Thirty Sunsets

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  Why didn’t I show him which house was mine? I had the chance and I blew it. Was I expecting him to consult his crystal ball to find me? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Well, one thing’s for sure: the longer I sit in my beach chair, the slimmer the odds of our sharing Sunset Number Two. Or three … or four …

  I tug at my bikini bottom (who can be comfortable in something the size of a washcloth?) and walk down the beach, trying to look nonchalant. I actually do get a couple of second glances—more than a couple, really—and I think maybe I can get the hang of being a goddess.

  I scan the beach every so often, then check out the swimmers, looking for that mop of sandy-blond hair. Shelley would never believe this: me actually pursuing a guy.

  But I’m not really pursuing him, right? He’s the one who penciled me in for the next twenty-nine sunsets. And besides, all I’m doing is taking a walk on the beach, which is probably what I’d be doing if I’d never met him, and geez, it’s a free country, isn’t it, and …

  Oh god. There he is. He’s playing Frisbee with three other guys just a few yards up the beach. He’s even cuter than I remembered, tanned and shirtless with khaki shorts that ride low and loose on his hips. I mean, not ridiculously low and loose, not like he’s about to star in a Flo Rida video or anything, just like he never really considers throwing on anything other than his comfiest clothes, and they just happen to fit him low and loose, but snug enough to stay put when he lunges for a Frisbee, like he’s doing now, and …

  My heart is about to beat through my chest (you can’t tell that by looking, right, even if you’re wearing a bikini?) but a play-it-cool mantra is doing a forced march through my brain. I’m so insanely happy to see him that I almost trot right over (wouldn’t it be cool and adorable if I swooped in just in time to catch the Frisbee he’s lunging for?), but I don’t want to make an ass of myself, so I just keep walking, peering mysteriously into the distance.

  As I get closer, I wait for him to call out my name (Hey, Forrest-like-the-trees! ), but he’s pretty preoccupied with his game. The guys are all laughing and whooping, high-fiving and diving into the sand. Yeah … this is better: he hasn’t even noticed me yet, and I’m too intrigued by whatever I’m peering at in the distance to notice him, so it won’t be until just after I pass him that my turquoise bikini catches his eye. Then he’ll think, Wow, what a smokin’ hot girl, and then he’ll do a double-take and realize, OMG, that’s Forrest! and he’ll trot up and grab my arm, and I’ll register just a hint of faux-confusion in my eyes before I look closer and realize, OMG, that’s Scott! and we’ll laugh and plan to spend our second sunset together, with maybe dinner thrown in this time for good measure.

  So I just keep walking, head jauntily high and shoulders straight, my arms swinging lazily.

  But I’ve walked past him now, and … nothing. He and his friends are still laughing and whooping, consumed with their game, oblivious to me.

  Chill, Forrest, chill.

  Right. So what. I’m just taking a walk on the beach, right? Really, it’s pretty clear by my mysterious expression that I actually prefer to be left alone, to keep myself company with my own profound thoughts. Uh-oh—is that the intimidation factor Olivia was talking about? I’m not sure; in the past, I really haven’t given a crap. No play-it-cool pep talks needed. Has my mantra made me more intimidating than ever, too intimidating to approach?

  I don’t think so. From the sound of their horseplay, they really do seem clueless.

  Scott just didn’t notice me, that’s all. My pulse quickens. I can’t make the same mistake I made last night, counting on fate to throw us back together. I’ve got to put myself out there. I’ve got to get in the game.

  I turn around, face the guys, put my pinkies in the sides of my mouth, and whistle.

  Two of the guys look at me, but not Scott. The third guy follows the gaze of the first two, so now three of them are looking at me. But still not Scott. So I wave my arms over my head.

  “Hey, stranger!”

  Yes. I really say that. I’m whistling, waving my arms over my head, and yelling lame things. Why not just erect a billboard, Forrest?

  But it’s okay, right? I mean, it’s cute. Guys are flattered by attention, especially when their friends are around. So, yes, I’m about as subtle as an air traffic controller, but that’s better than being intimidating.

