And I was going to die. Watching him rub suntan oil over Amanda’s back and shoulders was killing me. Especially when she looked back over her shoulder at him, smiling confidently at him like a smug kitten. Stupid Amanda and her obvious feminine wiles.
“Do you think he sees something in her besides her looks?” I asked, despite myself.
Piper shook her head and readjusted her ankle strap. “Who knows. I try to stay away from his girls as much as I can because they always make me want to hit something. He’s too smart of a guy to not want more from the girl he dates. I just hope that if he ever marries one of them, she wants him for the right reasons.”
“They usually want him for the wrong reasons?” The whole concept of that struck me as one that should be explored. Did I want him for the wrong reasons?
“Yeah. They just think he’s hot and he’s got money to spend on them. Plenty of it because he gets great tips. But he needs to save more of it and get his own life set up, you know?”
“That sounds like his fault, not theirs.”
Piper turned and glared at me. “No way. You know how fake these girls are? They all pretend to like me just to get on his good side. Ugh. I can’t tell you how many of them pretend to want to be my friend. Or how many times girls ask to hang out with me just so they can be close to Tate. Luckily, I can always say I already had plans with you guys. But if they’re fake with me, they’re fake with him too, and he deserves better.”
This conversation had become way more uncomfortable than I’d expected. And way too close to home. I mean, I knew that I wasn’t using Piper. I loved her and she truly was like the sister I’d never had—closer to me than either Sadie or Liv. But I knew, if she didn’t, that I always picked her house for us to hang out at because I wanted to see Tate. And it had always been a convenient excuse that my mom worked nights so the Collins let me sleep over whenever I wanted, even on school nights.
A spray of water shot over us, but especially Piper. We both squealed in surprise, but when I saw the football floating on the water in front of Piper, I realized I shouldn’t have been. Zane and Cooper laughed their heads off, but Ridge looked annoyed that they’d broken up their game to mess with us. He wasn’t the only one. Really, I loved them, but they were seriously immature. There was a reason I’d never been interested in any of them.
Piper was even more annoyed than I was, and I didn’t blame her since Zane had been aiming right for her.
Grabbing the ball out of the water, Piper stood up on her board and yelled, “Did you guys lose something? I think this ball is yours, right?”
Zane grinned and called back to her, “Throw it here. If you can throw that far.”
“If I can throw that far,” she mocked him.
I watched with supreme amusement as she turned around and faced the opposite way, pulling back her arm and hurling it with a tremendous effort as far as she could. The effort made her lose her balance and she tipped over into the water. The twins died laughing, not caring that their ball was now fifty yards down the beach and moving further away on the gentle current.
I watched it as it bobbed on the waves all the way to another group of guys. While Piper got back on her board, I stood up on mine and called, “Hey, can you throw our ball back?”
One of the guys, who looked about our age or a little older turned around, but he looked confused. He must have heard me but not understood what I was saying. “Our ball,” I yelled again, louder this time. He got it then and waved as he waded out until he was chest-deep in the water to get the ball. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to have to swim for it because the current was taking it out further and further.
He got it though, but instead of throwing it back, he swam over to us. His dark hair was plastered to his head, but it just made the features of his good-looking face more obvious.
“Hey,” Piper said. “What have we here?”
Even Sadie looked up then. “Oh, nice.”
And he did look nice, swimming right up to my paddle board as sleek as a dolphin. I sat down again, hanging my feet off either side as he stood up, rested his left arm across my board and held up the ball with his right. “This yours?” he asked, flashing his straight white teeth in a beautiful smile.
“Sort of,” I said, taking it from him. I tossed it over to Piper, who took one look at Zane’s expectant expression and threw it right back where she had the first time.
“Dang it, Piper,” Zane yelled, no longer amused as he chased after the ball.
The guy laughed. “I’d say that was a waste of effort except I got to meet you.”
I arched my eyebrow at him. “Oh yeah? Have we met?”
“We are now. I’m Jack.”
“Katriel.”
“Nice name.”
“Thanks. These are my friends, Sadie and Piper. And that girl on the board way over there is Liv.”
“Cool,” he said, but his eyes didn’t shift away from my face. “So where are you from?”
“Here,” I said, amused at the question.
“You’re a local?”
“Through and through. Let me guess where you’re from.” From the slight drawl in his voice, I figured there were only a few states to pick from. “Texas?”
“You’re good.”
Realizing that somehow the fates had smiled down at me and sent a good-looking guy my way in front of Tate, I glanced back at the beach to see if he had noticed. From the way he’d stood up and crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze fixed on us even from that distance, I knew he had. Perfect. Then I realized that the cute guy was saying something and that I should probably pay attention.
“…and I’ve always wanted to try paddle boarding. Will you teach me how?”
Focusing on him again, I smiled and shifted forward slightly in just the same way I’d seen Amanda do earlier to emphasize her figure. “Sure.” I stood up and moved forward on the board. “Let’s see how good your balance is. Get on.”
