Small Town Hearts

by Lillie Vale

  Here’s to the dream. And to the dreamer.

  * * *

  The next thing I knew, Levi was gently shaking my shoulder.

  “Whaa?” I groaned.

  “Babe,” he whispered insistently, “there’s a huge group of people coming up the hill. I think they’re heading here.”

  Levi’s face flickered in my vision for a few minutes, golden and tanned against the backdrop of the sun. Then his features focused—a narrow nose and disheveled hair sticking straight up from the wind.

  “Oh, right on time.” I sat up, stifling a yawn. “I’ve got to get started. Are you okay here on your own?”

  “My own?” Levi’s brow furrowed. “The people—”

  “Are tourists,” I finished. “They’re here for a tour of the lighthouse.”

  Every summer I did lighthouse tours, Friday to Sunday. “You can watch,” I told him. “But it’s not that exciting, so if you wanted to just sit around looking artistic, that’s cool, too.”

  “You mean be your prop?”

  I could tell he got a kick out of it by the way he tucked his paint-flecked brush behind his ear.

  “Exactly.” I launched myself upright, teetering for a second, but his hand shot out to steady me. “Thanks.”

  A few minutes later, the sweaty, red-faced tourists had reached the top of the hill and I was waiting for them with a cooler of water, juice, and soft drinks. The cooler’s lid was open, and on the inside was a giant yellow Post-it, the price written in thick black Sharpie.

  “Welcome to the Oar’s Rest Lighthouse!” I said. “There are ice-cold drinks available in the cooler! Just two bucks each.”

  Levi quirked an eyebrow. “Isn’t that kind of expensive?” he asked in a low voice as I passed by.

  “Supply and demand,” I whispered.

  The tour lasted about thirty minutes. I walked them around the lighthouse, told them a little bit about the history of the fishing town of Oar’s Rest, peppered with humorous anecdotes about local life. The kids were especially interested in the ghostly legends and seafaring superstitions that I’d grown up hearing, and the adults couldn’t keep their chuckles at bay, either.

  After a quick walk-through of the grounds, I brought everyone to the lighthouse keeper’s quarters, the home next to mine where originally, the keeper and his family would have lived. It was a tight squeeze, but we all got inside in the end.

  The electrical wiring had been shot to pieces, the real estate agent had told me when I’d moved in, and the wiring was from the last century. There was woodworm in the ceiling, and before the historical society had gotten their hands on it, vagrants had set up camp inside, so it smelled a little like urine and rotten food. The disrepair of the three rooms of the keeper’s quarters couldn’t be solved with TLC—it needed something a lot stronger.

  And so the historical society had outsourced the cleanup to a cleaning crew, and they’d come in and scoured the place clean. After that, the quarters and the lighthouse had changed hands a few times. Some rich guy had bought it with the intent of settling in Oar’s Rest, only to discover that small-town living didn’t agree with him. His asking price was sky-high, which meant no one was willing to buy it. He filed for bankruptcy a year later.

  The historical society had scooped up the remodeled buildings again, hoping to maintain the place as a cultural monument of the town. They leased it out for a rock-bottom rent with the addendum that the new renter, me, had to provide tours during tourist season.

  Inside, the quarters had been renovated into a museum. Glass cabinets housed relics and mementos of the past, like photographs taken by the families who had lived here and foghorns and thick, ancient knots of rope. Placards provided colorful visuals of maritime history, and one wall was reserved solely for a timeline of famous ships that had come in and out of harbor. Old pictorial maps were available to browse through, and everyone was enamored with the sparkling Fresnel lenses and Coast Guard medals.

  To wrap up the tour, I recommended a few places for them to get lunch and locally made ice cream. The kids immediately began clamoring to leave, the youngest ones tugging on their parents’ hands and shorts.

  I closed the cooler lid, watching as the tourists picked their way down the hill, hands outstretched to keep them balanced. I grinned at Levi. “Bet you’re glad you had a bike. Did you see their faces by the time they made it up here? Lobster red.”

  He laughed, and I finally noticed how far he’d come on the painting. “That’s beautiful,” I said, taking a step closer, our shoulders grazing. “You got the colors just right.”

