Where the Stars Still Shine

by Trish Doller

  Joe giggles and points a tiny finger at me. “Peach.”

  “I’d take that as a compliment,” Greg says. “Tuck doesn’t have a broad basis for comparison and Peach is pretty cute, as far as video-game girls go. And if Joe agrees? It’s some seriously good hair.”

  All of them are looking at me and it makes me want to hide. “Thanks.”

  “Kat didn’t go crazy with my credit card today, did she?” Greg asks.

  I think about all those bags. It never occurred to me that she was paying for everything with his money, but of course, it makes sense. How else would she have been able to afford it all? “I, um—”

  “I’m kidding, Callie,” he says. “Did you get everything you needed?”

  “I think so.”

  The room goes quiet for a moment, the only sound the clinking of silverware against plates.

  “Alex,” Phoebe says, “Callie’s going to start working for Theo tomorrow at the shop. Maybe after dinner you could give her a crash course in sponges, so when the tourists ask questions, she’ll be able to answer.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he says. “No problem.”

  Another silence falls, broken only when Joe points and calls me Peach again. Everyone chuckles nervously and fails to make eye contact. This is a million times worse than the dinner I’d imagined.

  “So, Alex, what happened to your face?” Phoebe asks.

  It’s only then I notice a deep pink splotch—a bruise so new it hasn’t had the chance to turn black and blue yet—on his cheekbone.

  “Bumped into a fist,” he says. “But you should see the other guy.” He laughs it off, but his eyes are grim. He’s hiding something, but I don’t think Phoebe notices because her mouth is too occupied with frowning.

  “You know Mom would not approve of this behavior,” she says. “You should be in college, not wasting your life and getting in bar fights.”

  “Well, I’m not.” The muscles in his left arm flex and he puts down his silverware. “Did you invite me over to nag me again? Because I’ve got some leftover pizza back on the boat.”

  I focus on buttering my dinner roll.

  “I just worry about you,” she says.

  “Don’t,” Alex says. “I’m fine.”

  “Mom asked about you today. She misses you.”

  “Phoebs—” There’s a warning in his tone and he looks as if he’s ready to push away from the table.

  “I’m sorry,” Phoebe says quickly. “I’m sorry. Don’t go. Please.”

  Alex doesn’t leave, but the rest of the meal seems to stretch into forever. The tension zig-zags across the table, connecting us all like an invisible spiderweb. When we’ve finished eating and there’s no more excuse not to talk, I stand and start gathering the plates. “I’ll do the dishes.”

  “Thank you, Callie.” Phoebe removes Joe from his high chair. “Come on, little man, time for a bath.”

  As I fill the kitchen sink with soapy water, I hear Greg tell Tucker that it’s his bath time, too.

  “Can Uncle Alex read me a bedtime story?”

  Alex’s response is muted, but from the delighted sound Tucker makes, I can guess the answer. A few moments later, Alex comes into the kitchen with the remaining plates. “So that was all kinds of awkward, huh?”

  I scrub at a bit of food stuck to one of the plates but don’t look at him. “Did you know?”

  “No.” He adds the plates to the water, then takes a drying towel from one of the drawers. He stands beside me and I can feel the warmth from his body spanning the space between us. “But when Phoebe asked me over for dinner to meet Greg’s daughter, Callie, I finally put it all together.”

  I rinse a bowl and shove it at him. “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “Yeah, I do.” The bowl drips water onto the floor as he looks at me. “I’ve been sponging full-time since I was seventeen, and for the past year I’ve been working two jobs. I don’t even have time for my own life, let alone time to pay attention to all the little details of Greg’s life.”

  I wonder if I should be insulted that he considers me a little detail, but I decide I’m kind of flattered that he’s the only person for whom my coming back here is not a big deal. I hand him the next plate. “Why did you lie to Phoebe about your face?”

  His eyebrows pull together. “What makes you think I was lying?”

  “I’ve spent a lifetime keeping secrets,” I say. “I know a lie when I hear one.”

