by Beth Reekles
He gulped, breathing hard, chest heaving. His eyes roamed over my face, looking desperate.
And then I got it.
Despite everything I’d said to Noah, everything I’d believed about my relationship with Levi, he did still have a crush on me.
I’d really thought he’d gotten over that. That it was just some fleeting, silly thing, exacerbated by the time we’d kissed.
That kiss had felt like a huge mistake at the time.
It had made me realize that whatever I’d been feeling toward Levi last year paled in comparison to my feelings for Noah. It had made me realize I didn’t like Levi that way, not really.
I’d always just kind of assumed it was the same for him.
I was such an idiot.
Maybe that time we’d kissed had just made Levi’s feelings for me stronger.
“I’m not just pretending to be your friend,” he said again. “It’s not an act, whatever Noah thinks.”
“Levi—”
But he was still barreling on: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get in between you guys or anything. I know I shouldn’t have hit him. Maybe…maybe I should’ve said something to you before, or…”
Oh God, I was such a terrible friend. All this time and I’d had no idea. I should’ve known. I should’ve noticed. I wasn’t exactly sure what I would’ve done differently, but I should’ve done something. Whatever else, Levi was my friend.
“I…I can’t do this right now, Elle. Thanks for the invite. I’m sorry I screwed up. Tell Noah I’m sorry. But right now I think I should go.”
“Levi,” I said again.
He continued to look at me with that same desperation, the same soft, pleading look, and then suddenly his hands were on my arms and he tugged me toward him, pressing his lips to mine just once, just for a second, just briefly.
I gave a squeak of surprise, but he had already stepped back and let go by then.
“You’re right,” I mumbled. “You should go.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and then he was staggering indoors and through the beach house, running out.
I touched a finger to my lips, listening to the front door slam.
And I let him go, too.
* * *
• • •
It felt like I’d been standing there for hours when footsteps clattered up onto the patio.
Lee’s eyes flitted around before settling on me. “What happened? Was that Levi? Where’s Noah?”
I froze.
“Was that the door?” Rachel said, going to look. “I thought I heard Noah’s bike….Where’s Levi?”
“They’ve gone,” I managed to say. “They’ve both gone.”
Lee sighed. “Maybe just as well. First time I’ve ever seen Noah walk away from a fight. What the hell was that all about?”
I was shaking my head, but then Amanda piped up, sparing me having to come up with any kind of answer. (Because how exactly was I supposed to explain what had just happened? I wasn’t even so sure myself.)
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” she told us all. “Not after that talk they had earlier.”
I huffed, exclaiming, “Oh my God, what talk? What the hell did they even say? What was so damn special about this chat?”
Amanda blinked at me. “Well, Noah confronted him. Told him to stop mooning over you. It’s a little bit sad, really. The way he looks at you. I feel bad for the guy.”
I suddenly remembered last spring, before Noah and I got together, when I found out he’d been “warning” guys to stay away from me in some stupid and misguided attempt to look out for me.
Frowning at Amanda, I folded my arms and demanded, “Did he tell Levi to stay away from me? Keep his distance or something?”
She shook her head, looking startled. “No! He just said it was about time Levi got over you and that it wasn’t fair to either of you to carry on the way he was. Then, of course, they had that big bust-up down on the beach anyway. I did tell him, I said, if you’re going to talk to the boy, at least try to be a grown-up about it.” She sighed and rolled her eyes; there was something almost indulgent about it, though. “That idiot, honestly. There’s no talking to him sometimes. He’s so bloody headstrong.”
“That’s one word for it,” Lee muttered.
They were all looking at me.
Waiting for me to protest, I guessed, like the last time this subject came up.
“I…”
They kept looking at me and waiting.
I flushed. “Okay, so…so maybe you guys have a point. About Levi having…having a crush on me.”
“Oh!” Rachel sighed, throwing her hands in the air. “Now she sees it! Did it really take Noah getting punched in the face for you to realize that?”
It maybe took Levi kissing me again to realize that, but…
“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered. “He’s still my friend. It’s not my fault I never noticed.”
Lee slung his arm around my shoulders roughly, pulling me forward and ruffling my hair. “You’re an idiot sometimes, Shelly.” He let me up. “So what did he say? Levi? And Noah, for that matter.”
“Noah didn’t exactly say much,” I explained. “Levi…”
Oh man. That was a whole other can of worms. One I wasn’t quite ready to deal with just yet.
Chapter Thirty
Noah hadn’t come back, but none of us were too worried about him. The mood down on the beach took a while to pick back up after the intensity of the volleyball game, but soon enough it seemed that everyone was enjoying themselves again.
“Everything okay?” Lee asked me as our friends cracked open some beers and Amanda explained the rules of some drinking game to everybody.
“Sure,” I told him, and plastered on a smile to prove it. There was no way I was going to let Noah—or Levi—spoil the rest of my final Fourth of July at the beach house.