  He’d managed to get the soft hues of the houses and the crocodile green of the grass. The upper left of the canvas had a curve overlooking the houses below. I looked closely at it until I figured it out.

  “The lighthouse!” I turned to him. “It’s beautiful. I bet a lot of people would want this.”

  He studied my face. “It’s not for sale.”

  The ease of our friendship made it so easy to forget that he was a summer boy. Made it easy to let my heart get involved. Hearts were fickle things, always willing to beat for the exact wrong person. First Elodie, who couldn’t be with me the way I wanted us to be together. Now Levi, someone who would be as fleeting as this summer itself. I had to harden my heart. I had to remember that Levi wasn’t mine to keep.

  “Right,” I said faintly. “You probably need it for your residency. There’s usually a big summer show at the end of the program.”

  His eyes looked more gray than blue. For a second, it looked like he wanted to say something. Levi’s lips parted, and the intensity of his face made me yearn for a thousand different things that I hadn’t even known I wanted until now.

  I waited, but then the moment was gone.

  “Want to grab lunch?” he asked. “I’d love to try real New England clam chowder.”

  Relieved by the change of subject, I couldn’t help but tease him. “Is this you trying to get out of eating at my place? I promise I won’t charge you two bucks for a drink.”

  He didn’t seem to notice. “Let’s go,” he said, laughing as he put his stuff back in his backpack. “Would you mind if I left the canvas here?” After a pause, he added, “I mean, assuming that you’ll let me come back to finish it.”

  “Sure,” I said quickly.

  It would give him a reason to come back.

  And even though I hadn’t worked out what—if anything—I hoped to get out of being friends with Levi Keller, I wanted him to come back, too.

  six

  The next day, I met Lucy on the beach before work. Around us, some early birds had already started prepping for the sandcastle competition. Lucy bounced her well-loved, graying volleyball on her thighs. “Hey, you entering the Clamshell Queen pageant?”

  That was a bit of a loaded question. Penny’s mom had played fairy godmother when Penny and I had entered two years ago. She’d helped us design our gowns and taught me to use her sewing machine to stitch it all together, making sure my stitches were straight and neat. Penny had won the pageant that year, and no one had cheered louder than me.

  The next year was a different story. That was the year I’d won, and the crushing look of hurt on Penny’s face had broken my heart. I’d taken the tiara off my own head and placed it on hers, announcing to the entire crowd and all the judges that we were best friends and we’d win—and lose—together.

  A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. Wang had told me to come by so she could take my measurements, but I hadn’t gone over. I had to talk to Penny first. I couldn’t let what happened with Chad hang over our friendship. I already had a plan in place—I’d make up a batch of Penny’s favorite oatmeal raisin cookies and bring them over to her houseboat. Then I’d broach the topic and explain what had happened that day on the beach when Chad had kissed me. I’d tell her that it meant nothing. I was definitely not into Chad, and despite the kiss, I didn’t think that he wanted to be with me. It was foolishness, that was all.

  “I do
n’t know if I’m entering this year,” I said. “Kind of depends on what happens with Penny.”

  “You can do it with me. My mom’s super stoked I actually agreed to do it this year and wants to take me dress shopping in Bar Harbor.” Lucy shot me a grin before bumping the volleyball off her knee. The ball soared through the air in a gentle arc.

  “We’ve done it together the last two years,” I pointed out, sending it back to her. “And it’s cheaper with Mrs. Wang. I don’t have the money for an expensive dress.”

  Lucy returned it with a powerful spike, sending me in a fumbled dive. Despite her petite stature, she was a powerhouse of energy.

  Two feet short of the ball, I landed on the soft sand. “I thought we were playing for fun,” I said, brushing the sand off my knees.

  I didn’t buy her innocent look for a moment as she said, “We are.”

  Our second game had the same result, a flurry of short, explosive motions culminating in me biting the sand—again.

  “I wish it hadn’t taken us so long to get around to doing, you know, stuff like this,” said Lucy, bouncing the ball over to me.

  “What do you mean?” This time, I managed to return it.