  Alex puts the plate on the counter and hooks his finger through a belt loop on my new jeans, pulling me against him. Someone could walk into the room at any minute, but when his mouth finds mine, caring isn’t even a consideration. He lifts me onto the counter, wedging himself between my knees.

  “We should not be doing this,” I whisper, sinking my fingers into his curls.

  “No, we shouldn’t.” He slides his hands up my thighs to my hips, his thumbs grazing the bare skin at the top of my jeans, under the hem of my shirt. “We should get out of here.”

  My mouth is about to form the word “yes,” when the sound of giggling boys drifts out from the bathroom. Alex pulls away from me, blinking as if he’s surfaced from sleep. He runs his fingers through his hair, making that one curl spring out in a random direction. “Wow.”

  I reach up and put it in place. “You forgot about story time, didn’t you, Uncle Alex?”

  “Completely.” He slides me down from the counter-top, holding me against him. He draws his thumb across my lower lip as if he’s thinking about kissing me again. I hold my breath, waiting to see if he does. “We could still make a break for it,” he says.

  “We could—”

  Alex releases me and bends to pick up the towel he dropped. There are damp handprints—my handprints—on the back of his T-shirt, and I feel an inexplicable surge of possessiveness, as if I’ve marked him as mine. Which is ridiculous, because soon the prints will be dry and no one will ever know. I return to the task of washing the dishes and, except for still being able to feel the imprint of his lips on mine, it’s as if we weren’t just making out.

  “—only I’m grounded from the last time we, um—”

  He laughs. “Already?”

  Tucker shuffles into the kitchen a short time later wearing space-themed footed pajamas and carrying a book about Spider-Man. Alex scrubs a hand over his face and only I hear the groan.

  “Spider-Man, again?” He swings Tucker up onto his shoulders. “Come on, buddy, let’s go pick out something we haven’t read yet.”

  I finish up the dishes by myself and stand alone in the kitchen. I consider joining Greg and Phoebe in the living room, where I can hear them discussing which on-demand movie they should watch. I don’t want to sit through any more awkward silences. And when I think about Alex, reading bedtime stories to Tucker and Joe, I’m not sure I can maintain the charade of pretending we’ve never met. So I slip out the back door.

  The fairy lights glow strong and white now that it’s dark outside. It’s odd that such a small thing can make such a big difference, but Kat was right—the lights make everything seem softer, prettier, and they keep the darkness at bay. I think about reading one of my new books—maybe the Hiaasen novel I bought so I can understand why Alex keeps five of them in his sink—but I don’t. I think about taking my guitar out of its case, where it’s been since I arrived in Tarpon Springs—but I don’t do that, either. I strip down to my bra and underwear—new ones that didn’t come in a sack with seven other pairs—and lie on my bed, looking up at the string of electric lights and remembering the feel of his hands on my skin. I trace the edge of my lower lip with my fingertip, but it’s not the same as kissing.

  I’m not sure what time it is when I hear a soft knock on my door, but all the lights in the house are off so the whole family is probably asleep for the night. I don’t bother getting dressed because I’m almost certain I know who it is.

  I let him in.

  “Jesus, Callie.” Alex stares at me and there’s somet
hing in his eyes I can’t name. It makes me nervous and live-wire exposed, and I reach for him to make him stop looking at me that way. As his arms come around me, he whispers in my ear, “You are so damn beautiful.”

  My face flushes, but in the glow of the fairy lights I don’t think he can tell. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I know.”

  My new bra has a clasp in the front instead of the back, but as he kisses me, Alex seems to already know this. He slides the bra off and lets it drop to the floor, then does the same with my underwear. This is not the same as last time when our clothes were being shed quickly, and at the same time. He’s still wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and it makes me uncomfortable. I yank the end of the sheet around me, holding it closed over my nakedness. “Take off your clothes.”

  He laughs a little, then his face goes serious when he sees my hand shaking. “Callie? What’s wrong?”

  “I would feel better if you took off your clothes.”

