Jennifer E Smith

by This Is What Happy Looks Like (v5. 0) (epub)

  There would be no more fishing boats or walks along the rocky beach.

  There would be no more Ellie.

  “I don’t know,” he said truthfully, because he didn’t. It seemed too big a question for a simple answer. Right now, sitting so close, he couldn’t imagine being without her. But including her in his real life didn’t seem logical either. It was like there were two different Graham Larkins, and even if one of them was truer, more substantial—even if one of them was happier—the other one still took up more space, and it wasn’t going away.

  He looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know,” he said again, afraid to meet her eyes. But when he finally did, he saw that she was nodding. She didn’t seem to be hurt or offended or even surprised at this. There was a thoughtful expression on her face, maybe even expectant, and his stomach churned with doubt. She nodded again.

  “Well, we have a couple more days,” she said eventually, and it was Graham’s turn to nod. “So what should we do?”

  He smiled. “We’ll go stick our toes in the water.”

  “I love doing that.”

  “I know.”

  “What else?”

  “Eat ice cream on a hot day,” he said quietly, closing his eyes. “Listen to the waves. Take an evening stroll. Go swimming. Read poetry. Hang out with Bagel.”

  Ellie was watching him in wonder. “That’s my e-mail,” she said, shaking her head. “How did you remember all that?”

  “How could I not?”

  She was smiling now, her eyes bright. “There’s too much,” she said. “We’ll never have time to do all that.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” he promised her, and he was certain then that they would.

  But as they neared Henley, Graham felt a deep sadness wash over him. Each time someone got off the bus, he found himself growing tenser, their departure a preview to his own. The seats smelled like mold and the windows were streaked with salt and the glare of the sun felt like a furnace, and if you’d asked him what he’d like to be doing on the Fourth of July, this would have been pretty far down on his list. But still, he hated to think of stepping off and back into the real world.

  When the bus turned off the main highway that had carried them down the coast, the engine slowing beneath their feet, Ellie sat up and stretched.

  “We still have a little while till the fireworks,” she said. “I told Quinn I’d meet her at the party.” Graham could tell she was weighing something as she bit her lip. She gave him a long look, then seemed to come to a decision. “Do you…”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to come with me?”

  “I love that you’re asking,” he said, knowing what it meant, what it could cost her. They both understood that it was more than just a simple invitation. It was a choice she was making. She’d chosen him.

  He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “But it’s probably not such a good idea.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Photographers?”

  “Among other things,” he said. “We’ve gotten this far. No sense ruining your life now.”

  She nodded. “So I’ll just stay ‘unidentified girl.’ ”

  “With any luck,” he said, then he smiled. “It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  The bus turned onto the harbor road, and they could see the crowd up on the green, which spilled out onto the streets in front of the shops. Graham couldn’t believe how many people there were; they were everywhere, milling around with hot dogs and hamburgers and lobster rolls, drinking beers and dancing to the band and setting up firecrackers that leaped from the grass and twirled in the air before dying with a whistle. It wasn’t all that much different from the clambake just an hour north, only this party held Ellie’s mom instead of her dad. And it probably also held Harry.

  “I wish you could come with me,” Ellie said as the bus slowed to a stop just before the harbor, where there was a green bench and a little sign with the schedule.

  “I need to deal with the boat thing anyway, and I should probably see what’s going on with the photographer too,” he said. “But maybe we’ll see each other later?”

  Ellie grinned. “Under the cloak of darkness.”

  They stepped outside, shielded from the party by the broad expanse of the bus, but in a moment, it would pull away, leaving them exposed.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Ellie said, leaning in to kiss his cheek, and then she began to walk up toward the party, her chin high as she scanned the crowd.

  Graham knew he should be moving too, skirting the back streets to avoid the festival on his way to the hotel, but it took a moment to stir himself into action. He was too busy watching her go, and it wasn’t until the door of the bus closed with a pop that he blinked, looking around, and then began to walk.

  As he neared the hotel, he could see the balloons that decorated the entrance, huge bunches of red, white, and blue that burst from the front of the building like fireworks. A short distance away, the party carried on, and Graham pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and then slipped into the quiet lobby without being seen.

  He moved straight past the empty chairs and the watercolor paintings that decorated the sitting area, hurrying toward the elevator. Behind him, he heard the concierge call out, but he pretended he hadn’t, tugging at his hood and punching at the button impatiently. There was nothing he wanted to hear about right now, not a message from Harry or his lawyer or anyone else. But the voice was insistent.

  “Mr. Larkin?”

  Finally, Graham spun around to look at him with obvious annoyance. It was a kid about his own age, skinny and nervous, leaning over the front desk and waving a small piece of paper. Graham pulled off his sunglasses with a sigh, raising his eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the guy said. “But I’ve got some messages for you.” He glanced down at the paper and cleared his throat. “Forty-three, actually.”

  Graham let out a groan. “All from Harry?”

  “Twenty-seven of them, Mr. Larkin.”

