Small Town Hearts

by Lillie Vale

  Vince lay naked on the bed with a fishing magazine open on his soft stomach. Next to him was Penny, shrugging her shoulders into a bloodred dressing gown.

  “Morning,” she whispered, keeping her voice low. She darted a glance at Vince and scuttled out of the bedroom, brushing me to the side and closing the door.

  “You hooked up with him?” I said, my voice tight. What had she been thinking? Was she trying to lash out at Chad?

  Penny’s gaze was unfocused. “Why is that any of your business?”

  “Just because you decided you’re not my friend anymore doesn’t mean I’m not yours.”

  She rubbed her forehead and looked at me. Not one of her hostile, dark stares, or one of her seeing-through-me looks. But like she was finally, really seeing me. “Do you want coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I watched in concern as she stumbled to kitchen cupboards, pulling them open at random until she found a cup. “I don’t have anything clean,” she muttered, more to herself than to me, and then, without warning, she reached up, the cup still clasped in her hand.

  I didn’t realize what she was planning to do until the ceramic met the wood floor and the fractured pieces skidded all around us. I saw the look of rapture on Penny’s face, and the vague, incoherent thought flitted through my brain that she’d never looked quite as beautiful in her destruction.

  Neither of us moved.

  She made to bend, hand outstretched toward each itty-bitty piece.

  “Don’t, you’ll cut yourself,” I said.

  She didn’t listen.

  I moved forward, delicately weaving around the broken cup. “Come on, get up.” When she didn’t move, I reached down, hooked my fingers under her armpit, and began to pull. It was easier than I thought it would be. Penny had always been slender, but this was different—her skin felt papery and she looked frail and tired in a way she hadn’t looked when I’d first brought Levi here.

  “Is everything okay?” I dropped my voice. “With Vince?”

  “Of course,” she said, slumping back down.

  “Get up.” When she made no move to comply, I dug my fingers even harder into her skin. “Get up,” I insisted. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  “I need to sweep,” she tried to say, but I’d already started leading her away.

  “Forget about that.” I helped her stumble onto the pier and when both her feet were on solid ground, they finally gave out.

  I couldn’t support her weight any longer and had no choice but to break her fall as gently as I could. “Penny? Penny? What are you on?” I peered into her eyes, but they didn’t appear dilated. “Are you high right now?”

  Her stare was blank.

  I hauled her up again, almost falling over when her dead weight fell against me. “Come on, Penny. You’re going to start walking. One foot in front of the other. There, that’s it.”

  With my coaching, she managed to steady her legs and walk down the pier, her arms hugging her body. My arm was wrapped around her waist, making sure she stayed upright. Between the two of us, we managed to get her off the pier and into the soft, golden sands of the beach.

  “Good. Feet hurt,” she mumbled.

  I spotted a mother with two little girls looking our way. Under the brim of her straw hat, the mother shot me a frown and held her hand out to the girls, saying something I couldn’t hear at such a distance.

  I realized that not only had Penny’s robe flapped open again, giving everyone a free show, but in my haste to get out of there, I’d forgotten to put shoes on her feet. “Damn it,” I swore, closing my eyes in frustration. Easing us both down to the sand, I pulled the robe closed.

  When I opened them again, she still hadn’t closed her robe. Hickeys blotched her torso, bruised and already purpling. Vince. Ugh.

  “Babe?”

  I turned around, using my hand to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun. “Lorcan?”

  He jogged over to us, his golden retriever puppy, Merlin, and his cavoodle, Lulu, dashing ahead of him. They were so well trained he never had them on a leash, and they skidded up to me, yipping in recognition.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Lorcan said in a whisper, noticing Penny’s drowsy expression and bare feet. To his credit, he didn’t gape at the scene we made.

  I told him, as quickly and discreetly as I could manage.

  “She hooked up with Vince?” Lorcan widened his eyes. “I never got good vibes from that guy.”

  “I think it’s because Chad broke up with her,” I said in a small voice.