  “Just … sometimes it felt like just because you had Penny and Chad, that sort of stood in the way of our getting closer?”

  “We’ve hung out before.” But I couldn’t really put my finger on when.

  Lucy laughed. “Nah, we haven’t. Not like this.” She sent the ball back to me.

  I scampered after it, wincing as it hit my wrist bone in a sloppy return. It was a knee-jerk reaction to protest, but she was right. People who had hit their friend quotient tended not to look outside the equation.

  Lucy snatched the ball out of midair and tucked it under her arm. “I hope things get back to normal for you, obviously, but it’s nice to see you without your posse.” She made a face. “Makes the rest of us lowly peasants feel like we have a shot at getting to know you.”

  “Oh my God, Lucy.” White-hot embarrassment streaked over me. “You’re not a lowly peas—I love you, okay? You’re the best.”

  She studied me for a long moment. “Can I say something?” She bit her lip. “Something that you potentially won’t like.”

  “Go for it.”

  “I didn’t have a lot of girl friends in high school. Or, um, a lot of friends in general? It always felt like once everyone found their people, they didn’t have a lot of time for new friends. I never really got it, you know? Why people felt like x number of friends was all they had space for.”

  I knew where this was going.

  “And we’ve hung out before, obviously, but we’ve been spending more time together … lately. Which is really nice,” she rushed to say. “But it just made me think about high school again.”

  She thought I was only hanging out with her because I didn’t have anyone else. Shame burned hot in my face.

  Lucy must have read some of what I was feeling. “I don’t want you to feel bad, Babe! Just know that I’m here.” She opened her mouth, about to say more, but then her eyes darted away.

  I followed her gaze. Lorcan was talking with some of the fishermen, and from the concentrated furrow of his brow, I figured he was haggling prices for the morning’s catch.

  “Hey,” I said. “Remember when you were younger and you threw sand at him? You screamed that you were going to marry him when you grew up.”

  Lucy laughed, then made a face. “He was only a year older than me. But he was thirteen, a teenager. It seemed so old back then.”

  I cackled, remembering how mortified and amused he’d been. Though he’d been in my grade, he was never really part of my circle. With a twinge, I realized that what Lucy claimed was truer than she knew—I’d never really talked to Lorcan much because I thought Chad and Penny were all I would ever need.

  Elodie’s face winked into my mind, swiftly replaced by Chad’s and Penny’s. Even as I focused on them, traced their features to my memory, they began to get hazy. Lost to me. In the blink of an eye, they were blotted out, replaced by a golden-haired boy and his blue eyes.

  As if she could read my mind, Lucy asked, “Did you put any moves on Levi yesterday? I’m telling you, Babe, he is so into you.”

  I quirked an eyebrow. “Based on?”

  Levi seemed to enjoy my company, and had laughed and joked with me yesterday, but maybe that was just his personality. I didn’t want to read more into it than that. Especially since I’d been on the awkward receiving end of guys who had misread my own friendliness for romantic interest.

  “Um, the fact you took him to your totally romantic lighthouse? And went out for lunch after?” Lucy put her hands on her hips and leveled a no-nonsense look at me. “C’mon, that’s at least second base.”

  I flushed. “What are you, ten? Levi and I are just friends.”

  “There’s no such thing,” she said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Friends don’t exist?”

  “Oh, friends exist. But the way you two eye-sex each other every day at Busy’s goes way beyond friendship.”

  “We don’t—”

  “Trust me. You do.”

  Now my face was hot for a totally different reason. Deflecting, I said, “I remember not so long ago you were too tongue-tied to even go up and talk to a boy. If Lorcan hadn’t worked up the courage to talk to you, you’d both still be mooning over each other.”

  “I couldn’t trust myself to keep my cool around him! You know what a serious case of foot in mouth I have,” said Lucy. “Doctors have told me it’s inoperable. I’m cursed with it for life. Side effects include incredible awkwardness and loss of coherency.”

  “Loser,” I said lightly.

  “Well?” Lucy demanded, impatient for details.

  Pretending not to know what she was asking, I gave her an innocent, wide-eyed look. “Well what?”

  “Did anything happen between the two of you?”