  But Scott still isn’t looking at me. One of his friends jostles him and points in my direction. Scott looks at me, registers a hint of something I can’t quite put my finger on (annoyance?), then immediately looks away again. He claps his hands a couple of times to signal the others to resume the game.

  What the hell … ?

  I’m still standing there, frozen in my spot. He must not recognize me. Understandable, right? I mean, last night I was wearing a baggy T-shirt.

  “It’s me,” I call. “Forrest.”

  Scott glances at me again for a nanosecond, tosses the slightest of waves, and lunges for the Frisbee.

  Oh. He does recognize me. He recognized me all along, including when I was making a total fool of myself by making like a windmill. He might have even noticed me earlier, as I was approaching him. The upshot is clear: he knows who I am. He just doesn’t care.

  But how can that be? He’s the one who friggin’ hit on me! When I was wearing a baggy T-shirt, for crying out loud! I put on a bikini for this jerk!

  My cheeks are so hot, my heartbeat so ferocious, that I wonder if I’ll hyperventilate right there on the beach, and wouldn’t that be the cherry on top of my goddess sundae. Maybe I should go vomit on his feet. I could write a book at this point about how to repel a guy.

  Move, Forrest, move.

  Right. Standing in this spot like a statue is really not working for me. Time to move on. But do I turn around and head back for my beach chair?

  Of course not! That’ll make it obvious that the only point of my beach walk was to stalk Scott. I’ve got to keep pushing forward.

  So I do. I trudge along the surf, white-hot heat emanating from my cheeks, wondering how on earth I could have deluded myself again into thinking I was something I’m clearly not.

  I walk a long, long way, fueled by the adrenaline rush of humiliation and determined not to cross Scott’s path again. After an hour or so, I feel my nose and shoulders tingle from sunburn. Good. Maybe I’ll spontaneously combust. Brian hates me, Scott hates me, and god knows I hate myself in this stupid what-the-hell-were-you-thinking turquoise bikini.

  What a self-deluded fraud I am. What a loser.

  I guess it’s time to turn around. I’ve got to head back sometime.

  But first, I fall into the surf and splash my face with water.

  Now nobody will notice my tears.

  thirteen

  It’s 3:40 a.m.

  I do a quick calculation on my fingers, then tell Olivia as she tiptoes back to bed in the dark, “Five hours.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve gone five hours tonight between barfing. That’s the best you’ve done all week.”

  She giggles lightly, the springs in her bottom bunk squeaking as she settles in. “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know I’ve been waking you up.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, the moonlight seeping through the window like a gauzy warm blanket. “What’s it like to be sick all the time?”

  Olivia laughs ruefully. “My doctor says pregnancy isn’t a state of sickness, it’s a state of health. I think he’s in a state of denial.”

  I smile. Olivia had a reputation in high school as a total airhead, and, granted, I don’t think she’ll be delving into quantum physics anytime soon, but she’s brighter than I gave her credit for.

  “Seriously,” I say. “Doesn’t it get you down having to sprint to the bathroom twenty times a day?”

  Olivia pauses, then replies, “I don’t mind. It�
��s a reminder that even though he’s the size of a jelly bean now, he’s right here, safe and sound.”

  My brow furrows. “You already know it’s a boy?”

  “No,” Olivia says sleepily. “It’s way too early for that. But it feels like a boy to me … I guess because he seems so much like Brian.”

  “So Brian makes you barf twenty times a day?”

  Olivia laughs again. “Well, indirectly, yes.” She sighs. “I just love my baby so much. I guess that’s why he seems like Brian.”

  I knit my fingers together. Yes, I’m getting used to the fact that she’s pregnant, but I’m not getting used to this sense of inevitability. As in Duh, of course Brian and Olivia are going to have a baby. Of course they’ll be a family. Of course Brian’s future is set in stone.