  He probably thinks I’m a complete freak, but I can’t tell him that Frank would remove my pajamas and sometimes open his pants to rub himself, but he never, ever took off his clothes. I wouldn’t blame Alex if he left right now and never returned. Except he tilts his head and looks at me as if I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve—and then he takes off his clothes.

  We have to start all over from the beginning, and I’m not sure why he even bothers when he could easily go find someone less damaged to have sex with him, but Alex kisses me and slides his fingers through my hair in a way that makes me feel as beautiful as he claims I am, until I release my grip on the sheet.

  “You wanna get ice cream?” he asks later, as I lie with my head on his chest. My eyes don’t want to stay open, so I close them and listen to the thump of his heartbeat as it returns to its normal pace beneath my ear. His fingers move through my hair, making me shiver.

  “Now?”

  “Why not?”

  “What if Greg finds out?”

  “He’s asleep and we’ll be quiet.”

  Now that I’m thinking about ice cream, I can’t unthink it. “Let’s go.”

  Alex uses the bathroom to clean up while I put on my clothes. When we’re dressed, we sneak out of the trailer and hug the dark perimeter of the yard, crouching like spies—and trying not to laugh—until we’re away from the house.

  “My truck is up on Grand,” he says. “I parked up there earlier, then doubled back on foot.”

  “Resourceful.”

  “I have my moments.”

  We reach the truck and he drives down Pinellas to the Sparta gas station. Alex goes inside first and leads me to a low white freezer chest filled with ice-cream treats, like Klondike bars, ice-cream sandwiches, and rocket pops.

  My favorite is the ice-cream sandwich. Mom and I get them sometimes as a special treat, and she was the one who taught me that the best way to eat them is to lick away the ice cream until it’s only a thin layer inside the chocolate sandwich.

  “What are you going to have?” Cold air blasts out as Alex opens the door and selects a Drumstick ice-cream cone. My hand reaches for the ice-cream sandwich, but it occurs to me that I don’t have to choose it because Mom and I always do. I can get whatever I want. Instead I take a Drumstick.

  We get to the checkout counter when I change my mind. “Wait.”

  I go back for the ice-cream sandwich.

  As we sit on the dropped tailgate of Alex’s truck under a streetlight in the gas-station parking lot, he licks the peanut bits off his Drumstick, oblivious to the inner turmoil I’m suffering over ice cream. And now that the frozen sandwich is in my hand, paid for and unwrapped, I don’t want it. Tears prickle my eyes, and I hate that I’m making something as simple as choosing ice cream more complicated than it needs to be. And I hate that I seem to cry all the time. I’m so tired of crying.

  “I’ll be right back.” I hop down from the tailgate, go inside the store, and buy a Drumstick. I throw the ice-cream sandwich away.

  Alex doesn’t comment on my weird ice-cream-buying habit as I hoist myself onto the tailgate. “Ready for your sponge identification lesson?”

  “Really?”

  He leans back and slides a blue milk crate toward us. Inside are sponges.

  “This one is the easiest,” he says, pulling out one with a stem and about a dozen long knobby-knuckled fingers. “It’s the finger sponge. It’s not used for anything except decoration, and tourists love it.”

  The next one resembles a bowl, with a hollowed-out center and a flat bottom.

  “Grass sponge,” he says. “The small sizes are used for painting and, I guess, for putting on makeup, but the pot-shaped ones are really popular in the store. People put plants in them.”

  He drops it into the crate and draws out another. “Wire sponges are mostly used for insulation, so you don’t really have to think about this one because we sell these to industrial customers.”

  He tosses that one over his shoulder and brings out two more that look similar to each other.

  “Wool and yellow sponges are fairly interchangeable, but the wool is softer. Wool sponges are for personal stuff, like taking a bath or shower, and yellow sponges are the household ones for washing dishes or whatever. You can use grass sponges for all that stuff, too, but tourists want to think they’re getting something special so we make the distinction.”

  “Finger, wool, grass, wire, and yellow,” I repeat.

