She caught her breath at the top, hot and sticky, melty in the sun. No wonder boys like Ellis thought she was gooey and icky. But in spite of all that, Julian's complaint sounded real. Real and like he meant it.
She sucked in a deep breath. "Come to my house?"
"Now?"
"No!" Oh god, no. His face flashed a darker feeling and her tongue tripped over itself to be understood. "My graduation party's next weekend. Will you—would you mind—what do you think about coming to that, if you have a chance?"
He grinned. Soul-sweet and achingly beautiful. "Okay."
The week passed in agonizing slowness and advanced excitement, because Julian kept inviting her over to his house, and she kept going. Night after night, staying a little bit later each time, until her parents finally complained that she wasn't hardly at home and she defended herself by saying that she was bidding farewell to classmates who were leaving the state, and they eased off because after all, she was leaving the state. Julian didn't push her about her party, even though his face changed, unreadable, every time he brought up his impending visit.
"Your parents are busier than mine," he said, one night when she had to leave, and "There will be a lot of people at this party of yours?"
"Just the people at the organization," she said, which was about five people including the intern, "and Mia."
And his face set again. Darkly thoughtful. Almost nervous, she would say, but he never got nervous about anything. Not even the now silent, watchful Ellis.
At the end of the last day of classes, Mia saved them almost an entire row of seats at the school awards ceremony. Julian sat next to her, and Pepper separated him from the rest of her family. It was a weird introduction, but Julian's coming to her graduation party later would seem normal. Her parents wouldn't get that over-interested look and begin asking questions about career trajectories. They wouldn't grill him like they had grilled the last boy she had invited over—in second grade. That boy had wanted to be a firefighter. Now, she was pretty sure he was thriving in San Francisco and wanted to be a handbag designer.
Nobody would think she was over-reaching. Not even Julian. She could dress up and be cool, and it wasn't solely for him. It was expected. His visit was nothing special.
Her new black dress was not a little black dress, but it was a Vera Wang clone. For one brief moment, the hours she spent spraying her hair into sausage curls and trying on Wet & Wild shades seemed to be rewarded by a deeper emotion beneath Julian's lazy smile.
Her heart fluttered. She moved her hand to cover the feeling just at the moment Julian put his hand over where hers had been on the arm rest.
Wait—had he meant to take her hand?
Before she could move back, his name floated across the theater.
He see-sawed to the aisle on Mia's side, because Pepper's side was too full of thick people.
They all clapped for his award.
Mia leaned over his empty seat. "He's good looking, isn't he?"
Hot and cold feelings pulsed through Pepper. Although saying it was like mentioning that tourists came to see orca whales. It was a fact, and someone as normally-proportioned as Mia would notice it just as much as an orca like Pepper would.
"I think he's dating a girl at the smoothie bar," Mia said.
The day shifted monochromatic, dropping below the edge of the ocean and flaring the blue sky to yellow with its last sunlit rays.
"I see him there practically every day. At the place across from the bus stop? A blonde with a surfer tattoo is always giving him free stuff."
Cold grayness seeped into her chest.
Oh.
Of course.
The drinks he tossed after her private tutoring. She had thought he was waiting for her. But that was wrong. He was actually using her for cover. Cover so he could be with a thin, beautiful blonde and score niceness points for being friends with a fat girl.
Pepper tucked her hands between her knees and hugged her elbows to her sides.
Her instinct—who was she kidding?—was wrong.
Julian returned to his seat and lifted a gold key. A purple foot inscribed with "Track."
She tried to arrange her mouth into his match. Little filets of pain traveled across her skin like a sushi knife, paper-cutting right up to her heart.
That depth behind his eyes wasn't interest. It was friendliness. He probably wouldn't even blink if she pulled off her black dress or all her clothes.
She couldn't hold her smile. As soon as he looked away, she did too, squeezing her hands between her knees.
The academic awards started and her name echoed across the theater in reflexive waves, echoing the effort she had put in for the past years.
