The Perfect Boy

by Hailey Abbott

  But as she looked past the circle of heads to AJ, envy lodged in her gut. He was leaning close to Heidi, whispering something in her ear as she threw back her head in laughter. Ciara began to push through the crowd, still half consciously moving with the beat. She didn’t know what she was looking for, only that seeing the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world yanked away from her was too painful to watch. And it was true—somehow in the last three days, she’d dived headlong into a major crush on AJ. She couldn’t explain it, but she just felt like it was the right thing—maybe the only thing at all….

  The crowd became a sea of sparkling tank tops and flailing elbows. She heard a girl laughing drunkenly by her left ear and saw her long yellow hair swing back and forth as she stumbled about the dance floor, balancing precariously on tall Lucite heels. Red wine sloshed back and forth in the glass she held in front of her. She reached for a guy who was pushing through the crowd ahead of Ciara, lurched suddenly to the side, and bumped sharply against Ciara’s hip.

  “Whoops,” she slurred.

  “Watch your glass!” Ciara cried.

  But it was too late. Red wine cascaded from the glass, and Ciara couldn’t jump out of the way in time. The wine spilled onto her, making a dark, ugly stain the shape of the Hawaiian Islands down the front of Ciara’s brand-new, eighty-five-dollar, bought-for-the-sole-purpose-of-impressing-AJ bright white teeny-tiny tennis skirt.

  Chapter Ten

  When the female and male come in contact

  Sticky situation in fact

  Tryin’ not to let the feelings catch

  —Jurassic 5

  Ciara fought her way through the mass of revelers to the bar, trying to keep the tears that stung her eyes from spilling over onto her cheeks. She held her hands down by her sides and shouldered her way through the sea of gyrating pelvises and waving arms, muttering “excuse me” as she jostled past.

  The crowd at the bar was three deep. Guys with hair gelled up into points at the top of their heads like Kewpie dolls waved twenty-dollar bills as their fake-tanned girlfriends clung impatiently to their sides. Everyone was vying for the attention of two sharp-featured bartenders with their hair pulled back in slick, gleaming ponytails, who took money and poured drinks with the quick, precise movements of hawks stalking their prey.

  It took what felt like aeons for Ciara to edge in close enough to catch the attention of the skinnier bartender, and during that time, she felt the wine soaking through her skirt and into her skin. The bartender’s slim, straight nose wrinkled in disgust when she asked for a club soda, no lime.

  “Four dollars,” she snarled, slamming the drink down so that it sloshed onto the pitted wood.

  Four dollars for a glass of bubbly water? Ciara sighed, handed her a five, and grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins before slinking away to an empty spot near the railing overlooking the dark, swirling ocean below. She wished she could just dive overboard and swim back to shore, but the lights of Santa Barbara twinkled like a toy village in a model train exhibit way in the distance.

  She dipped a cocktail napkin in the club soda and began dabbing miserably at the blood-colored stain on her skirt. It would look to anyone else like she’d gotten her period at a very unfortunate time, and the wine had soaked so deeply into the flimsy material that the club soda wasn’t making much of a difference.

  Next to her, a couple cooed at each other from the dark recesses of a locked embrace, reminding her of what a failure Operation Woo-ha was turning out to be. She looked over the rail again, at the black surface of the water rolling gently under them. If she just jumped in, she would never have to go back to LA and the mess she’d made of her life there again. She could sink below the surface, and AJ would spend the rest of his life wondering what could have been between them if only he’d paid attention to her instead of Heidi that fateful night on the party boat. He’d write song after song dedicated to her, and Em would realize she should have spent more time with her and less with her stupid boyfriend, and her mom would regret ever having broken up the family….

  She knew she was being melodramatic. To distract herself from her morbid thoughts, Ciara looked up at the DJ booth. Kevin had the headphones over one ear and was biting his lower lip in concentration. She watched as he made the transition from one track to the next, then rested the headphones on his neck and scanned the crowd. He nodded in approval at the packed dance floor before moving his eyes over the bar, down the rail past Ciara, and then quickly back again. Seeing her standing by herself, he pantomimed an elaborate shrug, as if to say, What’s going on?

  Ciara grimaced back at him and then pointed to her skirt. A look of almost-comic alarm crossed his face, and Kevin quickly motioned for her to join him in the DJ booth. She nodded before taking a deep breath and forcing her way back through the crowd. This time, she kept her hands clasped self-consciously in front of the stain, which made elbowing past the writhing bodies even more difficult.

  “Watch it!” she heard a girl shout as she struggled past, but she was already on to the next knot of dancers. Kevin had dropped a new track by the time she reached the narrow metal staircase leading to the DJ booth. Ciara suddenly realized she would have to climb it, putting her higher than almost everyone else on the boat, with a giant red stain on her crotch. She contemplated the stairs for a while, then turned so that her butt faced the crowd and climbed up sideways, like a crab. It crossed her mind that she probably looked even more moronic than she would have if she’d just climbed the stairs normally, but it was too late. She was already in the DJ booth, her back still to the crowd as she pretended to be fascinated by Kevin’s messy record bag sitting on a chair behind the turntables.

