth Slurpee before raising my hands to the sky in victory.
“Don’t gloat,” Lee groaned, slumping melodramatically over the counter, his knees buckling. “I…I can’t take it right now. Ugh.”
Levi gave a long, low whistle. “Jeez, Elle. That was impressive.”
I closed my eyes, the brain freeze pretty severe by this point. “If I puke while I’m at work, this is all your fault, Lee.”
“You guys gonna be okay to drive?” Levi asked us, trying not to laugh.
“Sure we are. In, like, a little while,” I admitted. I was definitely gonna need a few minutes to recover. Lee and I stayed at the checkout while we did so, groaning and holding our heads, Levi laughing and promising to send us all the photos.
Twentysomething minutes later, we were high-fiving and back on the road. Lee got out the crumpled, faded sheet of paper and unfolded it on his lap. He rooted through my glove box for a pen, then drew a neat line across the page with a grin.
20. Epic brain-freeze competition!!!
I pulled into the parking lot of Dunes, climbed out of the car, and handed the keys to Lee. “I’ll text you at the end of my shift? Come pick me up and we can head for laser tag.”
“You’re only here a couple of hours,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll hang out with you. May won’t mind.”
I didn’t have to say, “What about Rachel?” because she had plans to visit her grandparents today. But I did say, “What about the realtor? I thought she was supposed to be coming this afternoon. Your mom wanted you and Noah there.”
Lee scowled, a dark look on his face. I felt a twinge of sympathy; any mention of selling the beach house seemed to bring his mood down.
“Noah can handle that himself. He’s a big boy.”
“Well, okay. But the costumes—”
“I put them in your trunk earlier. Ready to go when you are. Hey, do you think May will have any fries ready yet?”
May, it turned out, wasn’t overly surprised to find Lee had tagged along. Although Dunes wasn’t technically serving lunch for another thirty minutes, she got him a soda and a bowl of fries. She didn’t ask why Lee was here, but she did ask why he had red smeared all around his mouth and why my tongue and teeth were bright blue.
We explained the bucket list to her, and Lee said, “And later we’re doing laser tag.”
“Oh! That’s…” She gave us a curious look, her smile a little stiff. “No offense, but that sounds kind of…normal.” Then she groaned melodramatically. “Why do I feel like there’s a catch with you two?”
“It’s Star Wars laser tag,” I explained with a grin. “We’ve got Han Solo and Princess Leia costumes. We wore them for Halloween a couple years back. Lucky they still fit.”
“Noah didn’t feel like renting a Chewbacca outfit and joining in,” Lee added.
May laughed. “You kids. I hope you bring in some pictures! Oh, hey, looks like we’ve got customers. Elle, time to get to work.”
I was worried Lee would be a distraction, but it turned out I was so run off my feet once the lunch rush started that I barely had time to spare him a glance. I did, however, notice him taking a phone call, looking unusually serious. I walked over before dropping an order to the kitchen, long enough to hear him talking in a deep, gruff voice.
“Yes. Yes, of course. Next week is fine. Thank you so much for understanding about the short notice. Mmm-hmm. I’ll be sure to let her know. Have a great day.”
“What was that about?”
Lee jumped, and there was an unmistakably guilty expression on his face. He looked at me with wide, bulging eyes for a moment and then coughed, waving his phone at me. “Oh, nothing. Just, uh, just the realtor. Canceling. They double-booked us.”
“And called you?”
“Mom gave them my number. Help organize things around the bucket list, you know?”
Huh. Well, I guessed that made sense.
“Now, don’t you have tables to serve, missy? Those fries aren’t gonna eat themselves.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Lee?”
He looked up, and so did I. It was quiet—a lull after the last of the late-lunchers left and before the early dinner-goers arrived, something that, a couple of weeks into summer and several shifts into working at Dunes, I was getting familiar with. I was putting away glasses under the bar.
“Yeah, May?”
“What are you doing?”
Lee and I exchanged a confused glance. He looked down at the mop in his hand and the bucket. I could see him thinking the same thing as me: Was this a trick question? “Uh…mopping?”
May gave a long sigh, crossing her arms. “You don’t work here. Stop mopping.”
“But the floor was sticky.”
May gave him a sharp look, a mom-type look that said, Don’t talk back to me, young man. He gave her a bright, winning smile, even pulling out the puppy-dog eyes. May threw her hands in the air, waving them in front of her like she was trying to wave away bad juju.
“That boy,” she told me with a sigh. She didn’t add anything else, but I guessed there was nothing else to say. I knew exactly what she meant and smiled at my best friend.
“Tell me about it.”
“Anyway,” she said, taking a breath. “Elle, I’ve got you working a double today, don’t forget, and I’ve put you down for those extra shifts you wanted next week.”
“Oh. O-okay. Thanks.”
She gave me an odd look. “Is that a problem?”