Applied Science, English, Knowledge Bowl, Math. Her parents squeezed her arms as she squished by and the Danish intern gave a misty-eyed cheer. After the fourth time they all had to stand to let her by, everyone shifted over a seat and stuck her on the aisle away from Julian.
Oceanographic Studies, Physics, Spanish. The principal's special award for consecutive quarters of Honor Role.
Her family's thrilled hugs lofted her back to good feelings, though Julian leaned his elbows on his knees and studied the seat backs in front of him, completely bored.
The event ended and everyone rose.
The Danish intern ruffled her hair. "We'll start a brain trust together, you and I. Yes?"
Julian pushed past her.
She gave the intern her handful of award keys and forced her way through the crowds like a whale chasing the receding tide while deadly gravity held her to the beach. She followed him around the building, almost breaking into a jog. "Julian!"
He turned.
She caught him and wheezed, nearly bent double. Her dress stuck in patches. She hated her weakness and herself, but she had to make him stop.
His hands jammed in his shorts pockets and his face looked over his shoulder. Away.
She mustered her courage. "Did you want a ride to my place?"
"I'm gonna head."
Her hands opened and closed. "There'll be cake."
He snorted and shook his head.
A hole opened in her stomach. There had to be something she could say. Something that would make him stay with her a little bit longer.
He squinted at her, behind her, and away again. Over his shoulder. As if he couldn't bear to face her fat self.
Or as if he couldn't wait to be with the athletic, beautiful surfer girl who was his actual girlfriend.
Her aching heart pressed her one step forward. It was pointless. She knew it was pointless. Still, she pulled out her graduation gift, a sleek new Razr. "Can I at least give you my new phone number?"
He focused on her.
She flipped it open. Gleaming. "We could stay in touch. You could visit me in New York."
His focus shifted. Face blanked.
"As friends, you know. I don't mean anything weird by it."
His whole body froze into a cliff-side rock.
"We've got our own lives. It'll be a good chance to get off the island. You have another person you know to visit." Her words tumbled, faster. "Because we're friends, right?"
He shifted, rubbed his nose, stared at the dirt beneath his ripped tennis shoes.
She poised with her phone. "Please? Can I give you my new number?"
He looked her dead in the eyes. Hard as the ocean from a twenty-story fall. Flat as a glassy, airless day. "Why would I ever want that, Patty?"
The deck slammed into her knees and the impact ricocheted up her body, shuddering in her jaw and elbows. She remained on the deck, palms on the wood, for one deep breath and another, unable to face the shocked-silent room. Then, still without looking up, she shifted her feet under her to stand.
Hands—her classmates' hands—lifted her up. Concern blurred beneath the heat waving off her cheeks.
She blinked to focus and pulled her elbows free from the helpers.
Murmured "are you okay?"s crystalized in Al
lison's pitying head-shake. "Not everyone can wear those high heels."
Across the room, Julian looked away. Dropped back into his conversation with the athletic surfer woman.
The burn localized to Pepper's chest. She recognized it. Not anger at the others. Anger at herself. And disappointment. She was not that kind of woman any more.
"Nice entrance." Mia gravitated to her as unnaturally as they had in elementary school, one freak to another. Her braces-straightened teeth gleamed in the dusky roll of the ship, brown eyes blinked naturally behind their contacts, and her smart business suit and smarter heels suggested that they shopped at the same New York boutiques. "He's still pretty cute, isn't he?"
Pepper shifted on her wobbling heels and tugged down her skirt. Adrenaline pounded through her body, breaking like the waves of a rough storm. "I'm not looking."
"The blonde is supposedly his client, a semi-pro surfer from Hawaii." She looked down on Pepper's wrinkled outfit and dreams. "Some things don't change. He always did go for the graceful sporty types."
The crash in her heart sounded as loud as the crack of a chair separating in assembly.
