by Amelia Stone
He sighed like he was tired. Then he put a finger under my chin, tipping my head up to look at me.
“And you’re going to remember that for next time, am I right?”
I nodded miserably. “Yes, sir. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know you are.” He nodded, ruffling my hair like it was all okay. “You’re a good man.”
But I didn’t feel like one. I’d really let him down today. I’d let Krista down, too. Heck, I’d even let myself down. I closed my eyes, because I felt like I would cry if I didn’t.
Then I heard Krista whimper, and I picked my head back up. She locked eyes with me, even though her glasses were hanging off one ear and she probably couldn’t see too good. Her face was pale and a little green, like she might throw up at any second. But she was also smiling at me, weirdly.
“Thank you, Seth.” She cradled her broken wrist against her chest as she slowly sat up.
Ward huffed loudly. “Of course she thanks him,” he grumbled. “Not like I jumped in there first.”
Krista ignored him, still looking up at me like I was Superman or something. “You saved me,” she whispered.
I wanted to protest, to tell her that I didn’t really do anything. Like Ward said, I didn’t even try to fight until after she’d gotten hurt. And really when I thought about it, she’d basically saved herself.
But she was staring up at me with huge, sapphire eyes like I was her hero. My chest swelled, and my stomach did this weird swooping thing that made me feel like I was on the pirate ship ride at Adventureland. It kind of felt like pride, but also like I wanted to throw up. I didn’t know what to call it, but it felt good, somehow. It felt necessary.
I made a promise, right then and there, that I would try my best to earn that look in her eye.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll always save you.”
In case you were wondering, a nail polish bottle smashing against a marble floor makes a noise like a windshield shattering. Which was surprising, obviously, because it was such a small bottle. You’d think it would make a cute little noise like a bell tinkling, but you’d be wrong.
On the day I discovered the improbable number of decibels such a minor accident produces, I was sitting in a pedicure chair that massaged my back and bottom while my feet were being tortured by a nice lady ruthlessly wielding a Mr. Pumice. Ellie sat to my left, and I was grateful she was there, if only because my ego was soothed by her reaction to having her feet scrubbed. Ellie was the most ticklish person I’d ever met, and she couldn’t manage to keep still – or keep the giggles at bay – through her own exfoliation assault. I was downright cool, calm, and collected by comparison.
Celebrate the little victories in life. That was my motto.
Anyway, I was twirling the polish I’d picked out between my fingers, admiring the sapphire-blue holographic sparkle. I was kind of a nail polish junkie. I got a mani/pedi twice a week, and I always brought my own polish with me to the salon. I had a couple thousand bottles to choose from at home.
Yes, I said thousand. Don’t judge.
But even though I loved nail polish, I sucked at painting my own nails. Seriously. Once I got some on my elbow.
My elbow.
So I indulged my obsession by paying someone else to do the dirty work for me. That Saturday morning, I was sitting in a salon with Ellie, my cousin Larkin Michaels, and her friends Taylor Kusmierski and Kristi Roberts. It was Larkin’s wedding day, and with Ellie’s help, I’d kidnapped the bride-to-be and her friends for a day of pampering. We’d had brunch at Sarah Jane’s, a vintage-style bistro on Grand Avenue, then headed to the best spa in town for facials, massages, and nails.
The other women were currently chatting while I zoned out for a moment, my eyes tracking the holo flame in my polish bottle. I really never got tired of petting pretty nail lacquer, and I happily admired my precious while everyone else gossiped.
Until one of their comments caught my attention, and my head whipped up so fast, my hair smacked me in the face.
“Hey, speaking of kisses, did you hear about that famous baseball guy?”
It was Kristi who’d spoken, and now she was smiling at us eagerly, eyes bright like she had the exclusive scoop. Everyone else leaned forward in their seat, but I froze. My eyes darted from Kristi, to the wall, to the towel cabinet in the corner, to the smiling lady who was now rubbing coconut lotion into my calves. Her thumbs dug into my suddenly-tight muscles, and I winced.