  “He just came to paint! Not everything is about sex.”

  “Yeah,” said Lucy, grinning, “but some things should be.”

  I glanced toward Busy’s, where Tom was just making his way outside with his watering can. Like clockwork, we could count on him to be out there every day at eight a.m. “Shit, we’ve gotta go. Ariel already texted to say she was sick”—“Ha! Sick!” groused Lucy—“so it’s just us this morning. Race you back!”

  * * *

  Hours later, my lower back felt stiff and sore from being on my feet all day. I felt like a Sim with a low energy bar. Stifling a yawn, I turned just as the door opened and a customer came in. What little energy I had left in me ebbed away entirely.

  Elodie Hawkins, in the flesh.

  With her statuesque height and high cheekbones, she’d always looked ready for the runway when we were in high school. She was the girl voted Most Likely to Succeed, and no one ever forgot it.

  “Guess who’s back for the summer!” she said through a laugh, throwing her arms out. As if it was so easy to breeze back into town—back into my life.

  I seethed to see two tables erupt into cheers and How’s college, E? Some of the kids who had graduated in her year had occupied the table closest to her, and they quickly scooted chairs to make room for the prodigal El.

  “Told you she was coming back,” Lucy murmured over the drone of the dishwasher. “Hey, she’ll probably run into Levi at the art center.” She nudged me.

  I gave a half-hearted shrug, unease pooling in my stomach. Elodie still hadn’t looked at me. The humiliation of her avoidance yesterday was fresh in my mind, and the hair on my arms prickled. She looked even prettier today. Up close, I could almost count the constellations of her freckles. I remembered thinking once that no matter how blustery the day, seeing her made me feel like I was warmed by summer rays. Now I just felt cold.

  “Oh my gosh, Babe, is that you?” Elodie made a show of looking around the room. It was only the slight downturn of her full lips that hinted at her emotions.

  I w
ouldn’t call her El. “Hi, Elodie,” I said, trying to smile as she approached, although I was pretty sure it was laced with Splenda sweetness.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, like she was warding off the chill she’d brought into the coffee shop. She glanced over her shoulder at the table that was waiting for her, then back to me, like she wanted to say something more. “How have you been?”

  I kept my voice as clipped as I could as I responded, “Fine.”

  Lucy’s eyes volleyed between us. “So how’s school? You were in California, right?” she asked, breaking the tension.

  “Yes!” Elodie’s whole face seemed brighter. “CalArts is amazing!” she said. With an embarrassed smile, she added, “That’s what we call it there.”

  Lucy caught my eye, and I knew she was fighting back a laugh. “Whoa. Cool,” she said.

  “California Institute of the Arts,” said Elodie.

  I kept my face blank, even though she seemed intent on holding eye contact. I knew the name of her school, abbreviated and full, and didn’t need a reminder of the place that had lured her away from Maine.

  Elodie waved a hand at my cakes in the glass display case, still smiling. “We had some amazing food near campus, but I found myself missing these so much.”

  Missing these. Not missing me. Not missing us.

  “Glad you missed something about home,” I said tartly. “Back for anyone in particular?” I wanted to take the words back the moment they were out there. It sounded like I was fishing, like I wanted her to tell me she was back for me. I knew she wasn’t. Oar’s Rest was her home; her family was here. It made total sense that she was back for the summer.

  But it was too late. Elodie’s mouth tightened and her eyes flashed. She leaned over the counter and lowered her voice enough to say, “Would it matter to you if I was?”

  Stung, I pulled back. She was trying to goad me. And I’d practically invited her to do it. I wouldn’t pretend that I was fine. She’d ignored me. She didn’t have to acknowledge our relationship, but she didn’t have to actively avoid me, either. I’d been without her for a year. I’d learned how to move on, even though it hadn’t come naturally. When my mom started taking longer and longer work trips, I had accepted it. But with Elodie, there had been too much confused anger and grief to make acceptance come easy. Each step was a milestone, each day was a little easier. I’d known, of course, that our relationship was over, but my heart hadn’t been ready to face it until now. We were done. It crossed my mind in that second that we made better strangers than we ever did friends.