  Kevin placed a concerned hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”

  “A drunk girl spilled wine on my skirt,” Ciara said. “Do you have any idea how much this thing cost?”

  “It can’t have been that much,” Kevin said. “I mean, it’s got to be like six square inches of fabric at the most.”

  “Don’t you know the cardinal rule of summer couture?” Ciara asked bitterly. “The smaller the garment, the bigger the price tag.”

  “Guess I’m behind on my women’s fashion,” Kevin quipped, crouching down and rummaging beneath the chair on which his record bag sat. He emerged with a large navy blue Adidas windbreaker. “It gets cold here sometimes at night, so I usually bring a jacket. It should be long enough on you to cover up the stain.”

  “Thanks!” It seemed like Kevin was always saving her butt these days. First he’d stayed on the ground with her at Six Flags, and now this. She snuggled into the light, fleece-lined jacket as he flipped through the LPs in his record bag. It came down lower than the hem of the skirt and smelled like Tide and old records, just like him.

  “I don’t think that look will make it to the runways this season,” Kevin observed. “But it does the job.” He turned and placed the record on one of the turntables, holding up a finger to let her know to hang on while he cued it up.

  Ciara looked down at the crowd. From up in the DJ booth, she had a panoramic view of the dance floor, the bar, and the stairs leading down to the lower levels. It was obviously the best seat in the house, and being up there with Kevin was safe and relaxing, like they were two kids hiding out in a tree fort. Instead of a hungry amoeba eager to swallow her into its yawning maw, the dance floor looked like a sea of bobble heads attached to small, delicate bodies. She could see the parts in everyone’s hair and the glowing tips of cigarettes, the occasional beaded shirt catching the colored spotlights and winking up at her.

  Suddenly, her eyes zeroed in on a pair of heads in the center of the dance floor: a perfectly round, brown skull with a close-cropped coating of black fuzz and, much farther down, Heidi’s shaggy platinum locks. As Ciara stared, transfixed, Heidi straddled AJ’s leg, grinding her pelvis suggestively. AJ’s hands roamed up and down her back, lingering on her butt and drawing it closer to him. Ciara could literally feel her blood pressu
re rise as Heidi stared up at him, her eyes glittering rapturously, for a long moment before she buried her face in his neck.

  “What’s wrong?” Kevin asked. She must have looked as frustrated and disgusted as she felt. She pointed wordlessly toward the human knot AJ and Heidi had formed with their bodies.

  “Oh.” Kevin sighed.

  Ciara slumped against the railing, her hands dangling over the boatload of laughing, dancing mass below. The cutest guy on the dance floor was practically lip-locked with her friend, and she felt her confidence seeping away like dishwater down a drain. She was just some loser in a stained skirt she’d paid too much money for, watching helplessly as the only guy she wanted got cozy with someone else.

  “Sucks to be us,” Kevin said glumly, echoing her thoughts. “I mean, I can move a whole dance floor, but I can’t even get a girl to tear her eyes away from AJ long enough to look at me.”

  “Come on,” Ciara said, suddenly feeling the need to comfort him. She turned to look at Kevin. With the headphones resting in sleek silver relief against his neck and his face cast in black and purple shadows from the lights, he looked like an image in a music video: fierce, sleek, and cool. “Heidi just doesn’t realize how great you are.”

  “I’m obviously not that great,” Kevin protested.

  “Yes, you are,” Ciara argued. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me all summer.”

  Kevin’s lips loosened into a smile at her praise, and he suddenly seemed very large and very masculine beside her. “Thanks,” he said.

  As their eyes locked, Ciara felt a tingly sensation bubble up inside her. She gathered the feeling around herself like Kevin’s soft, warm windbreaker, luxuriating in it as it protected her from the cool ocean air and the feelings of hurt and regret about Heidi and AJ. Kevin’s lips were inches from hers. His eyes flickered with confusion and desire.

  The record segued into a long, floating instrumental break that sounded like foghorns and mermaids. Below them, the bobble heads paused mid-bobble, so that the entire dance floor seemed suspended in midair, waiting for the beat to drop.

  “Crap!” Kevin suddenly turned from her, shattering the moment into smithereens. He grabbed his headphones and shoved them haphazardly over his ears, leaping toward the mixer and frantically throwing switches and turning dials. She could feel the tension between them wilting like a bad perm on an August day. Kevin placed the needle on the record and squinted in concentration as he moved it back and forth in the groove, looking for the right spot. Biting his lip, he nodded along with the music, suddenly flicking the fader all the way to the right.

  The beat dropped and the crowd landed on the dance floor with it, shaking their fists in the air, rocking the boat, and screaming. In their midst, she could see Heidi standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on AJ’s lips.

  Kevin turned to her, a shaky smile faltering on his face. “Whoa,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Ciara agreed. She couldn’t believe she and Kevin had come so close to kissing. She forced a small laugh that sounded more like a bark. “What was that?”

  “I was this close to train-wrecking,” Kevin said, holding his thumb and forefinger millimeters apart.

  “Oh.” Ciara’s voice sounded hollow even though she was shouting to be heard over the music. She hadn’t been talking about the music.