  “Call me Graham,” he said, walking over to the desk. “What about the others?”

  “Someone named Rachel who wouldn’t give me her last name…”

  “My publicist.”

  “A lawyer named—”

  “Brian Ascher.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Graham.”

  He nodded, holding out the slip of paper, which had a list of names and then a collection of tally marks beside them. Graham scanned it, then looked up again with a frown.

  “No calls from my parents?” he asked, and the boy shook his head.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “That’s okay,” Graham said, tapping a fist against the desk. “They probably tried my cell. I don’t think they even know where I’m staying.”

  “I can’t wait till I can go away without my parents knowing where I am,” the boy said with a rueful grin. “That sounds awesome.” He coughed, his cheeks reddening, and then added, “Sir.”

  “Yeah,” Graham said, slipping the list of messages into his pocket and turning back toward the elevator. “It’s pretty awesome.”

  From: GDL824@yahoo.com

  Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2013 7:38 PM

  To: EONeill22@hotmail.com

  Subject: (no subject)

  I’ve been officially reunited with my phone. Again, really sorry that yours is on the bottom of the ocean. I’ll make sure you have a new one first thing tomorrow. Or you can just take mine, and I’ll happily put you in charge of fielding calls from Harry, which has apparently become a full-time job…

  The Quinn who awaited Ellie at the edge of the green was not the same one she’d met along the harbor road this morning. And it certainly wasn’t the same one she’d been tiptoeing around for the past few weeks. Even from a distance, Ellie could see it in her posture, a mix of anxiety and concern; she stood slightly apart from the rest of the crowd, glancing at her phone, her whole body practically vibrating with impatience.

  T
he sun was starting to slope toward the tops of the trees on the other side of town, and the band had taken a break, the brassy sound of their instruments replaced by the uneven hum of voices. Ellie had been looking for her mom. Her thoughts were still spinning like tires over the events of the day, and she wanted nothing more than for the two of them to fill a couple of paper plates and collapse onto a picnic blanket, to spend the rest of the evening talking about anything but her father, anything but Graham, just eating and laughing until the sky fell dark and the fireworks took the place of the stars.

  But there was Quinn—this oddly unsettling version of Quinn—pacing at the edges of the party, and when her eyes found Ellie’s, she went still.

  And just like that, Ellie knew.

  “Want to take a walk?” Quinn asked, and Ellie nodded, allowing herself to be steered away from the many people who fanned out in rings around the gazebo, away from the shops and the food and the noise. She felt oddly numb, her thoughts slow and fumbling as she tried to absorb what she knew to be true. She didn’t need to hear Quinn say it; it was there all over her face, her mouth set in a thin line, her eyes full of concern.

  To her surprise, they arrived at Sprinkles, having taken the long way around the backs of the shops that bordered the green. Quinn dug a key from the pocket of her shorts and they slipped inside without a word. The shop was officially closed for the day, though for the festivities they’d donated enormous tubs of ice cream, which were lined up along with everything else on the picnic tables outside. But inside, the store was cool and quiet, the sun coming through the windows at a slant, leaving rectangular stamps across the tiled floor. Ellie followed Quinn into the back, where a small table with a few folding chairs was set up in the storage area, surrounded by cardboard boxes like the start of an igloo, all of them filled with ice-cream toppings and various kinds of candy.

  They sat down, and Ellie leaned heavily on the table, a wave of exhaustion sweeping over her. “So it’s out there?” she asked. “My name?”

  “It is,” Quinn said with a matter-of-fact nod, and Ellie realized how relieved she was to be hearing this news from her friend. Quinn had always been unflinchingly honest; it was one of the things Ellie loved most about her. Even now, when they hadn’t talked for weeks, when Quinn must have a thousand other questions she wanted to ask, a thousand other things she wanted to say, she seemed to instinctively know what part of the equation Ellie would be most worried about, and she was almost businesslike in her assessment of the situation.

  “It also mentions your father,” she said, and her eyes filled with understanding, though she couldn’t possibly have understood any of this. When they were kids, Ellie had told Quinn that her parents were divorced, which somehow sounded better than the truth, even if she’d been allowed to tell it. “He’s out of the picture,” she’d explained, parroting back the words she’d overheard her mom say in the coffee shop when asked by one of the women in town. And just like that, he really was out of the picture, at least between Ellie and Quinn.

  Ellie never knew whether Quinn’s mother had forbade her highly inquisitive daughter from asking too many questions, or whether Quinn, even when she was little, saw a warning in Ellie’s eyes whenever the subject came up. But either way, they’d spent the past twelve years dancing around the idea of Ellie’s father, and now—when Quinn had every right to be angry or confused about this gaping hole in their friendship, this enormous secret between them—she instead emanated a kind of quiet capability. They’d fought about far less, and Ellie wouldn’t have blamed her for being upset about this. But that was the thing about best friends; all the petty grievances and minor complaints were left behind as soon as something more important came along, and Ellie was grateful for that.

