by Sarah Dessen
Once in the parking lot, he pulled out his keys. “Well, I suppose we should be on our way to North Reddemane. We’ve paid to have the house cleaned since the renters left, but there’s no telling what kind of state we’ll actually find it in.”
“Renters are hell on houses,” Luke said, as Benji skipped beside me in that awkward, bouncy, little-kid way.
“Is that so,” my father said.
“According to Emaline’s grandmother, anyway.” Luke pulled out his keys and started jingling them as his truck came into sight. Seriously, it was like a reflex with him. “Most likely it’s nothing you can’t fix up yourself, though.”
“I don’t know about that,” my father said. “I’m not exactly handy.”
I saw Luke give him a look, slightly pitying. It’s one I never would have expected a couple of hours earlier, when this evening began. Then, he and Theo were the experts, and Luke stuck out. But here, now, it was reversed, and I suddenly saw my father the way I realized my boyfriend had from the beginning, like he was the one who should be embarrassed. Which, in turn, embarrassed me. Apparently, I was responsible for everyone now.
“Nice to meet you,” Luke told him, extending a hand. My father shook it. “And thanks for dinner.”
“Of course.”
“Are you coming back to the house with us?” Benji asked me.
“Um,” I said, glancing at Luke, “I don’t think so. Not tonight, anyway.”
“Emaline’s got her own life,” my father said. “She was very kind to meet us on such short notice.”
Benji looked at me, his eyes squinty in the setting sun. He was more my sibling than Amber or Margo, at least if you went by genetics. But I didn’t know him at all.
“I’ll see you soon,” I told him. “We’ll go play minigolf, or something.”
“Yeah?” he said, excited. “That would be so cool!”
“Watch this one with a golf club,” Luke told him, cocking a finger at me. “She’s lethal.”
“That was just one time,” I said.
Benji’s eyes widened. “What happened?”
I looked at Luke. “I kind of nailed him on the forehead on the windmill hole.”
“Hit one of the spokes and shot right back at me,” he added, ever cheerfully. He stuck a finger in the center of his tanned forehead. “Had a circle mark here for weeks.”
Benji laughed, because of course this was just the kind of thing ten-year-olds loved to hear about. My father forced a smile. “All right, buddy,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
“Okay.” Benji crossed over to where my father was standing, leaving us in two separate camps. The natural order, resumed. “See you guys later.”
“Count on it,” Luke said.
“Drive safe,” I added. And then, finally, it was over. It had only been an hour and a half, but I was exhausted. I could feel it in my bones.
Even so, after a few steps, I turned back and looked at them again. Benji had run out ahead to the Subaru, my father walking behind him slowly, almost heavily. As I watched, he reached up and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Check the doorknobs,” I called out.
He turned around. “What?”
I cleared my throat. “The doorknobs. They get the most wear and tear in a rental. Especially any onto the beach side. You don’t want them falling off and locking you out.”
He just looked at me for a moment, and I wondered why I was even telling him this. In the distance, Benji was lifting his arms to the breeze coming off the causeway, his hair blowing back from his face.
“Okay,” my father said. “Thanks.”
I nodded, then started back towards my car, where Luke was waiting for me. Doorknobs? I was thinking. Really? And yet it wasn’t like I was proficient in his language, had any idea how to speak to him. You stick with what you know.
Now, back at the Tip, Morris picked up his beer again. “It’s not your problem,” he told me.
I looked at him. “What isn’t?”
“His marriage. Or his relationship with his kid.” He took a sip, then swallowed. “Any of it.”
Morris might have been dense. Okay, Morris was dense, most of the time. But just about when I was totally ready to give up on him, he’d say something out of nowhere that surprised me. And, even more surprisingly, helped.
“So why do I feel like it is?” I asked.
“Because he dumped all that shit on you. Totally uncool.” Another gulp. God only knew how many he’d had. Morris never seemed to get drunk, just talked even more slowly. When he was really wasted, he was flat out silent. That’s how you knew. “He wasn’t around for you when you needed him, you don’t have to be there for him. Bottom line.”
I was quiet, aware as I always was when we crept close to the issue of his own father. All I knew of him was the lowered Monte Carlo he’d always driven to see Morris back when we were neighbors, years ago. It was red, supershiny, with a stereo that had bass rumbling loud enough to set your teeth chattering. You could tell the car was its owner’s baby, absolutely loved and cared for. This was in stark contrast to how he treated his actual child, who, more often than not, sat waiting on the front steps for weekend visits for hours before finally disappearing back inside, dragging his overnight bag behind him. After Morris and his mom moved, his dad relocated somewhere up north and hadn’t been in touch since. It was not something we talked about much. What I did know was that in the weeks leading up to graduation, when I found myself haunting my mailbox for responses to my invites, it was Morris who said to cut it out, that it wasn’t worth the time. He might have been ignorant on some fronts, but the boy knew about the futility of waiting around.
Unlike Luke, who was now suddenly behind me, his hands sliding down over my shoulders. “What are you guys doing over here, looking so serious?” he asked. “Contemplating the universe?”