The gastrocnemius. Ellie had told me the anatomical name for that muscle years ago. Why did it pop into my head right now?
“What famous baseball guy?” Taylor asked, oblivious to my inner freak-out.
I held my breath, almost afraid to let it out, for fear it would betray my sudden anxiousness. There were lots of ‘famous baseball guys.’ At any given time, in fact, there were at least seven hundred and twenty players in the MLB. Could be up to twelve hundred, actually, if each team took advantage of its full forty-man roster. And that wouldn’t even take into account the legions of minor-leaguers, retired players, coaches, managers, executives, and long-dead legends, all of whom could be considered famous.
So there was no way she was talking about him. It was just a coincidence that I was sitting here in a spa on South Bay Island, talking about a famous baseball player. Kristi was not talking about South Bay’s favorite son. She couldn’t be. There was no way.
No freaking way.
“Seth somebody or other.” Kristi shrugged, casual as you please. Probably because she wasn’t dying inside. “I forgot his name. Jeff told me,” she added, referring to her husband.
“Seth Holt?” Ellie asked, sounding almost angry.
Which I didn’t quite understand, if I were honest. She’d always been in my corner, don’t get me wrong. She was always there when I wanted to talk about him, patiently listening to me recount every minute detail of all those ancient hurts, and she was sympathetic in all the right places.
But I always got the sneaking suspicion that she was secretly Team Seth. Or at least, Team Krista-and-Seth. It had been a few days since I’d received a certain unnecessarily perfumed invitation, and she was still lobbying hard for me to attend the reunion and reconnect with him.
Which was a terrible idea, clearly. I couldn’t even handle someone mentioning him in passing. I’d probably pass out if I actually came face-to-face with him.
While I was quietly, desperately trying not to lose my shit, I saw Kristi nod in answer to Ellie’s question. Gods. My eyes dropped to my lap, but somehow I steeled myself to get the necessary info. And my voice didn’t even tremble!
Little victories, people.
“What about him?”
I kept my eyes trained on anything but my companions, since my cheeks – which were currently hovering right around the temperature of the sun – would almost certainly give me away. But I could still feel Ellie’s eyes on me. They were trying to burn a hole through my hair, which had fallen in front of my face. Ignoring her, I picked up the nail polish again, twirling it between my fingers in an effort to distract myself.
“Supposedly he’s coming back to live in South Bay.” Kristi sounded delighted by this hot piece of gossip. “Everyone in town is abuzz with the news.”
And that was when I learned that a bottle of nail polish makes a noise disproportionate to its size when it breaks.
I couldn’t help it. Upon learning that my childhood best friend – the boy I’d secretly been in love with for more years than I could count – was coming home, I simply lost control of my fine motor functions. My fingers went slack, the nail polish took a dive, and then there was sapphire-blue holographic lacquer everywhere. I think some of it even got on my elbow.
My elbow. Again. I couldn’t escape it, apparently.
I managed to whisper a hasty apology as the nail technician tried her best not to glare at me. She abandoned my foot massage, hustling into the back room to grab cleaning supplies, muttering epithets under her breath
. Which was totally fair, since I’d just made a mess of her Carrera marble-encrusted salon. I refrained from pointing out, though, that it was my one-of-a-kind indie nail polish that had just been destroyed. I’d never be able to get another bottle of it. I let the sadness for my loss take center stage for a moment, until the anxiety from Kristi’s revelation battled its way back to the front lines.
The technician came back with a rag and some kind of cleaning solution, shooing away my efforts to help. Meanwhile, I felt Ellie’s hand on my arm, rubbing up and down soothingly as the other women joked about kissing Seth. Not that I could blame them.
I jammed my own lips together, thinking about the number of times I’d dreamed of pressing them to Seth’s. His lips were a dark, dusky pink and so, so full. I’d spent a lot of time during my pubescent years staring at them when he wasn’t looking, memorizing their shape, wondering what they’d feel like against mine. I’d never found out, of course. And now I never would.
