Small Town Hearts

by Lillie Vale

  If August had a color, it would be gold. Brighter than a lion. Twenty-four-karat beauty. Levi’s presence in Oar’s Rest had stretched from summer into the beginnings of brittle fall. Spiderwebbed leaves turned from green to gold, the edges a rich burnt amber and persimmon orange.

  “I’m glad you got to see this,” I whispered to Levi. Witnesses to the much-beloved boat festival were few and far between. Secrets didn’t stay secrets for long in a small town, but this was one we all universally kept from strangers, hidden up our sleeves and close to our chests. The last thing any of us wanted was for Oar’s Rest to become another Bar Harbor.

  “Me too.” Levi’s smile was luminous. A light show of primal, twisting orange flames flickered across his pupils.

  The Burning Boat Festival was basically destruction dressed up as a party, and as the flames rose higher and higher, the party well and truly got underway. Someone was blasting a mix of folk tunes from their iPod, and bodies swayed around the engulfed boat, tan legs kicking up golden sand, and bronzed arms wrapping around friends and lovers.

  A few feet away, Lorcan and Penny tipped back bottles of beer before Lucy pulled Lorcan into the firelight to join in the jigs of the revelers. “Come on, Babe!” she screamed, hair bouncing up and down as she bounded around the bonfire with the rest of the young people. Laughing, Lorcan let himself get pulled along, stumbling a little as he tried to keep up with Lucy’s jittery dance steps.

  “There’s the guys,” said Chad, stubbing his toes into the sand. “I’m gonna catch up with them for a minute.” He turned to leave, then paused. “Um, do you wanna come, Penny?”

  Her eyes widened. “Sure.” She turned to me. “I’ll see you two later?” At my nod, they both drifted away like shadow, the black plumes of Penny’s dress fading, fading, fading. Just the two of them this time. As it should be.

  “She looks a lot happier,” said Levi. “Do you think they’ll get back together?”

  I agreed with him in wholehearted relief. It had hurt to see her painfully thin body, the skin bruised like day-old supermarket fruit, the hazy uncertainty in her eyes the day after her last party. “I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe not.”

  We stood there for several minutes, both of us content with the silence. It was broken only when Levi reached into his back pocket. Something crinkled. I watched with interest as he pulled out an envelope. He let me read the return address for only a second before he flung it into the bonfire. In seconds, the corners of the envelope curled up and blackened.

  I gasped. “Levi, that was from RISD!”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you—” I shook my head. “Did you even open it?”

  He grinned at me, utterly unrepentant. “What, do you think I’m crazy? Of course I did. That was just a grand gesture, since I didn’t have anything else I wanted to throw into the fire.”

  I was in no mood for his cuteness. Especially when it wasn’t giving me the answer I wanted to know. “But…” I bit my lip, watching as the envelope disintegrated, becoming one with the flame. “What did it say?”

  “I got in,” he confided. “I had the online acceptance a while back.”

  “You got—!” I stared him down. “Levi! Oh my God! Congratulations.”

  “I was going to tell you after the exhibition.” Oh. “I asked for my acceptance to be deferred until the spring semester,” he said. “It’ll give me time to apply for as many scholarships as I can before I officially start school.” His voice held more hope than I’d ever heard before when he added, “Dad said he’d help as much as he could.”

  I knew what that meant to him. His eyes were so intense that I never wanted to look away. If I did, it wouldn’t come true. If I even blinked, it wouldn’t—

  “Babe, say something.”

  Words weren’t enough. I wrapped my arms around his middle and pressed myself close. I hugged his warmth to me, his soft shirt rubbing against my cheek. A whiff of familiar woodsy cologne brushed my nostrils. “You’re staying for a semester,” I said, mostly for myself but also for confirmation. This didn’t make any sense. What about RISD? What about figuring out if he had other passions besides art?

  Levi cuddled me close. “I’m staying. I’ve been talking to Ralph about it. He got me a place here for a semester. I spoke to the art program coordinator and she said if I come up with a rigorous program, she’ll consider giving me course credit. And I don’t have to worry about, well, money. As long as I keep painting, I’ll keep getting commissions. And maybe after this, I won’t want to pick up a paintbrush again. Maybe I’ll do something totally different. I’m not in a rush to figure it out.”