I glanced at Morris, who was downing the last of his beer. “Sort of.”
“Screw the universe,” he said. “I’m just checking out the ocean.”
Luke guffawed, then plopped down next to me and pulled me into his arms. I knew he was buzzed and just being sweet, but like too often lately, it grated; he’d come at the wrong moment. I tried to shake this off as Morris got to his feet.
“Getting a refill,” he announced. He looked at me. “You need one?”
I shook my head. “Talk later?”
“Talk later,” he repeated.
It was what we had always said, our version of goodbye, going all the way back to the days when he lived next door. Back then, when we were kids and time was long, we spent just about every day together—riding the bus to school, coming home, then playing by the causeway behind our houses. More often than not, he’d then end up at our house for dinner and TV afterwards, leaving only when it was time for me to go to bed. But as he finally went out the door, walking the short distance across the grass to his rental house, it was never a full stop. More like a pause, until we started up the next day. Talk later. We always did.
Now he nodded, then was gone, loping across the sand. As I watched him go, Luke pulled me in even closer and kissed the back of my head. “You did look pretty serious over here. Everything okay?”
“I guess.” I picked at a piece of driftwood by my foot. “Just kind of freaked about my dad and everything, still.”
“Right.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I know it’s weird. But the fact that he did tell you … it’s kind of cool. Like he’s, you know, letting you in.”
I felt myself blink, processing this. “Into what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. His life, his marriage. I mean, that’s progress in some way, don’t you think? That after pulling away like he did, he wants to include you now?”
No, I thought. Out loud I said, “Maybe.”
It was so different from what Morris had said, the complete opposite in fact, that I wanted him to explain himself. But then he was sliding his hands around my waist, over the small of my ba
ck, kissing my neck again. “My parents are out tonight,” he said into my collarbone. “Want to see if we can get busted at my place this time?”
It was a fair offer, one I most likely would have jumped at any other day. But now, it just felt off. Sometimes I thought Luke knew me better than anyone. This wasn’t one of them.
“Maybe,” I said again, leaving all of my doubt to hover in this one word between us. I didn’t know if he heard me or not, as the wind was picking up, carrying voices from behind us with it. There were so many sounds near the ocean. Water, air, even sand blowing. As you got farther inland, nature subsided, muted by concrete and the landscape. Here on the Tip, though, you could always count on it to drown just about anything out.
* * *
Of course, Luke’s parents didn’t catch us. He had always been the lucky one.
I was heading home just after midnight when my gas light came on. Now I’d be late for curfew for sure, I thought, as I turned into the Gas/Gro. I’d just started filling up when a dusty, dented pickup pulled up to the other side of the pump. The door creaked open and an older guy with graying hair, wearing a worn baseball cap that simply said FISH, climbed out.
It was one of those hot summer nights, with a breeze that didn’t even come close to cooling you off, even when it hit you right in the face. Inside the Gas/Gro, the attendant had his cell phone tucked between his ear and shoulder as he stocked cigarettes, sliding in one box at a time.
When my pump read twenty bucks, I slowed it down, watching the numbers carefully so I wouldn’t go over what I had in my pocket. In my peripheral vision, I saw the guy slide his credit card, then twist off his gas cap. He started filling up as well, and for a moment we just stood there, the only sound the ticking of gallons and dollars going in.
“Hey, Clyde,” I finally said.
He glanced up. “Emaline. How’s it going?”
I nodded for my answer and we were silent for another minute or so. Then I said, “You know there’s some people down here shooting a documentary about you, right?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the pump. “I believe I have ignored some phone messages to that effect.”
“They seem pretty persistent.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
When I hit twenty-five bucks, I stopped pumping and replaced my gas cap. As I did so, I looked at Clyde, who was as much an institution in Colby as the pier and the bacon at the Last Chance Café. He’d grown up in Colby, worked doing maintenance for my grandmother in the summers, ran a framing crew my dad was on in high school. I’d met him hanging around the bike shop by Clementine’s, which he owned and had run until a couple of years earlier. He was recognized and referred to by all of us, and yet nobody really knew him that well, which was just the way he’d liked it since he moved back from New York about ten years ago.
On my way in to pay, he nodded at me, and I waved. From inside, I watched him climb into his truck, crank it up, and pull onto the main road. Maybe he was going back to the sound-side house where he lived, or to check on the Washroom, the all-night Laundromat/café he owned. Whatever it was, though, it was his business.
That’s what Theo didn’t understand, what I couldn’t tell him when he first starting asking me questions. It was one thing for all of us here to wonder about Clyde, speculate what his story might be. This was a small town, and that’s what people did. When someone from outside started prodding around, though, it was different. This was the coast. We understood about secrets. And Clyde’s, whatever they might be, would always be safe with us.
6
“OH MY GOD. Look at that.”
There was an appreciative murmur. “Oooh, the scenery here just keeps getting better and better!”
“Melissa, the beach is in the other direction!”
With that, the four girls gathered at the check-in desk burst into loud, squealing giggles. I was pretty sure I knew what they were gawking at, but just to be sure, I glanced out the window. Sure enough, there was Luke, moving some stuff around in his truck bed in the parking lot, shirtless.