The conversation moved on, and everyone started chattering about the wedding later that day. Larkin and Graham were getting married before the South Bay justice of the peace, but we were all going to be there to celebrate. Afterward, my mom and dad were hosting an informal reception, because their rambling old Victorian on the beach was the only place big enough to fit the entire family.
But I couldn’t really concentrate on the festivities, or much of anything else, for the rest of the day. My mind was spinning, wondering what Kristi’s news could mean. Would Seth be living in South Bay full time? Had he used my dad as his realtor? What if I ran into him somewhere while I was visiting my parents? Would I have to make painful small talk with him while on a tampon run, or in the produce aisle at Stop and Shop? Would it be more or less awkward than seeing him on purpose, at the reunion?
A million questions raced through my brain, questions to which I didn’t have the answers. But I knew someone who could help me with a few of them, at least. And I’d be able to wring those answers out of him in just a few short hours.
It wasn’t until almost midnight, after all the wedding guests had finally left, that I was able to get my dad alone. Tom Summers was a very outgoing, friendly man, which made it hard for me to have a one-on-one conversation with him when he was surrounded by people. But it made his job as a realtor a lot easier. He never had trouble landing clients, because he liked everybody, and everybody liked him.
Take his newest client, for instance.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I pounced the second I entered the walnut-paneled library my dad had claimed as his turf when he and my mother bought this house almost forty years ago. He was seated at his desk, as usual, his halo of frizzy curls illuminated in the lamplight. The red had started to fade to white in the last few years, but it was still obvious where I’d gotten my hair genes from.
“Tell you what, Kris?” Dad looked up from his phone, where I could see he’d paused a round of Angry Birds to talk to me.
“That Seth was moving back home,” I replied, ignoring, for now, the fact that he was cheating on Golden Goddess with his mobile game choices.
I’d given him a beta of our first mobile RPG, Undefeated: The Order of Alexander, a couple of weeks ago, and he still hadn’t given me any feedback. The man could barely manage to send a text message, but he loved to play games on his phone. I should have hours of play logs from him by now.
But I had bigger problems than his content-provider treachery right now. Like his parental treachery, for instance.
“I had to find out from Kristi Roberts,” I added, trying to keep the whine at a minimum.
Dad shifted in his seat, setting his phone down and lifting his hands like he was trying to tame a hydra.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I just sent him some listings.”
Sent him some listings? That was practically Dad-speak for ‘I expect a contract by Monday.’ Under-promise, over-deliver. That was his motto.
Gods, Kristi’s hot gossip was all true. My throat went dry, and I swallowed roughly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I repeated.
His cheeks flushed, just like mine did when I was uncomfortable. “Well, honey, I didn’t want to stir up all that old junk again.” He scratched at his freckled cheek before continuing. “I figured it was best to leave it all in the past where it belongs.”
I stiffened. “What do you mean? Leave all what in the past?”
His cinnamon-colored eyes gave me a shrewd look. “Come on, Kris. He broke your heart.”
I bit my lip, taking in a caustic breath. “More like I broke my own heart,” I mumbled. And Seth’s, too, but I felt like enough of a turd without voicing that thought aloud.
Dad shook his head stubbornly. “No, don’t get me wrong. He’s a good kid, and a damn fine ball player. That foul off the third base line…” he trailed off, a distant, reverent look in his eyes as he got lost in the memory.
And I nodded, because the ball Seth caught in game three of the 2014 World Series was a thing of legend.
“But he never saw you,” my dad continued, his brow furrowing in paternal consternation. “Not the way you saw him. And I know it hurt you, honey.”
I shook my head in frustration. “Did everyone know about my feelings for him?”
“Well, of course!” With her usual perfect timing, my mother came bustling into the room, her arms full of bath products and her Irish wolfhound, Ethel, trailing behind her. Mom owned a shop in town called Louise’s Luxuries, and she made soaps, lotions, shampoos, and all kinds of other bath and beauty necessities. She used all natural ingredients, too, most of which were grown here in her garden and greenhouses. Ethel had been the shop’s unofficial mascot ever since she opened about four years ago.