  He brushed his knuckles over my cheek. “And you have time to figure it out, too. Whether you can do something long-distance or not. We haven’t been together long enough for that kind of commitment, maybe.” He paused. “I feel like I’m not supposed to say that.”

  But I was glad he did. “I don’t think we have, either,” I said. “Summers anywhere, but especially here … it makes everything fast-forward. I guess that’s why we have Real Life, to keep us from burning ourselves out. Summer’s good for a lot of things, but the real test is what comes next.”

  “What comes next for this summer boy is this,” he said, and then he kissed me. It was just as short and sweet as the first time, and it ended the same way, him smiling against my mouth.

  “That was a good decision,” I whispered.

  “I think so, too.” He opened his eyes to look at me. Our noses brushed. “It’s just a semester. But maybe one day I’ll stay for us. Or you’ll leave for us. Whichever. Maybe neither. You were right before. RISD is a great school, but it will still be there a few months from now. Maybe staying here for a semester isn’t the right choice, or maybe it is, but we won’t know until we try, you know?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, heart thudding. “I feel like the right thing for me to do is tell you not to wait for me.”

  “I’m not waiting for you.”

  “You’re deferring, Levi.”

  His voice was coaxing. “Nothing’s going to expire if we take a few extra months together. Remember?”

  “But it’s selfish of me to let you.”

  He frowned. “Let me?”

  “Bad word choice. I know you can make your own decisions, I do, but if I’m a factor in it, then—”

  “Of course you’re a factor. But you’re not the only factor. I told you, I’m doing good here. I’m inspired, I’m creating, I’ve made friends. I have a life here that goes beyond you, Babe. I love you, and you’re part of that life, but you’re not my whole life.”

  “That’s super unromantic and yet incredibly reassuring. You’re not just saying that, are you?”

  “No more secrets,” he said. “Let’s say what we mean from now on.”

  That I could agree with. I’d had enough of all the secrets this summer. “Then I want you to kiss me again,” I said boldly.

  “Trust me, I plan on it.” He smiled. “But first … just look.” This time, what he pulled from his pocket wasn’t an envelope but a postcard. The corner was bent just slightly.

  My breath caught. This was Oar’s Rest. Even in miniature, I could see the bright colors of the beach houses dotting the coast, the familiar slant of the Busy Bean’s roof, and the slick red of my lighthouse.

  On the path uphill, the same one I took every day, were two figures on bicycles. One was a boy with short hair, the other a girl with wavy blonde hair trailing behind her. I blinked, lips parted. This was us.

  In the top corner, nestled in the clouds, were the words Oar’s Rest in graceful illustration, each word resembling rope. Levi’s name was written in black ink on the bottom, small, so as to fit inside the sandcastle that peeped from the edge.

  I flipped the postcard over. On the back were the familiar three lines for an address, but on the opposite end something was written: The words A place to rest your oars between two crossed wooden oars.

  A place t
o rest your oars.

  “Oh,” I whispered. I looked up at the sky before the tears could plop onto the postcard. Instead, I blinked, and I felt hot wetness cling to my lower lashes.

  “Those are happy tears, right?” he asked.

  “Very happy tears,” I said, laughing. “When did you have time to do this?”

  “Last week. I went to the tourist office and suggested I could do a postcard series for the whole of Maine. They loved the idea. They wanted a mock-up done first, but if they like it, they’re going to order a whole print run.”

  “You’ll have to buy a bike if you decide to stick around,” I said, only half-kidding.

  “I know. Maybe tomorrow after work you can help me pick one out?”

  I wound my arms around his neck. “It’s a date.”

  Levi bent his head; his lips trailed kisses from my shoulder to my ear.

  I shivered with pleasure when I felt blunt teeth against my pulse, felt his breath on my earlobe a second before his lips followed.

  His warm fingers painted pictures over my wrist, shooting tingles up my arm. “You’re ticklish,” he murmured.

  We stood there for what felt like an eternity, holding each other tight.