“Honestly,” Margo said out loud, adding a couple of cluck-cluck noises as she tapped away at her computer. “Can’t you keep him dressed in public, at least?”
“It’s not up to me,” I said, glancing at the girls again. They were here for a wedding, or so they announced when they’d come in a few minutes earlier. We were used to the kind of pre-vacation exuberance that people let loose after being cooped up in a car for a few hours: voices raised, footsteps hard, the lid to the ice-cream cooler being banged, not eased, shut. Everything took a beating in high season.
“Have you stayed with us at Fancy Free before?” Rebecca, one of our reservation specialists, was saying to them now.
“Never,” the tall brunette who’d first noticed Luke replied. She had that deep brown tan that you just knew was cultivated on a bed all winter. “We usually go to Hilton Head. We could barely find this place! Leave it to Tara to decide to get hitched in the middle of nowhere.”
Margo tsked again, shaking her head. I agreed with her, sort of—not only did these girls show up demanding early check-in, now they were insulting our beach—but she still sounded like an old woman. Then again, as long as she was distracted by them she wasn’t noticing that I was here and not out in the sandbox, where I was technically supposed to be.
The front door banged and Luke came in, pulling a shirt over his head as he walked. He had a sheaf of papers in one hand.
“Oh, no,” too-tan Melissa said to him as he passed her. “Don’t do that!”
Luke yanked it the rest of the way down, then smiled at her. “Sorry?”
“Your shirt,” she replied, nodding at it. “You don’t really need it, do you?”
“Afraid so,” Luke told her. “No shirt, no shoes, no service. You know the drill.”
“I hate rules,” she said, smiling at him. Her friends, behind her, exchanged looks as he kept walking, over to my grandmother’s open office door. She was on the phone, so he stopped just outside, smoothing his hair down with one hand.
“Hey,” I called out, my voice low. He looked over, surprised; he hadn’t seen me. “What do you need?”
He glanced at the girls, his face flushing slightly, then held up the papers. “Invoices from my jobs this week. Carl said I needed to come by and get a check.”
“She might be on forever,” I said, nodded at my grandmother, who was talking shop with one of our more chatty owners. “Come on over to my mom’s. Are they readable, at least?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding annoyed. I doubted it, though. We both knew his handwriting was the absolute worst.
As he followed me across the office, I was distinctly aware of the girls watching not only him but me as well. I was not the jealous type, but that didn’t mean I didn’t notice. I said, “Your fan club just keeps growing.”
“Hardly,” he replied. “They’re on vacation, would look at anybody.”
“Not everybody’s putting on a show, though.”
I felt him slow his steps, and instantly hated how petty I sounded. More and more lately, we kept hitting each other with these little jabs. Like we were siblings or bickering friends, not a couple supposedly in love. “It’s hot and I work outside, Emaline.”
“I know.”
My mom was behind her desk, bent over some papers, a pen in one hand. A fountain drink cup from the Gas/Gro was sweating through a napkin beside her. “Hey,” I said, and she looked up. “Luke needs a check.”
“Doesn’t everyone.” She sighed, waved him in, then looked at her watch. “Aren’t you due to do check-ins?”
“Just about.” Luke handed her the invoices and, as I expected, she squinted at them like they were written in Sanskrit. “But Grandmother said she had an errand for me to run first, so I was waiting around.”
“Remind her of the time. You need to get out there,” she said, reaching for the checkbook she kept in her bottom drawer. To Luke she said, “Dear God, this
is practically illegible. Is that a six or a b?”
I shot Luke a look—he ignored me—as I went back to my grandmother, through the office, which was now quiet. It was three, though, which meant people would start showing up in rapid-fire style soon. Luckily, she was off the phone now, busy opening a Rolo.
“I have to start handing out keys,” I told her. “Did you need me?”
“Yes,” she replied, reaching down for a Park Mart bag beside her. “The owners of Foam Free apparently didn’t trust us to purchase a new doorknob for the property, so they dropped off their own. Maintenance is already there. Can you run it over?”
“Sure,” I said, taking it from her. “Anything else?”
She shook her head, and I headed out to my car and Foam Free, an older property a few blocks down from the office. It should have been a short, easy trip, but I got bogged down en route and coming back by a fender bender on the main road. By the time I pulled back into the office lot, there was a line of cars backed up from the sandbox.
I groaned out loud, already picturing how pissed Margo must be, having to fill in for me. When I got out of my car and sprinted over, though, I found Morris instead, squinting at the box of welcome packets like they were written in code.
“Baker,” a man in a Mercedes, clearly annoyed, was saying to him. “Bay-kurr. B-A-K-E-R.”
“Right,” Morris repeated, still looking. S-L-O-W-L-Y. “Ummm …”
I reached around him, finding the envelope, then grabbed it and the complimentary Colby Realty bag and handed them over. “Here you go, sir. Have you stayed with us at the Jolly Pirate before?”
“No,” he said, taking the bag and envelope from me.