  I’m thinking we’re in an all-of-our-options-are-still-on-the-table kind of phase. Not that I get a vote, of course, and not that I even know what that means. I can’t think too hard about the specifics: how I feel about abortion in general, how I’d feel about my own niece or nephew being aborted, how I’d feel about my niece or nephew being somewhere out in the world with a different family …

  I shudder.

  Okay, now I’m thinking about it. And it sucks.

  But still … Brian being body-slammed into a precarious-at-best future at the age of eighteen? That makes me shudder too. Then again, Brian sure isn’t acting like he’s being body-slammed. He’s acting like he’s voluntarily thrown himself at Olivia’s feet, and there’s nowhere he’d rather be.

  “Speaking of being down … ” Olivia says hesitantly, and my brain does a quick replay for a reference point.

  “What?” I prod her.

  “You’ve seemed … down lately.”

  I swallow. I’ve been trying really hard the past few days to cut the crap with Olivia. Really, I have. Yes, the pregnancy revelation totally freaked me out at first, but hey, it is what it is, and whatever the future holds, Olivia and I are bonded for life at this point. I mean, she’s carrying my DNA around in her uterus. Even if that disappears tomorrow—through whatever mechanism it might disappear, which I’m now consciously willing myself not to think about—we’re connected now in a cosmic kind of way. I don’t know how I feel about that. I just know I feel it.

  And frankly, the pregnancy makes her interactions with Brian considerably less puke-inducing than before. They’re not a couple of lovestruck kids anymore contemplating the intricacies of fruit-free McDonald’s parfaits. They’re parents. God, that’s hard to absorb.

  Plus the fact that she notices way more than I ever gave her credit for. All those curled lips and narrowed eyes in high school? Maybe I was misinterpreting. Maybe she was trying to figure me out rather than judging me.

  And who’d have thought she would notice the funk I’ve been in for the four days that have passed since Sunset Number One, which, gasp, shockingly turned out to be Sunset Number Finito?

  My fingers are still looping in and out of knots. I take a deep breath. “I met a guy.”

  Pause.

  “Really?”

  I shake my head, grateful Olivia can’t see me blush. “It’s nothing. Truly nothing. It’s so stupid. I just … I met this guy on the beach our first night here. We took a walk together. He kinda … indicated I’d be seeing more of him. And the crazy thing is, I really wanted to. Then I saw him on the beach the next day and he blew me off.”

  The sound of the surf lapping onto the shore sounds like a heartbeat.

  “Oh,” Olivia says.

  Why did I tell her this? Was I concerned that she still wasn’t quite clear on my status as a loser? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Hey, if he’s not into you,” Olivia says, aiming for breezy but conveying a mortifying hint of pity, “then who needs him. Move on.”

  “Right … ”

  “I mean it, Forrest. You’re amazing. You’re smart, and you’re gorgeous, you’re … ”

  Oh god, please make this stop.

  “ … drop-dead beautiful,” Olivia continues, and my nails are piercing my palms so hard, they just might be drawing blood. “And you can do sooooo much better than some jerk who blows you off a day after—”

  She stops abruptly, the wheels in her brain clearly spinning.

  “A day after nothing,” I assure her. “We didn’t even kiss. It was just a stupid walk on the beach. I can’t believe I’m making a deal about it. I can’t believe I’m talking about it.”

  Maybe I can convince her in the morning that this conversation was just a dream. Maybe I can hitchhike to Mexico and start a new, humiliation-free life.

  “I’m glad you told me,” Olivia says, and hey, that makes one of us.

  “I mean it,” she says. “I never had anybody to talk to about this kind of thing.”

  I bend over the side of the bunk to look her in the eye. “What kind of thing? Guys have never done anything but worship the ground you walk on.”

  Olivia shakes her head. “Do you really believe that?”

  “Hello, I’ve witnessed it,” I say, then hop off my bunk and sit on the edge of her bed.

  I sit there for a moment, then hear her sniffle.

  “Olivia?”

  She dabs her eyes.

  “Olivia? Are you crying?”

  She shakes her head roughly. “It’s nothing, just hormones … ”

  “No way. Something’s wrong. What is it?”