  At the sound of his name, Penny murmured something under her breath and moved closer to me. I pulled her onto my lap, letting her head drape on my left thigh. Missing my usual scratches and pets, Merlin gently butted Penny’s leg in affront before burrowing his way underneath her to head for Lorcan.

  Lorcan’s face darkened. “I know Vince. What did he give her?” He bent forward and snapped his fingers under Penny’s nose. “Come on, wake up. Yes, that’s it.” The moment her eyes fluttered open, he used his finger to peel back her eyelashes so her eyelid stayed open. I vaguely remembered he’d taken junior EMT classes in high school.

  “Lor—” Penny scrunched her eyes, forcing him to let go long enough for her to blink. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t think she’s that high. Just drunk. She just looks exhausted. When’s the last time she slept?” he asked, directing the question at me.

  Flummoxed, I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “The party don’t start till I walk in,” Penny mumbled.

  I gave her shoulder a little shake. “Penny? Did you sleep at all last night?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Were you up all night? Partying?”

  She nodded.

  “How long did the party last?” Lorcan looked grim. “Did you take anything else?”

  “Um, just since last night, I think? It’s just booze and this much weed, I swear. I’m fine.” Penny tried to roll off my leg.

  I let her, but made sure she didn’t face-plant into the sand. With effort, I helped her sit upright. Her expression still looked glazed, but her voice seemed steadier, and she didn’t wobble when my arms fell away from her.

  Sitting there in the sand, she reminded me of a child.

  “It’s exhaustion,” Lorcan determined. “She’s dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and is probably going to regret this tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure she’s okay?” I whispered, terrified she could have alcohol poisoning.

  “She’ll be fine,” said Lorcan. “But let’s take her home?” At my start, he clarified, “Her parents’ house, I mean.”

  “No shoes!” Penny whined.

  “I’ll carry her.” Without waiting for an answer, Lorcan leaned forward, clinically grabbing whatever parts of her were still covered by the flapping kimono and pulling her into his arms.

  “Lulu, Merlin, time to go!” I called out, clapping my hands. With Lorcan in the lead, a limp Penny cradled against his chest, the three of us followed behind him.

  I knew the Wangs hid their spare key in the vase next to the front door. When I overturned it, the key fell into my palm. Her parents were still asleep, so I woke up her mom while Lorcan carried Penny into her old bedroom. He moved a wastepaper basket by her bedside along with a glass of water. Mrs. Wang hurried in, her face ashen.

  Allowing myself a gesture of affection before we left, I brushed my palm over Penny’s forehead. I could have sworn she leaned into my touch for a moment.

  “We should get him out of her houseboat,” said Lorcan as we slipped out the front door again.

  I dropped the key back into the vase.

  In the pocket of my black romper dress, I found a couple of sticky, warm peppermint candies. I offered Lorcan one, which he took. I unwrapped the other and popped it in my mouth, sucking hard. My tongue was dry and sour, and my heart was still beating fast. I glanced up at Penny’s bedroom window as I crinkled the wrapper in my f
ist and shoved it back into my pocket.

  Outside, the dogs were waiting for us. Lulu’s face was cocked to the side as she waited for us to join them on the sidewalk. Her tail slapped against the ground. Merlin brushed against me, his nose butting against the back of my calves.

  “Thanks for being here, Lorcan,” I said, falling into step beside him. “I wouldn’t have been able to get her here without you.”

  He cast me a sidelong glance. “Don’t be mad at her, but Lucy told me a little bit of what’s going on with you three.”

  “She did?” There was no judgment in his voice, but I still felt the finger of blame.

  He nodded. “I better go finish my run. These guys will go stir-crazy if I don’t tire them out a little bit.” He whistled to Merlin and Lulu before breaking into a jog, the two dogs yipping in unison before chasing after him.

  I watched him go, a faint smile ghosting across my lips. Growing up, it had always been Chad and Penny who had my back. I thought now of Lucy’s resilient optimism and Tom’s grumpy affection, of Lorcan’s true-blue steadiness and Levi’s heart-stopping smile.