“No!” I blurted. “That’s great. Thanks, May, I appreciate it.”
She gave me a thumbs-up before going into the kitchen. Lee went back to mopping, humming to himself, his head bobbing as he cleaned.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I’d asked for the extra shifts, so obviously I was happy to have them, and obviously it wasn’t a problem or I wouldn’t have asked for them in the first place.
I was trying to rack up as many hours as I could—more hours meant more money, and I could do with as much of that as possible right now. In the last couple of weeks, Lee and I had blown through a solid portion of the bucket list—from diving in one of those shark tanks to skydiving and taking a juggling class. The only one that hadn’t cost me money had been the blanket fort we’d built (which Rachel and Noah got really exasperated by because we wouldn’t let them in without a password and we’d stolen all the best snacks). Lee had footed the bill for a couple of them, which honestly only made me feel worse about the whole money situation.
We weren’t exactly struggling to get by, but we didn’t have the same kind of disposable income the Flynns did. The more money I could earn this summer, the better. I knew I’d need it once I got to college, and I’d rather not have to keep going to my dad to ask him for cash.
I definitely wanted the extra shifts.
But May reminding me about them just made me feel…kind of exhausted. It had only been a few weeks, but between all the bucket-list stuff, driving back and forth to help out with Brad…It was a lot.
And that wasn’t even mentioning all the work we’d been doing around the beach house. So far we’d tidied up the backyard and painted the porch, Rachel had deep-cleaned the kitchen, and Noah was working on fixing the pool filter using several YouTube tutorials. Next up on the list: steam-cleaning the couches and painting the ceiling, which sounded like the kind of job we’d need all hands on deck for.
Just thinking about it all made me want to sleep for like a week.
“You know,” Lee said, distracting me from myself. He’d set the mop down again and was leaning over the bar, the bucket list out once more. It was looking even more worse for wear than when we’d found it. Stained with red Slurpee, seawater, chocolate sauce from the giant sundae we’d dumped on an unsuspecting Noah, and covered in a bunch of different pens where we’d ticked things off or crossed them out after completing them.
Now Lee tapped the list. “You know, there’s one thing on here we won’t be able to do. Number twenty-two: Live together at Berkeley.”
Guilt prickled across my skin, same as any time Berkeley came up in conversation.
I knew he wasn’t trying to guilt-trip me now. Aside from our initial discussion about college, after I told him I’d be going to Harvard, Lee had been trying his best not to make me feel any worse than I already did about Berkeley. Even so, I still worried that whenever it came up, resentment was simmering just under the surface.
He just gave me a sad smile and said, “You think we should cross it off the list? It feels weird to leave something out.”
“Well…what if we didn�
��t have to? Maybe I could come up to Berkeley with you, help you, I don’t know, get set up or move in or something. Go up and check the place out? It’s not exactly what we had in mind, I know, but…we could make a weekend of it? Just us?”
Lee reached across to put his hand on mine. “It’s a deal. Hey, I’ll get some recommendations from Ashton for when we visit. See if there’s any places we should check out.”
“Ashton?”
“Yeah, Elle. Ashton? Came to our party? Yay high, blond hair, great taste in comic books?” He laughed, talking about some things Ashton had told him about Berkeley already, including some comic-book shop Lee thought sounded like a lot of fun. I was barely listening, though.
Ashton lived on Jon Fletcher’s street but went to a different school. Jon and a couple of the football guys had rented a place on the beach together for the summer after they’d seen us having such a great time at the Flynns’ beach house. Olivia had begged her parents to do the same for her and a couple of the girls.
(And here I was putting ten-dollar bills in a piggy bank I’d labeled “college fund.”)
So Ashton had been hanging around with the guys some days, and he and Lee had been talking. I knew that. I knew Ashton tagged Lee in funny posts on Instagram he thought he’d like.
But I kept managing to block it out of my mind. Ashton and Berkeley both.
I figured I didn’t need the reminder of how I was letting my best friend down.
My second shift was just starting when Lee’s phone rang. “Rach. She’s outside. Guess that’s my cue to go home.”
“Save some dinner for me?”
“Not likely.”
I knew he would.
“See ya tomorrow, May!” Lee called, tossing me his apron.
“No, you won’t!” came her reply, even though I think she knew that nothing she said would stop Lee coming by to hang out here, working for free. He hadn’t said it exactly, but I got the feeling he was trying to make up for the time we’d lose now we wouldn’t be at college together.
There was a handful of other people who worked at Dunes. A nerdy guy from the grade below me at school whose name I now knew was Melvin. A woman who’d been here about as long as May. An old guy who’d come out of retirement and mostly just made up drinks or helped prep food in the kitchen. A few college-aged kids I didn’t really know but got on well enough with. They were all a little confused about why Lee was here so much, although none of them really said anything.