  “I love you, Babe Vogel,” he whispered against my hair.

  I glanced back at my friends, at the flames, at the town I knew and loved. This was the summer that everything had come undone, unspooling our lives like the wickedest of storms. Now there was only the calm, the after. It would start in picking up the pieces, making sure everyone was okay. But where it ended? That was anyone’s guess. Like Levi once told me, we were beginnings and middles, but we weren’t endings. They were still up there in the clouds somewhere, waiting for us to catch up.

  I looked up at the lighthouse, then back at Levi. “Let’s go home.”

  “You don’t want to stay for the rest of the bonfire? I thought this was supposed to be a sacred Oar’s Rest tradition.”

  “It is, but now that my Jedi’s returned…” I trailed off suggestively.

  He grinned. “Wanna see my lightsaber?”

  “Want to see lightsaber, I do,” I said in a Yoda voice.

  “Okay, the mood’s shot.” But he grinned and kissed me quick, and I could tell that the Force was with him.

  “We’ll be back fast enough to catch the end of it,” I promised. Right then, I wasn’t interested in taking it slow.

  “Ha.” Levi’s mouth curved into a slow, lush smile, full of promise and a thousand everythings. “Maybe not that fast.”

  And then I was reaching out. Reaching for the boy I loved, for the town I belonged to, for the moon I could almost reach. For all those things that seemed near and far away. For summer and everything that came after.

  acknowledgments

  It would be impossible to begin without first acknowledging my parents for their support, guidance, and unflinching ability to read all my manuscripts. Mom, you gave me the love of stories and a library card without parental restrictions—any coarse language is therefore not my fault. Dad, I can’t thank you enough for being my biggest cheerleader and helping me find the first spark of “fire in the belly.” Without you both, I wouldn’t be able to follow my dream.

  Thank you to Jean Feiwel, Lauren Scobell, my editor Kat Brzozowski, and the entire Macmillan/Swoon Reads team for helping this book come together. Kat, I hope Small Town Hearts makes you really hungry. Thank you for always asking the right questions to make me dig deeper and, on occasion, reminding my characters to be a bit less murder-y (this will always be my favorite comment). Big thanks to André-Naquian Wheeler, Hayley Jozwiak, and Jessica White for their sharp eyes and insightful copyediting. Swoon Squad, you’ve been the best crew I could hope to sail with. Especially when the seas get rough. I’m also grateful to have the Novel19s community and my Twitter writing pals just a click away.

  Thanks to Jen Dibble, the first person outside of family to believe in me. When you reached out that day in 2015, you helped set my life on a new course. And the journey wouldn’t have been half as fun without my pals Sam Pennington and Alessandra Ferreri, who are the best people to fangirl with. You three are truly the best. My sanity and I also thank my best friend Kate Holiday, who was always a willing ear, shoulder, and everything in between. You’re my fairy-tale sister. Here’s to slaying more dragons together.

  And, of course, this would be incomplete without mentioning Charlotte and Wolf for being the start. You guys know what you did. Bev and Sean, I owe you for the laughs and for telling it like it is. Embarking on this publishing journey would have been unimaginable without the people who had been there from the start: Pragati, Vicky, Mandee, and the many others who read, loved, and championed … you have my heart. The last thank-you is reserved for my readers, old and new, and to all the ones I’ve yet to meet. I wouldn’t be here without you.

  about the author

  Lillie Vale, upon discovering she could not be one of Santa’s elves or attend Hogwarts, decided to become a writer to create a little magic of her own. Enjoying the romantic and eerie in equal measure, she’s probably always writing a book where the main characters kiss or kill. Born in Mumbai, she has lived in many US states, and now resides in an Indiana college town where the corn whispers and no one has a clue that she is actually the long-lost caps lock queen. She can be reached on Twitter @LillieLabyrinth and Instagram @labyrinthspine. Small Town Hearts is her debut novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Lillie Vale

  A Swoon Reads Book

  An imprint of Feiwel and Friends and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  swoonreads.com

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

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  First hardcover edition 2019

  eBook edition March 2019

  eISBN 9781250192363