Pepper tried to make her gaze appear to focus on the buffet tables, not tempt his gaze by staring directly at Julian. "Maybe she's with the other guy."
Mia snorted. "The shorty? That's Ellis."
It wasn't fair. It so wasn't fair.
She was supposed to have been the graceful one. She was supposed to be the beauty now. She was supposed to have made Julian and all the blade-slim girls desperately jealous of her obvious success.
Julian followed the surfer babe away from the table to the side doors leading to the whale-watching area. Devoted. Practically her husband.
"I forgot our class was so small." Mia rubbed her nose as though trying to push up her non-existent glasses. "There was no need for Rizzo to introduce you. Fat or thin, your face is the same." She lingered on Julian's new girlfriend, her face echoing the jealousy in her tone. "I wish I had her quads."
"I'm going to eat." Pepper stomped to the buffet to load a paper plate with apple wedges, pear chunks, and celery sticks without dressing.
She was supposed to be beautiful. She was supposed to have attractive quads. She was supposed to have changed.
Ellis wandered up, munching a cracker-cheese hors d'oeuvre. "Looking good, Patty."
She snapped the celery. "My name is Pepper."
"Seriously? I never knew that."
She gave his average, ordinary, wedge-shaped face one solid glare.
Long enough for his brows to rise and his eyes to widen and genuine fear to replace whatever average, ordinary, wedge-shaped feeling had originally crawled from his hollow heart. In second grade, his stupid questions led the class in a taunt that had shaped her life. Is Pepper short for Peppermint Patties? Did you eat too many and that's why you're so fat? Fatty Patty, Fatty Patty, Fatty Patty! He used to be a thousand times bigger, but now she towered over him in heels.
"Now you know." She flounced to the bar.
Vastly depleted beer and wine, and mostly full carafes of orange juice and soda, greeted her wrinkled composure. The high school her would've carted the entire soda carafe to a hidden corner.
She poured lemon-scented water into a plastic cup.
Julian sidled up beside her.
She swallowed drily. "Julian."
His voice, smooth and lazy, caressed her. "Pepper."
With just those two syllables, she fell five years back in time. Her heart pounded, her body pulsed, and her tongue twisted in her mouth. She hadn't seen him coming and now he was here, at her elbow, too close. Too hot. Too present. She thought she had prepared herself, but nothing could have prepared her for this. She was seventeen, and thicker around than she was tall, and desperately, palpitatingly, sickeningly in love.
He gazed at her.
She felt it as a heat, even though she couldn't meet his gaze. If she met his gaze, he would know how he still affected her, and she couldn't stand that. She grabbed the nearest thing with shaking hands. "Bud Light?"
He took it from her, set it down, and selected a Coke. "I don't drink. Not anymore."
Her insides trembled. "No?"
He smiled, slow and lazy, never once taking his gaze off of her face. As though etching the lines of her in his head, in case they didn't meet again for another five years. "I didn't want to end up like my dad."
Her chest rose and fell.
He had taken her advice. And remembered it five years later. And specifically mentioned it.
Desire rose between them, shimmering, like waves upon the horizon. Waves of yearning.
She picked up her paper plate and plastic cup.
And met his eyes.
Such blue, blue eyes.
He smiled and pushed her, without her raising one objection or fighting for control, to the door.
Wind whipped past and the dark islands chugged by, houses secret on their cragged and tree-lined faces.
He moved her aft, to the covered deck, to empty chairs where she could eat in the windless sun.
She bit the fruit, sweet and succulent.
He watched her. Sitting so close, the long tender hairs vibrated on his hands where they curled around the soda cup. He studied her so deeply, all the edge-shifting in the world wouldn't alter the angle of his gaze.
"Where's your client?" she asked.
He tipped back his drink, the moisture running down his kissable throat, luscious with salt, and stretched his arm across the seat back.
Across her seat back.
Drawing him a little bit closer. Making her part of his orbit once again. "Calling her fiancé."
She wanted to believe that. "Why bring a 'client' on a reunion cruise?"