  She sniffles some more. “I just … it’s just nice to have somebody to talk to.”

  I pull a lock of hair behind my ear. “You have Brian.”

  She nods quickly. “I know, I know. He’s great. But I mean a girl. I’ve never really had girlfriends.”

  My eyebrows knit together. “What about Casey and the other cheerleaders?”

  Olivia shrugs. “They’re not real friends. They’re catty bitches, to be honest … a few of them, anyway. They hung around me because we were on the squad together, but everything was so competitive. They were always making little digs to knock me off balance. Maybe because my mom’s not in the picture? I dunno … I’ve never been able to figure out why girls are always weird around me. Your friend, Shelley: that’s a real friend. Good friends build you up, not knock you down.”

  I press in my lips. “It really pissed me off when you and Casey were dissing Shelley at the graduation party.”

  Olivia’s eyes widen. “It was Casey, not me!”

  I stare at her evenly, and she blushes.

  “You’re right,” she says. “I should’ve spoken up. The way you stood up for Shelley? That was … incredible. I thought to myself that very instant, That’s the difference between Forrest and me.”

  I bite my lower lip. “I don’t always stick up for people.” I feel a stab in my stomach, thinking of the times I’ve either halfheartedly defended Olivia or snarkily dissed her myself.

  She smiles. “I just envy that you have friends,” she says. “And your mom.”

  My eyes narrow. “You’ve got a mom too. I met her, remember? At the football game? I thought she was your sister?”

  I feel a pinch in my chest as I remember their laughter as I walked away, incredulous about what an idiot I was.

  “She loved that,” Olivia says in a small, tight voice. “She’s probably told that story a million times: ‘Olivia’s friend thought I was her sister!’ ” Her face crinkles again.

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I say consolingly, not sure if I should touch her or not. “I mean, isn’t it cute that your mother is so gorgeous, people think you’re sisters?”

  More sniffles. I reach over to the dresser, pluck a tissue from the box, and hand it to Olivia.

  “I wouldn’t mind people thinking I had a sister if I had a mother,” she says bitterly.

  “But … you were laughing too. I remember.”

  Ol
ivia’s dewy eyes stare into space, a mixture of contempt and despair. “I want a real mom. Not some beauty queen who breezes into town a few times a year to try to outshine me.”

  Now I do touch her … tentatively at first, resting my hand on her arm, then squeezing gently. “Does she know you’re pregnant?”

  Olivia nods, still staring into space. “It just gives her more ammunition to tear into my dad. He’s a moron, how could he let this happen, she saw it coming a mile away, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, and the baby’s supposed to call her Aunt Olivia. She doesn’t want anybody knowing she’s a grandmother.”

  The waves are still pumping their gentle heartbeat.

  “Your mom’s name is Olivia too?”

  Her eyes narrow. “I hate it. I hate my stupid name.” Then her gaze suddenly softens. “I’ve tried to get Brian to call me something different. I know it sounds stupid, but something like Liv—some people call me that—or even my initials, OJ … ”

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” I wisecrack, and Olivia giggles.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Brian says nothing sticks, and besides, he loves my name and he wants me to love it too. He says you have to love all of yourself, even the things you hate, before you can really open your heart to someone else.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “I think he read that on a Hallmark card,” I tease, and I’m relieved when Olivia laughs.

  “But he’s right,” she says wistfully. “If I hate my mom, or my name, or my thighs, or whatever … that just sucks up energy that I should be using to love my life, to love the people in my life. Like my baby.”

  “Deep,” I say, and I actually really mean it. How ridiculous does my guy-on-the-beach story sound now?

  Olivia peers at me and says, “I’m sorry that guy on the beach hurt your feelings.”

  OMG. My skin actually tingles as I wonder if she just somehow read my mind.

  “I’m thinking we should go bikini shopping and make him eat his heart out,” she continues.

  I shrug. “Embarrassingly enough, I actually sorta tried that. The day I borrowed your bikini? Didn’t work. Besides, I’m more of a Speedo kind of girl.”