  “Yep.” Alex pops the last bit of Drumstick in his mouth and brushes his fingers on his jeans. “And if you forget, wing it. Tourists are going to believe anything you say because you’re beautiful and you’re Greek. So you can tell them a grass sponge is a wool sponge and they won’t know the difference.”

  He hands me the wool sponge. “For you.”

  “I’ve smelled these things on your boat.” I crinkle my nose and hand it back. “I’m not sure I want that thing touching me in the shower.”

  Alex laughs and swaps it for the finger sponge. He presents it to me like a bouquet of flowers, pulling it out from behind his back with a flourish. “Sponges are better than flowers,” he says, as if he’s read my mind, “because they’ll never die. They’re already dead.”

  I take the sponge. It’s quite pretty, really—like a winter tree bowing to the breeze—and it’s the closest thing I’ve ever come to getting flowers from a boy. Or any gift at all. Still, I laugh it away, so he can’t see that it means something. “Thanks.”

  “There’s more where that came from.” He gives me an exaggerated wink. “Of course, I’d have to dive down and harvest them, so—just hang on to that one, okay?”

  “Is sponging really that bad?”

  “Not really.” He leans on his hands and looks up at the sky. It’s kind of hard to see with the lights of the gas station, but the moon has expanded since the last time I paid attention to it and it’s peeking around the edge of the Sparta sign. “I’ve always loved it. I mean, being underwater is—I don’t think I can even explain it in a way that will make sense. I’m a lot more comfortable in the water than I am on dry land. But my crewmate Jeff doesn’t dive. He handles everything on deck, which is cool, but I never have the option of not going down. I can’t be tired. I can’t be sick.”

  “What if you are sick?”

  “No sponges, no money,” he says, glancing at his watch, a wide brown strap lashed around his wrist. “So unless I can’t breathe, I go. And speaking of going … we should probably head home.”

  I don’t want to go yet, but we’re well into tomorrow and I start work in only a handful of hours. “Yeah.”

  Alex parks the truck down the street from Greg’s house and lets me out on the driver’s side so he won’t have to slam the passenger door. “I’d walk you home.” He keeps his voice low. “But under the circumstances—”

  “It’s okay.” I nod. “Thanks for—”

  He cuts me off with a kiss that makes my toes curl under and my heart feel as if it’s going to climb right out of m
y chest and throw itself at his feet. It’s an entirely new feeling.

  “I, um—” he says, getting back into the truck. “See you later.”

  I stand there for—I don’t know—maybe a minute, wondering what is happening between Alex Kosta and me. Just when it feels as if this might be something more than nothing, he pulls away. He doesn’t make me feel as if I’m just another piece of ass, but maybe he’s just better at this game than Danny or Matt or—Adam. I remember now that the first guy’s name was Adam and he played guitar in a park, busking for change. He charmed me with a little song he made up on the spot with my name in it, and at thirteen I lost my virginity to him in his van.

  It’s a distinct possibility that I am a terrible judge of character.

  I sneak over the fence, being careful not to trample the flowers, and press myself into the shadows until I’m inside the Airstream. I place the finger sponge on the little shelf above my bed and crawl in, not bothering to even take off my clothes. Alex’s scent lingers on my pillow, and I fall asleep with the ghost of his fingers moving through my hair.

  Chapter 10

  Eight o’clock arrives much too quickly. I jolt upright when my alarm goes off and squint at the numbers, convinced they must be wrong. But it is official—the four hours of sleep I’ve had are all I’m going to get. My insides vibrate with tiredness as I drag myself out of bed, gather my bathroom supplies, and go into the house.

  Greg, Phoebe, and the boys have gone to the early service at the Greek Orthodox church, so the house is empty. On the drive to Tarpon Springs from the airport, Greg told me I was welcome to attend church with them, but I have no interest in God. Especially when it seems he’s never really had any interest in me.

  When I’m washed, dried, dressed, and caffeinated, I walk down to the shop. As I pass Alex’s boat, I wonder if he fell asleep thinking of me the way I thought of him. But mostly I wonder if he’s lucky enough to still be sleeping. The shop is already open when I get there and Theo is counting money into the cash register.