As the evening drew on, Matthew and my dad set up the fireworks. June brought out desserts, with Amanda and Rachel and Linda helping. I’d decided to stay out of the way at that point. Too many hands and all that.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Noah?” Brad had asked me and Lee. “He can’t miss the fireworks.”
“How about we video them for him?” Lee suggested. I’d tried calling Noah, left him a message to say he should come home.
He ended up texting his mom, saying he was just out clearing his head.
I had an idea of exactly where he was but decided to leave him be. He’d come home when he was ready. And today was about all of us, about our final Fourth of July at the beach house, not about me chasing after Noah.
That evening, after all our friends had gone and Brad’s buddies had been collected by their parents and after we’d cleaned the place up a little, we piled into the rumpus room at the back of the house with drinks and plates of leftovers to snack on.
Dad was setting up Monopoly. The board was old, used so many times it frayed at the edges and felt soft to the touch. A lot of the cards and game money were faded, crinkled, and bent, some of them stained from our games as careless, messy children.
There weren’t enough pieces to go around for us to all play by ourselves, since we’d lost two of the tokens years ago. Rachel and Lee teamed up. Brad would be playing with Dad. June and Matthew were a team. Amanda, Linda, and I would play by ourselves.
“We get the race car!” Brad cried, grabbing for it.
“Not so fast,” Linda told him with a laugh. “We have to roll to pick the pieces.”
I pulled a face at Lee. We never rolled to pick pieces. We all had our own pieces. We just rolled to see who went first.
But, hey, fine.
Whatever.
I rolled a one when it was my turn. I didn’t really care, until Linda rolled a six—the highest of everyone�
�and said with a great big smile, “Looks like the honor is all mine! And I think I’ll pick”—her fingers danced over the pieces—“the doggy!”
My hand flung out before I could stop it, snatching up the dog.
“Sorry,” I blurted, realizing what I’d just done. “It’s just that I’m always the Scottie dog.”
“Oh, no, Elle.” Linda laughed, holding her palm out to me patiently. “Those are the rules. I get first choice.”
June gave me a sympathetic look from her spot next to Linda, but all I could do was scowl. I’d been so willing to give her another chance today, but this was where I drew the line.
My voice was biting when I retorted, “I don’t care. I’m the Scottie dog.”
I knew I was being a brat. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t wipe the scowl off my face or compose myself or stop the irritation that boiled away in my veins the more I stared at her.
I knew I was being a brat, and I knew someone was going to try to talk me down, but I really, really didn’t expect it to be Dad.
“Elle, come on,” my dad said, sounding unusually stern. “Why don’t you just give Linda the piece?”
I scoffed, glaring at him now in utter disbelief.
He was really going to take her side? On this?
I saw June wince, but she didn’t step in to defend me either. In fact, when she caught me looking her way, she gave me a small nod, with an expression that said, Go on, Elle, listen to your dad.
Well, fine.
If that was how they were going to be.
“It’s just kind of tradition,” Lee tried on my behalf. “Elle’s always the Scottie dog.”
“No,” I snapped, pushing myself up from the floor and throwing the little metal piece savagely at the table. It hit the Chance cards, sending them scattering. Rachel was quick to tidy them up. “It’s fine. Take the dog. I didn’t want to play anyway.”
“Oh, no, no, it’s okay! Hold on, Elle,” Linda said, picking up the tiny dog and holding it out after me even though I was already at the door. “If being the dog is tradition, you should absolutely be it. Here.”
“I don’t need your charity,” I spat, wheeling around. “You know, you can’t just barge into our lives like this, spend the holiday with us, play board games with everyone, and act like you’ve been here all along. Because you don’t belong here. And it’s pathetic how hard you’re trying.”
“Elle!” both my dad and June shouted. I heard one of them jump up.
Matthew said, “Don’t mind her, Linda. Teenagers, eh?”
I made sure to slam every door on my way outside. I heard heaving footsteps tromping after me but didn’t turn around, not until my dad shouted, “Rochelle! You stop right there, young lady!”
I did, crossing my arms and turning back around just before I got down the path to the beach. It was already dark out, and the outside lights on the turquoise pool water cast eerie patterns across the patio, the house, even my dad’s face.
Which was a pretty furious face.
I stood my ground, arms crossed tight and brow furrowed.
“What was that all about?” he demanded.
“What are you talking about? You know exactly what that was about!” I objected and jabbed a finger back at the house. “You know I’m always the Scottie dog, Dad. It was Mom’s token. Every time we played. Every time. And you were just going to let her have it? What, should I give her the watch Mom left me for my seventeenth birthday, too? Should we get all Mom’s clothes out of storage in the attic for her, let her use Mom’s favorite mug with the pink stars on it?”
He sighed, taking his glasses off to clean them on his shirt, pausing to rub his eyes before putting them back on. “Elle. It was just a Monopoly piece.”
“It was Mom’s Monopoly piece. This is our last summer here. The Flynns are selling the place and…and we’re off to college, and when are we even going to have a family game night like this again? She shouldn’t even still be here. It’s a family game night. All the guests went home ages ago.”