“Everybody but Seth, anyway,” Mom added. Ethel growled as though in agreement.
I closed my eyes, wanting nothing more than to fade into the hundred-year-old mural painted on the wall behind me. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”
Little victories, I’m telling you.
“Really, it was inevitable that you two had a falling out. Now, I’m not saying you went about it the right way,” my mother continued. “You could have just told him how you felt.”
I snorted, because everybody in that room knew I had not been brave enough as an eighteen-year-old to confess my feelings. Gods, I wasn’t even sure I was brave enough as a twenty-eight-year-old.
“Well, maybe not,” Mom conceded, handing me three bottles each of my favorite coconut shampoo and conditioner, as well as two new tubs of body butter. “But I still can’t forgive him for not falling in love with you.”
“Damn straight,” Dad agreed.
“Tom!” Mom glared at her husband. “Language.”
Dad waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t understand what he was thinking at all.”
I nearly rolled my eyes as I stashed my goodies in my purse. “Oh, come on. You guys know what I looked like back then.”
Mom shook her head. “You were a beautiful flower,” she insisted.
“Mom.” I let the eye roll run free. “Please.”
“And you’re still beautiful,” she added stubbornly. “You’ve blossomed so much since then.”
I remained silent, because I had never been good at taking a compliment, especially about something I had no control over. I didn’t grow my boobs on purpose, so why should I take credit for them?
“Listen to me, Kris.” Dad stared at me until I met his eye. “Your mother’s right.” The woman in question crowed in triumph, but I couldn’t look away from Dad’s twinkling eyes. “But it’s not about your looks. It’s because of who you are inside. You’re smart, and funny, and so talented that sometimes I wonder if your mother stepped out on me, because you definitely didn’t get all that math and computer stuff from me.”
Mom and I both snorted at the idea that she could ever even look at another man. They’d been together for more than forty years, and they were still a couple of l
ovestruck teenagers in all the ways that counted.
Plus, we all knew I hadn’t gotten my coloring from my raven-haired mother.
“And you love your family and friends something fierce,” he added. “You have a good head and an even better heart. That’s why you’re beautiful.”
I blinked, looking at the man from whom I’d inherited my freckles, my propensity to give everyone a monosyllabic nickname, and my love of pickles. A sudden wave of affection overtook me, and I leaned over the desk, giving him a kiss on the forehead. As I straightened, I heard my mom sniff like she was fighting tears, and her arm came around my shoulders. Even Ethel wanted in on the love fest, it seemed, as she nudged my hand. I dutifully scratched her favorite spot behind her ears, and she whined happily.
“That boy’s an idiot, Krista Marie,” Mom whispered, like she didn’t want anyone to hear her saying something unkind. “Handsome, but an idiot.”
“Well, look on the bright side,” Dad said, giving us a mischievous smile. “Now that he’s coming home, you can forget all that silly stuff and just pick up where you left off.”
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah, sure.”
For Seth, that ‘silly stuff’ had come totally out of left field. I didn’t think he’d ever forgive me, let alone want to pick up where we left off.
Dad sighed. “I’m sure he’ll accept your apologies if you just talk to him, Kris.”
I gave him a doubtful frown, but otherwise made no reply.
“You know, you should go to that reunion. Jessica says he’ll be there.” Mom gave me a beaming smile. “You can patch things up then.”
Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen.
Probably.
Maybe.
“I don’t know,” I hedged. I glanced at the clock on the wall behind my father. “But I do know I need to get going.”
Mom frowned. “Honey, it’s after midnight. You should stay the night.”
I shook my head. “I have a meeting with my design team in the morning.” I sighed, already dreading the prospect of another hour of circle jerking. And everyone would be extra cranky, because they’d be coming in early on a Sunday.