  “My gig here would have been over for good if I did,” Kevin explained. “We’re ten minutes away from docking. This is the part of the night people will remember. If I left them with silence to dance to, I’d be royally screwed.”

  “Oh.” She felt like a broken record, uttering the same dumb syllable over and over again, but she didn’t know what else to say. What had just happened? One moment they’d been mooning over AJ and Heidi, and the next they’d practically been kissing. That wasn’t supposed to happen. It certainly wasn’t part of Operation Woo-ha.

  “Anyway, listen,” Kevin said, suddenly not meeting her eyes. “I have to clean up a little here, get my vinyl together.”

  “Oh.” Third time in a row. “Okay, then. See you later.”

  She scurried down the narrow metal stairs toward the throng of exuberant dancers below, no longer cool enough to stand above them and watch. Once again, she was just part of the crowd.

  Chapter Eleven

  This old boat she’s just sitting in the moonlight

  Catching the gleam in her eye…

  Shimmer glimmer I think I’m gonna fall—what?

  Catch me mama that’s all

  —50 Cent

  Ciara tried to battle the creeping feeling of weirdness as she approached the dilapidated seaside diner where Kevin had instructed her in a text message that morning to meet him. She still felt unsettled from their encounter on the party boat the night before. After she left the DJ booth, she had stood silently by the railing overlooking the sea, watching the lights from Santa Barbara grow closer and closer as they approached shore. Her insides were a mess, battling between hurt over AJ and confusion about her near kiss with Kevin. If she didn’t want him, why had she leaned in like that? That was the kind of thing the old Ciara would have done, and the feeling of having let herself down was unsettling. She could almost feel the slimy post-hookup tendrils swirling in her stomach as she realized how close she’d come to throwing away a picture-perfect romance with AJ just because she felt let down and Kevin had been standing right there. Making AJ her boyfriend was the most important thing in the world: once she had a real relationship, she’d be able to truly start life as the new, better Ciara she was trying to be. How could she have let her goal slip away?

  The moment the boat docked, she had fled down the gangplank and run across the boardwalk to her car. The last thing she had wanted was to see AJ, Heidi, or (least of all) Kevin. All she wanted was to go home, take off the vile skirt, crawl into bed, and forget the whole thing had ever happened.

  Of course, she was still wearing Kevin’s windbreaker. And the next morning, he sent her a text saying he needed it back, which seemed a little strange since the weather for the next week was supposed to be in the nineties. Then again, maybe something had happened after she’d run off the boat and he had more news about Operation Woo-ha. Whatever it was that made him want to see her again so soon, she hoped it didn’t have anything to do with their almost kiss from the night before.

  A white clapboard shack perched precariously on a rotting wooden dock, the diner had smudgy windows overlooking the rows of canoes, paddleboats, and kayaks bobbing gently in the water. A cracked, peeling wooden sign reading THE BOATHOUSE hung on rusted chains over the door.

  Kevin was already seated at one of the booths, his head buried in a book. The inside of the diner was surprisingly cozy. Cheery vases of daisies adorned the vinyl tops of the booths, and a fifties-style jukebox gleamed in the corner.

  “What’re you reading?” Ciara asked, sliding into the seat across from him.

  “Nothing,” Kevin said, quickly closing the book and placing it next to him on the seat. Leaning over the table, Ciara craned her neck to get a look at the title.

  “The Star Wars Companion?!” She gasped, trying to suppress a laugh. She put her hand over her mouth but ended up snorting around it. “Guess you’re not completely over your dorkiness after all.”

  “Hey, you can take the boy out of the galaxy, but you can’t take the galaxy out of the boy,” Kevin joked.

  “I may not be playing with lightsabers anymore, but I’ll always have a little Skywalker in here.” He tapped his chest, and Ciara dissolved in giggles. The reference to his former Star Wars obsession was somehow enough to eradicate any awkward “about last night” discussions. Besides, here in the brightly lit diner, they were obviously still cool.

  “This place is cute,” Ciara observed, looking around the diner.

  “I love it here,” Kevin admitted. “My parents used to take me here every Wednesday when I was a kid. It was like a family tradition.”

  He frowned slightly a
s he said that but quickly brightened when a matronly waitress with an enormous tea-colored bouffant bustled over to take their order. “Hi, Sheila,” Kevin said. He introduced her to Ciara, and Sheila smiled warmly.

  “I’ve known Kevin since he was this big,” she said, holding her hand about a foot off the tabletop.

  “Sheila’s been working here as long as I can remember,” Kevin elaborated after she had taken their order and disappeared behind the swinging wood doors leading to the kitchen. “She’s almost like my second mom.”

  The mention of moms made Ciara scowl. Hers had left a message on her voice mail while she was on the party boat, saying simply that she missed her. It was the last thing Ciara wanted to hear. Thinking about her mom made her think about all the other bad stuff she had left behind in LA—stuff she definitely didn’t want to dwell on. It was time to get back to landing the perfect boyfriend right here in Santa Barbara.

  “So about Operation Woo-ha,” Ciara said. “Are we still on?”