“Now stop it. That’s not fair and you know it.”
“Fair?” I scoffed, my eyes bugging. “You want to talk about fair? What’s not fair is the way she’s just…just…just suddenly around all the time, trying to force herself into our lives! You got her to pick up Brad from camp, she’s been to the house cooking dinner with you guys, she’s been hanging out with Matthew and June. She was in our house, acting like she belonged there, acting all…chummy with me, and I can’t stand it. I know you like her, and I’m sorry, but I don’t. And I think it’s selfish of you to force her into our lives like this.”
I watched my dad’s face turn pale, the way he blinked in total shock as he digested it all.
And I kept my arms folded and gritted my teeth, because I didn’t regret a word of it.
He was forcing her into our lives. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want my dad to be happy, but it was too much, too fast. Linda wasn’t part of our family and I hated that she was acting like she was.
I hated that she’d been getting on so well with June and Matthew all day. I hated that she’d been talking to Rachel and Amanda in the kitchen earlier, and they had been chatting so happily back, with friendly smiles on their faces. I hated the way she’d “snuck” Brad an extra brownie, like it was their little secret, like he was five years old and she could win him over with some baked goods—and I hated that Brad was already so won over by her, calling for her to join in, and had she tried our favorite potato salad, and had she seen all the photos in the hallway, and she was still picking him up from camp in a couple of days and taking him for pizza, right?
I hated that everybody else seemed to have welcomed her in so easily when she didn’t belong.
By now, Dad had recovered enough to stand up a little straighter, his cheeks turning ruddy. “Selfish? Are you serious, Elle? You and Brad have been my number-one priority your whole lives, especially since your mom died. But you’re both old enough now, and after I got to know Linda, I realized maybe it was time I stopped putting part of my life on hold. Jeez, Elle, I know I haven’t always been around a lot, but that’s because I took a job I didn’t want in order to earn more money to help you go to a better school, to give you and your brother a better life.”
He was breathing raggedly, so heavily I could hear it from even a few feet away, and the lines on his face seemed to deepen while I stood there slack-jawed.
“And don’t talk to me about selfish,” he went on. “I asked her to help out with Brad so much to give you more free time this summer! So you could spend it gallivanting around with Lee, doing all those bucket-list things and spending time with Noah and your friends. Do you have any idea what a big step that was for Linda—for me to ask her to suddenly be part of my kids’ lives like that? Looking after Brad, looking out for you?”
“I…”
I’d had no idea. I’d just always assumed he hadn’t met anybody he liked, that he’d found it hard to move on from my mom; I didn’t think for a second he’d actively decided to put any kind of dating life “on hold” for us.
And I knew he found his job exhausting. I knew he worked long hours sometimes and occasionally had to spend a night away or do something for work on a weekend, but he never said. Whenever we’d ask him about work, he’d just smile and say, “Oh, you know. Same old, same old, bud!”
It’s not as though I didn’t know he was, you know, human, with his own thoughts and feelings, but he never let on. About any of it.
“I’m not trying to force her into your life, Elle,” he told me, his voice serious and weary. “I was hoping to take things slow. Give you guys a chance to get used to it, I guess. That’s why I took a while to tell you. But with you being so busy this summer, it just…happened. And Brad really seems to like her. And Linda likes him, too. She treats him really well. And she’s desperate
to get to know you better. I’m not…For God’s sake, Elle, it’s not like I’m trying to replace your mother. Nobody could do that. But don’t stand there and call me selfish, and don’t take it out on her. If you’re going to act like a child, Elle, I’ll treat you like a child. But I would like to think that you’re old enough now that we can have this conversation like adults.”
“You never said” was all I could manage. “The…the job and”—ew—“dating.”
“Of course I didn’t! You were just a kid, Elle! You’re my kid. Those weren’t your burdens to bear. It was bad enough I needed to rely on you to help out with Brad so much and with chores around the house.”
“But…” I gulped, not sure where the lump in my throat had come from or when the tears in my eyes had appeared.
My dad stepped forward and lifted my chin, sighing and giving me a sad, small smile. “You had to grow up so quick after your mom died. I just thought…this summer, why not let you be a kid a little while longer? I didn’t realize Linda being around like this was so upsetting for you. And I’m sorry about that. I should’ve known, bud.”
At least he was back to calling me bud, I thought. He couldn’t be too mad at me anymore for yelling at his new girlfriend.
I sniffled, feeling a couple of tears drop down my face. I ducked my head, trying to wipe them away quickly. “I guess I should’ve said. And I guess I was kind of being a brat.”
“Just a little,” he agreed, pulling a face and making me give a snotty, wobbly laugh before he tugged me into a warm hug, letting me cry a little into his shirt.
And just for a little while, everything seemed okay.
Chapter Thirty-One
Noah didn’t come home to the beach house that night. I was back at work on the morning shift so didn’t get to stick around to see if he’d show up.
I was hoping, though, that by the time I got home things would be back to normal.