“What, now?”
“Sure. It’s the perfect time. Trust me.”
Using my core strength, I managed to keep the board from tipping while he got a leg over the board and straddled it. “Okay, how do I stand up?”
“Get to your knees and then move to one foot at a time. You can put your hands on my hips if you need to steady yourself.”
He grinned up at me. “I’ll have to make sure I do.”
He proved to have great command over his balance and gracefully got to his feet, but he did indeed steady himself with a hand at my waist. But from the light pressure, I could tell he didn’t need it.
“Okay, see the handhold there? That’s the center of the board. We need to keep our weight even so take a step closer to me.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“I’m headed in,” Piper said, sounding way too pleased. “You coming, Sadie?”
“I think I’ll stay here in case they need help.”
Piper dug her paddle into the water and moved back toward the beach.
“See how she’s doing it?” I asked, passing my paddle back to him. “Give it a shot.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” he asked.
I didn’t miss the extra meaning behind his words.
Chapter Seven
My phone didn’t usually get a lot of traffic, but by Monday morning it was blowing up with notifications. Job offers were pouring in, just as I’d expected. All I had to do was sort out which one I would hate the least and return the calls.
But I was also getting a ton of texts from Jack. He’d somehow managed to remember my phone number long enough to add me as a contact. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I mean, it was flattering and he was definitely cute, but my heart wasn’t ready to move on from Tate yet. Even though he had a girlfriend who was way hotter than me.
Piper was super enthusiastic about Jack. “It’s just a matter of time until he kisses you,” she said. “When he asks you out, don’t you dare turn him down.”
So, I
didn’t.
I was in the kitchen at the time, eating breakfast with my mom before she went to bed. “I have a date.”
“Oh yeah? With who?”
“A guy named Jack.”
“Is it serious?”
“No,” I answered cheerfully. “He’s only in town for a week.”
“Oh, a tourist. Well, have fun, but be careful that he doesn’t try to pressure you into anything.”
“Come on, Mom. No worries there.”
“How about the job search?” she asked, sitting down with a protein shake. She was on some kind of diet lately.
“I have several offers. I’m going to take my time picking because I don’t want to spend all summer with a job I hate.”
“Sure. But don’t wait too long or they’ll hire someone else.” She took a long drink of her shake, then said. “Um…I have a date too.”
I nearly dropped my phone in my cereal bowl. “You what?”
“Yeah. So there’s this guy who works in the hospital billing office. He’s really nice.”
I don’t know what was more awkward—her tone or the way she seemed to be waiting for me to congratulate her. But I had no idea how I felt about this. “Um, okay.”
“Look, I know it must be weird for you, but we’ve been…talking…for a while now. I just wasn’t sure about what I wanted. But now with you leaving home soon, I realized how lonely it’s going to be.” She looked up and met my eyes for the first time since she’d started the conversation. “That didn’t sound too fun, you know?”
I tried to see things from her perspective, and not from my selfish one. I got it, I really did. I didn’t want her to be alone or sad or miserable. But I also wanted to point out that she wouldn’t be alone if she wasn’t pressuring me to leave home and go to school—where I was sure I would be lonely and miserable and stressed out all the time. “No, it doesn’t. I guess both of us are staring down a future that we don’t really want right now.”
Her brows snapped together. “What do you mean—a future you don’t really want?”
Shrugging, I got up and took my bowl to the sink. “I just meant that I am not looking forward to going to UF at the end of the summer.”
“But why?” The concern in her voice made me pick my words carefully.
“Because I have to leave everyone and everything I love behind and I don’t even know what I want to do there.”
“I thought you wanted to be a business major.”
“It’s as good as anything else, right? Since I’m good at math.” I couldn’t stand the worried look on my mom’s face. “Look, don’t freak out about it. It’s time for me to grow up, whether I feel ready or not.”
She stood up and came toward me, crossing her arms. “I had no idea you were feeling this way. Why don’t we sit down together and look at all the degree plans? Maybe there will be something you think sounds fun. And anyway, the first couple of years are all just general education credits anyway. You have time to figure it out.”
Yeah, maybe. But that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to leave Grand View. “Okay. Let’s do that some time. But right now, you need to go to bed. You know if you stay up too long you get your second wind and have a hard time falling asleep. How many more nights are you working this week?
“Tomorrow night and then Thursday through Saturday.”
“You have to work on my birthday?”
She frowned. “Yeah. I tried to get off, but they’re short on staff. But we’ll spend some time together during the day.”
“I’ll probably have to work.”
“We’ll have breakfast together for sure. And then we’ll spend all of Sunday together doing whatever you want, okay? And we’ll have that talk.”
“Sure. Why don’t you go to bed, Mom? We’ll talk later.” And then I walked away before she could argue with me.
In my room, I got out a notebook and wrote down a list of the four job offers I’d gotten. Two were retail stores in the mall, one was an ice cream shop, and the last one was from one of the many souvenir stores around town. Hard pass on that one. Of all of them, the ice cream store was probably the most dangerous since I already had a serious addiction to sugar. Before I could decide between the two retail stores, however, I got another call.