  With that thought, I turned and headed back to Busy’s.

  Lucy was pissed when she heard me relate what had just happened. “I wish you guys had roughed him up a little bit,” she said, surprising me with the anger in her voice. “I never liked Vince. He’s mega skeevy. Plus it was super irresponsible of him to get her drunk and not even make sure she was okay. That’s the least you do for someone you hook up with.” She cleared her throat. “Hey, can you pass me the cake? The window table wants a couple slices.”

  Lorcan had already rounded up a few local fishermen to haul Vince out of Penny’s houseboat. Their gnarled hands wore battle scars with pride; gashes and ancient scars where flesh had once been gouged by fishhooks; their arms muscled, faces unforgiving. They were the true Old Men of the Sea, strong as krakens, legendary as Cthulhu. Lorcan had called us and said that although Vince had created a scene and refused to go quietly, they’d dealt with him easily enough.

  I handed Lucy the cake platter. “Being thrown naked onto the pier was punishment enough. Lorcan said if Vince didn’t want to be arrested for public indecency, he’d better run as fast as he could to whatever gutter he crawled out of.”

  “He’s pretty good at playing the knight in shining armor.” Lucy laid the last piece of cake onto its side, easing it on the plate carefully so the mocha icing didn’t smear and the layers of raspberry and chocolate chip could be seen.

  I would have loved to use blueberries, but I hadn’t had a chance to go berry picking at one of the local farms with everything else that had been vying for my attention lately.

  “Is she still asleep?” Lucy asked. “Will she be okay?”

  “She was knocked out when we left,” I said. “And … I think she will be.”

  I had a feeling we all would be.

  seventeen

  I once saw a snake slithering up the road just outside of Busy’s. It didn’t move in a straight line, even though it would have been much faster. It wove left and right in a slow, hypnotizing dance, each zig followed by a zag. Predictable. It took its sweet time going where it wanted to go.

  The weeks after the fish fry felt like that—languid and never-ending. Tourists came, tourists left. Tom and Ralph continued to be fixtures, alternating between playing chess and arguing about how far they got with the girls in their youth.

  Every time the stories were told, they grew in the telling. The girls had grown up and grown away and were now relegated to challenges for my friends to win. If Tom had kissed Elaine under the stars, then Ralph took her out in his granddad’s boat. If Ralph got Annie’s number, then Tom had been the one to kiss her in the back of the old movie theater. Their competition over days long past had been amusing at first, but quickly paled. They knocked it off after we pointed out that their nostalgia was just on the side of skeevy.

  The boat on the beach grew more and more each day. With so many people from Oar’s Rest pitching in, the bones of the boat were filled in with old planks from the pier and leftover wood from forgotten DIY projects. People contributed what they had—the boat was a patchwork of projects and lives. Then, using remnant silk from the craft store, someone made bloodred sails. Every day we saw the ripple of the sails from Busy’s, heard the hammers and the jovial, muffled voices of the boat builders.

  “There’s got to be a story behind that,” Levi said one day as we sprawled on the beach after a long sandcastle practice.

  The blanket beneath us was hot from the sand and my legs stretched in front of me, looking impossibly lean and long. My stomach peeked out from my crop top, a glorious, creamy golden-tan.

  “The boat?” I opened one bleary eye to look at it. Everyone had long since gone home, and it stood there, tall and proud, just a few yards away. I closed my eye again. “Mmm, yeah.”

  I rolled onto my side. “We do it every year. After the tourists leave, we have a huge bonfire on the beach, light it on fire, and drink the night away. It’s sort of the town’s giant fuck you to the people from the city who come down here and wear out their welcome.”

  “Definitely feeling the love,” he said dryly.

  “You don’t count,” I explained, smiling.

  “What’s a guy gotta do to count?”

  “Buying a bike would be a good first step, I guess.”

  He didn’t say anything, so I opened my eyes. He was staring blankly, apparently lost in thought, at the strip of my stomach exposed to the last lingering rays of the sun. An inch of tanned flesh, the hint of a hip bone.