"They're having a pre-wedding honeymoon. She wanted a free ride." He licked his lips. "I wanted to see you."
Her other questions all died. She sucked on the sweet Bosc slices as the ship's white wake propelled her into the past.
"I heard you went to New York." He put his ankle on one knee, the thick hard length of his thigh brushing hers. He wore a loose T-shirt that couldn't disguise the underlying ripple of muscle, and surfer shorts that allowed his calves to rub hers. Skin to skin. "You're working for the Japanese consulate?"
"Hai, hai." She sipped her lemon water. Cool, to stop her from perspiring. "You left the island too. Congrats."
He bumped her. Subtle but unmistakable. "Why did you come back?"
"I saw too many remakes of Carrie." But of course he didn't smile, because he didn't read and he didn't watch movies and he didn't sit around when there were athletic worlds to conquer. He didn't know what it was to be mistreated, to be misunderstood, to know everyone would like her if only they knew her inner beauty. He was too easy-going to get upset about all of that. "I never showed my true self in high school. I came back to be known for who I am."
He didn't laugh or joke or say that's deep, man. "And who are you?"
She finished her lemon water, folded her plate, and stood.
The wind caught her hair, whipping it around her face.
She smoothed it and faced him, shadowed, as they moved deeper into the setting sun. So he would know this was truth. "A shy girl grown up to a successful woman who was once totally in love with you."
There. She had said it.
Usher in the age of vengeance.
His smile disjointed. As though the words took a moment to hit him, and his mouth heard them first, flattened in one corner, while his eyes narrowed to probe her meaning. He looked behind her. Hearing the words, re-hearing the words. The smile that he finally flashed at her settled firmly into the trench of denial.
No matter how much she changed, he didn't want someone like her to pine over someone like him. Ugh, his face said. What are you talking about, Patty?
It hurt as much as his words on that last day. Her eyes burned. She wanted to shriek at him. Didn't he see that she was finally beautiful? This was her final revenge. Telling him h
ow she had felt, then showing off her new thin self and saying Too bad you missed your chance. Buh-bye now.
He didn't want to believe her. She was thin but he preferred graceful athletes. She had changed, but not enough for it to mean anything to him.
Pepper was not going to cry.
She strode to the garbage/recycling and appropriately disposed of her utensils. The trip was one-way to Friday Harbor for her. Not for him. Those who had no family on the island would take the last state ferry back to the mainland because the summer season had filled all the guest houses. Even finding a place to camp risked huge fines and worse, public embarrassment.
Julian still sat, staring out over the water. Older, perhaps, but just the same.
It wasn't fair how powerfully she felt for him. These feelings were supposed to fade with absence, not return twice as strong.
She walked to the fore where the wind hit her fullest on the face, and took a long, deep breath. Regardless of whether she was graceful, she loved herself now, and no rejection or embarrassment could ever take away that knowledge. Je comprends que je m'aime. She had melted away the inessential parts and found her own true center.
Julian slid next to her against the rail.
Her heart ached at his nearness. His presence filled her with a distant sort of longing, one that she had thought telling him of would finally make go away, but instead, like hearing the sound of the Pacific, only made her more nostalgic for it. She gripped the rail and deliberately studied the passing boats, bobbing like so many white pieces of debris. "What are you doing here?"
He followed her gaze with the easy familiarity of a dive instructor who spent much of his time on boats like this. "I go where the current takes me."
"Well, then, go back to your graceful, athletic girlfriends."
He snorted, then sighed. "I told you, she's just a client."
"She's your responsibility."
The tendons on the backs of his hands rose as he scratched his nose. His nose, in profile, was hooked. In high school, his hair had always covered the upper half of his face. Now his hair dropped to the powerful plane between his shoulder blades and only the barest curly wisps pulled from the thick black band at the base of his neck.
Fatty Patty: A Romantic Short Story (San Juan Island Stories #1) Page 2