  “It’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking,” Quinn was saying. “Really.”

  Still, Ellie’s heart had plummeted at the mention of her father. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her trembling hands. She’d known this would happen ever since she saw the first article this morning, ever since last night, when she’d watched Graham draw his fist back, maybe even since the moment he walked up the steps of their porch that first night. But she still didn’t feel quite prepared.

  She thought of her father, with his bright polo and even brighter smile, the feel of his hand as he shook hers, and she was suddenly relieved that she’d lost her nerve earlier. It was better this way. After all, he couldn’t be angry with her if he didn’t know her. If everything had gone according to plan this morning—if she’d knocked on his door and he’d let her in, ushered her over to a table where they could sit and talk, the years between them melting away, if she’d walked out of there with not just a check but also a phone number and a memory and a promise of something more to come—then it would have all dissolved now anyway, as flimsy and fragile as a soap bubble. This would have been all it took for everything to fall apart again: the moment when an unidentified girl was, quite suddenly, identified.

  Maybe later—today or tomorrow or the next day—he’d study one of the pictures that would no doubt accompany the articles, and something in his mind would click with the faintest recognition. He’d puzzle over her face, the face of the daughter he’d never reached out to, wondering whether it was familiar because she belonged to him, or because of something else. He’d try to catalog all the smiles he’d seen and the hands he’d shaken, flipping through the images to locate the girl with the red hair and freckles who had stared back at him with unspoken urgency at the clambake that day, willing him to make the connection, to figure it out, to open his eyes. But even then, he probably wouldn’t be able to do it.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Quinn said, leaning over to open one of the boxes that were strewn all around them. She wrinkled her nose at whatever was inside, and moved on to the next one, pulling out a bag of saltwater taffy. “As soon as I saw the news, I wanted to make sure you knew. Where have you been anyway?”

  “My phone’s… broken,” Ellie mumbled, accepting a piece of green taffy from Quinn, then twisting it in her hands. “My mom. Is she…?” She wanted to say mad or angry or upset, but she was sure that her mother would be all of those things, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to complete the sentence. Her stomach lurched when she tried to picture it: her mother picking up a newspaper, or opening up her e-mail, or being stopped by someone on the street in town. They might ask about her daughter, or about the man she’d had an affair with, or they might just ask about Graham and the cameras, the biggest scandal this sleepy town had probably ever seen. There were so many things she could be mad about, it was almost hard to focus on just one.

  “I think she’s just worried about you,” Quinn said. “I was too.”

  Ellie had closed her eyes, but now she looked up again. “Thanks,” she said, biting her lip. She felt her shoulders relax, just slightly; of all the many things she was still toting around with her—the broken news story and all it would mean for her mother, the polite handshake with a father she’d never get to know, the disappointment of missing the Harvard program, the looming and inevitable good-bye to Graham (a thought that squeezed at her heart and took the breath right out of her when she thought about it too hard)—it was a relief to have one of them slip away. Whatever had passed between her and Quinn this summer—the hurt feelings and jealousy and misunderstandings—all of it now seemed to have been forgotten. It was a little bit like the taffy, this friendship of theirs; you could stretch and pull and bend it all out of shape, but it was no easy thing to break it entirely.

  “I’m sorry I never told you about my father,” Ellie said. “I wanted to. You have no idea. But Mom was always worried this would happen.”

  Quinn tilted her head. “What?”

  “That the news would get out and everyone would know the truth,” she explained. “About who we are. And who he is. And where we came from.”

  “Ellie, come on,” Quinn said with a small smile. “Nobody here cares about th
at. You’ve lived here how long? You think anyone who knows you would care about some scandal that happened a million years ago?”

  “Well, they do now,” Ellie pointed out. “You said the word’s out there. All those articles…”

  Quinn laughed. “That’s practically a footnote,” she said. “Really. All anyone cares about is Graham.”

  Ellie stared at her. “What?”

  “Do you think people would rather read about Paul Whitman’s daughter or Graham Larkin’s girlfriend?”

  “I’m not his—”

  “Trust me,” Quinn said, popping a piece of taffy in her mouth. “You are.”

  Ellie leaned back in her chair and shook her head in wonderment. Her father had always loomed large against the background of her life, his absence so big it almost felt like a presence. Now, the idea that Graham—who she’d only just met—could somehow turn out to overshadow him struck her as amazing. All this time, she thought Graham’s fame would be the thing to tip her off balance. But he’d managed to salvage the whole situation simply by being himself. To almost everyone else in the world, he was far more important than Ellie’s father. And it took her only a moment to catch up to them, to realize—with a little shock—that he was more important to her too.

  Quinn sent another piece of taffy sailing across the wooden table in her direction, and Ellie reached out to stop it. “My mom’s still gonna kill me.”

  “Maybe,” Quinn said merrily, now fully back to her old self. “But once she’s done with that, how about we grab some sparklers and head down to the beach? You can even bring your boyfriend, now that you guys have been outed.”