“Hello?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Katriel Pearson,” a lady with a cheerful voice said.
“I’m Katriel.”
“Oh good. I’m Laura at the Coral Sands salon. I’ve got your application in front of me. Would you be able to come in for an interview either this afternoon or tomorrow?”
The salon had called me back? I’d dropped off that application weeks ago. I’d seen that they were looking for a receptionist when I got my nails done for prom, but I’d given up after all this time. “Yes, I can come whenever you’d like me to.”
“Would two o’clock work?”
“Yes. I’ll be there.”
“Great. I’ll look forward to meeting you.”
When we hung up, I looked at the phone as if expecting a message to pop up on the screen that it had all been a prank. But nothing happened of course. I looked down at my list and crossed off the two retail stores. All at once, I had a gut feeling that I wanted this job and I was going to do whatever I could to make that happen.
***
Five hours later, I was ready to go. Surely if you needed to look professional for any regular job interview, you needed to look your best for a job with a company that was about looks.
I’d spent an hour coaxing beachy waves into my dark brown hair and it had taken three attempts on each eye, but my winged eyeliner was definitely on point. If I did this every day, I might even get good at it. If nothing else, having a good excuse to dress up more every day might be good for me. After all, if t-shirts and ponytails had defined my look in high school, what better way to look like an adult than to dress like one?
I was not thinking about Tate as I decided that. Anyway, not much.
Wearing a breezy, floral sundress and platform sandals, I got to the salon ten minutes earlier than my appointment time. As I came through the door, I stopped, not sure what to do since no one was at the reception desk. Obviously why I’d gotten a call back.”
A guy whose work station was close the desk looked up from sweeping hair on the floor and smiled. “Can I help you?”
“I have an interview with Laura.”
“Oh, great. I’ll go find her.”
As he left, the phone rang. I looked around waiting for someone to answer it, but all the other stylists were busy with clients. One of them, a pretty girl who looked to be in her early twenties pointed her scissors at me. “Hey, do you mind getting that?”
“Me?” I asked, pointing to myself in surprise.
“Sure. You’re here to apply for the job, right? Well, consider this a test of your phone skills.”
I blinked but now was not the time to hesitate. Moving quickly around the desk, I quickly thought of what to say. I put the receiver to my ear and said, “Coral Sands Salon. How may I help you?”
The call was only some guy asking when his girlfriend would be done so he could pick her up. “Someone is calling about Denise?”
“Twenty minutes,” the stylist in the back corner called.
I gave the guy his answer and said, “We’ll see you then.”
Just then a lady with perfect highlights and a friendly smile came in from the back. “Look at you. Katriel, right? You’re a natural. Do you think you’d like doing that all the time?”
I looked around at the dynamic atmosphere full of talented, creative people. “Definitely.”
“I have to warn you, the last girl we hired quit after two weeks. There’s a big learning curve as you master everyone’s schedules and figure out how to keep clients happy, but if you can get that down, it will get easier. And from your resume, it’s clear you’re a smart girl so that shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re interested, you can even help out the stylists and
learn some things. What do you think?”
“I think that it sounds perfect. I’m ready for the challenge.”
“Great. I’m Laura by the way, and you’re hired. I’ve got a good feeling about you.”
As I shook her hand, I had a good feeling too—way down deep in my gut where you feel things that matter.
Chapter Eight
I sent my mom a text about my new job so she’d see it when she got up, and then I headed over to Piper’s house. When I got there, she was sitting at the desk in her room doing exactly the same thing I’d been doing a few days ago—filling out job applications.
“This is the worst,” she said.
“Right?” I plopped down on her bed. “But guess what? I got a job today and I don’t think I’m going to totally hate it.”
She spun around. “Ooh, where?”
“Coral Sands salon. I’m their new receptionist, but the owner says that I can help out the stylists when I get spare time if I want. Doesn’t that sound awesome?”
“Help them with what? You don’t know anything about hair or nails or makeup. And don’t you have to have a license or something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can get things for them or sweep up hair or just be an extra set of hands. I don’t know, but I’m excited.”
“Well, cool. I admit I’m surprised, but I think it’s awesome. And you’ll be good at it.”
“Does that mean I can play with your hair and makeup?”
She looked back over her shoulder at me and grinned. “Oh yeah. Can I keep working on this at the same time?”
I shot up off the bed. “Yes. Let’s do it.”
Soon, I had curling irons with different barrel widths, hot rollers, and a flat iron all plugged into a power strip on her desk. I sprayed and curled and set. With some YouTube videos to guide me, I put her hair up in half a dozen updo’s, braids, and knots. She only complained a little when I made her tilt her head back and she couldn’t work at the same time. Finally though, she’d had enough.
Rubbing the back of her neck, she said. “I can’t fill out any more applications and I need a snack. Can we take a break?”
Before We Say Goodbye Page 4