  “I wish…” He let his words trail off, sighing. He pulled his legs up and folded his arms across his knees.

  My heart clenched. I wish you didn’t have to leave.

  Soon, I wouldn’t see his face every day at Busy’s. We wouldn’t joke over the fact that he never varied his coffee order, we wouldn’t exchange smiles over the heads of other customers. If I couldn’t have my first wish, then I wished I could go back, tell him I didn’t want a long-distance relationship. That the risk outweighed the reward. That I was no brave Gryffindor to barrel headfirst into things, nor an optimistic Hufflepuff who would try, try, try. I swallowed, waiting for him to speak.

  He never finished his sentence, but I knew how it would go as well as if I’d said it myself: I wish this summer could last forever.

  Finally, he wetted his lips, which were chapped from the wind and from too much kissing. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with—with this place.”

  I was willing to bet that he wasn’t the first summer boy to feel that way. My chest felt hollow. A thought pierced me, sharp and true: Had other people in Oar’s Rest felt this way? And then a deep and profound sadness for all the other summer boys and summer girls who had left Oar’s Rest and the people who loved them behind. I thought about all the people who came into Busy’s, locals and tourists alike. Who knew what drew them here, and what would draw them away? Because, as I’d told Lucy at the start of summer, tourists always left.

  The sun drooped, coating the sky with amber glow, tingeing the water gold and fiery. Levi’s hair looked dipped in stardust. Impossible things suddenly seemed possible.

  “What if you didn’t have to leave?” I murmured. “What if you weren’t a tourist anymore?”

  “I kind of like the idea of being a townie.” His lips quirked into a smile. “Rest my oars here for good.”

  “It sounds nice put like that.”

  He caught my eye. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? I could paint, maybe go to college here, learn how to sail…”

  My stomach happily squirmed. I wanted everything about the picture he was painting. If he could see a real future here, then we could just ax the whole long-distance plan. We could keep going just as we were. “Learn how to eat things with arms and legs.”

  “Hard pass.”

  I laughed at the horrified look on his face. “Oh, come on! You know things taste better when you cook them in
the shell, right?”

  “Fake news.”

  “Baby,” I teased, throwing an arm around his shoulder. “But seriously, though. There’s cool classes at Oar’s Rest Tech, and if you wanted to paint, the art center usually has some highbrow artist in residence during the year to teach. Ralph could get you more info about it.”

  “Great minds,” said Levi, pressing a kiss to my temple. “I’ve already spoken to him about it and he’s getting back to me.”

  My insides thrilled. He’d done it on his own, without us even needing to talk about it. No one I knew had ever taken this kind of initiative in order to stay. Mouth dry, I managed to ask, “So … you’re thinking about staying?”

  “I think I’d have to be an idiot not to at least consider it. I’m more creative than I’ve been in a long time, everything about Oar’s Rest is inspiring, and then there’s…” He broke off, lowering his eyes to the curve of my neck. “And then there’s you.”

  I could feel my cheeks heating up. “What about RISD?”

  “Still trying to figure it all out. School starts in September. It’s way too late to apply for any scholarships. I mean, if the money doesn’t come together, RISD could still be a big nope.”

  It could also be a yes. If Levi was making plans for the future—our future—based on whether or not he got into his dream school, then he could just as easily unmake them. My hope faltered, squeezing my insides hard. Everything rested on the thin, flimsy edge of an envelope—acceptance or rejection. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” He drew me into his arms, breathing into my hairline. “It’s not the end of the world if it’s a no. You have a college here, right?”

  He knew we did. His tone was light, cheery. Meant to make me feel better, I knew. But even the safety of his arms didn’t quell the unease that gripped my mind. His words should have been everything I wanted to hear, but they were wrong somehow, too. He shouldn’t go to a local school that couldn’t offer him the kind of program he deserved. He should have the best education available, and Oar’s Rest Tech wasn’t it.