I swallow hard and flinch before I look toward her.
“Did I fuck up another order?” she asks, watching my face.
I shake my head, sliding the drinks her way. “No. It was fine. Rough day?”
“If by rough you mean fucking up right and left. How did I ever think I was going to anchor a broadcast, James? I can’t even manage to get people silverware before their meals are through.”
“It’ll get easier.” I smile at her, and my eyes snag where they should not. “I told Brian to get you a bigger shirt.”
“He did.”
“It doesn’t look bigger.”
“Leave her alone, James,” says Kristy, coming up on Elle’s left. “Her shirt’s just fine. I bet she’s getting better tips than the rest of us combined.”
This pisses me off, far more than it should. Everything where Elle is concerned is pissing me off, including Max. He’s been my best friend since college, but I also know how he is with women. Ginny is so much younger than him, I’ve never really had to worry about the two of them together. But if I’m capable of thinking the things I am about Elle, he is too.
Later, after Elle’s shift has ended, he shows up at the bar, something he’s never done. The shot of tension crawling up my spine is beginning to feel familiar.
“Where’s our new housemate?” he asks. “I thought she was working tonight.”
“Please tell me that’s not why you’re here.”
He raises a brow. “Dude. I know how old she is. Chill. I’m just surprised Brian doesn’t have her working cocktail with you. She’d be popular.”
That hadn’t even occurred to me, and I hope to God it doesn’t happen. I frown. “She’s new. No way could she keep up over here.”
“I’m pretty sure the male half of your customers won’t give a flying fuck about whether she keeps up,” says Max.
I slam the fridge door harder than I should. “She’s barely out of high school.”
He leans back in his chair and looks at me a moment too long, a small smile on his face. “Yeah, so you keep saying. What’s your deal?”
“She was like a sister to me growing up. If you’re saying something I wouldn’t want to hear about Ginny, then assume I don’t want to hear it about Elle either. Which brings me to my point. I don’t want a bunch of older guys hanging around Elle and Ginny. It’s one thing if we’re having a party and I’m there, but I don’t ever want to come home again and find them drinking with some douchebag 30 year old.”
“I wouldn’t have let anything happen, and you know it,” he says. “You’ve been tense as fuck for days. I think you need to get laid.”
“Excellent suggestion, asshole, but my girlfriend is four hours away.”
He raises a brow. Max lectures me about Allison almost as often as my parents lecture me about leaving the internship. My summer would really improve if they’d all shut the fuck up.
We walk back to the house together once I’m off and find Ginny and Elle on the back deck.
“You two are the lamest 19 year olds I’ve ever met,” says Max. “Why aren’t you out?”
“I have this thing called a job, Max,” says Ginny. “A real job, that occurs during daytime hours and requires more than the ability to pour beer. And also, Elle is lame and is still moping about her ex-boyfriend.”
Elle rolls her eyes. “I’m definitely not moping about Ryan. Where’d you even get that?”
Ginny shrugs. “You aren’t interested in any other guys, and you don’t want to go out. That spells moping to me.”
Max drops into the chair beside her and drapes his arm around her shoulders. “I want to hear more about this ex-boyfriend of yours,” he says. “I need to know what he did wrong so I don’t mess up when we’re a couple.”
I growl, and he looks at me and throws up his hands. “I’m kidding!” He turns back to Elle. “But seriously, what did he do? So I’ll know once we’re a couple.”
“We had different thoughts on fidelity,” she says.
“Oh my God,” Max cackles. “He cheated on you? What a moron.”
“I like how you emphasize the word you,” scoffs Ginny. “Like it’s okay to cheat, but not on a girl who’s attractive.”
“He didn’t cheat on me,” Elle replies. “But it was clear that a summer apart was going to be an issue, so he wanted me to give up my internship and travel with him.”
Ginny shrugs. “I don’t think that’s so awful.”
“Maybe not,” Elle says, her voice quiet and certain, “but just once in my life, I want someone who puts me first, and I knew right then that he was never going to be that person.”
Our eyes meet as she says it, and behind that set jaw I see something fragile about her that I wish I didn’t. It’s something I saw in her face even when she was little. I still remember the way her mother would simply forget to come pick her up from our house, the glance the housekeeper and nanny exchanged when someone finally showed up.
I think of all this as our eyes lock, and I find myself hoping one day she will find someone who loves her the way she deserves. I know for a fact that person can never be me.
Chapter 8
ELLE
It’s the second week of kindergarten. I wait in the carpool line with my classmates, watching as the mothers descend to hug and kiss their offspring as if they’ve just returned from war, oohing and ahhing over today’s art project, the way they do each day. My mom has never oohed or ahhed. She arrives each day flustered and slightly irritated, because she thinks she shouldn’t have to come get me at all.
But maybe today will be different, because I at last have something worthy of praise. I’ve built a hotel out of cardboard boxes and toilet paper rolls, so extravagant my teacher held it aloft for the rest of the class to admire. It’s a fragile thing, carried with two hands and even then at risk, and I can’t wait to show it to my mom. I wonder if it will be enough to make her ooh and ahh this time.
Kids walk away with their parents, hands clasped and swinging. Ginny’s nanny, Marta, hovers close by, hesitating for a moment before she and Ginny turn and walk away.
I curl my arms around my stomach, a habit when I get nervous and something I do often since my mother fired the nanny.
“Maybe I should call her?” my teacher suggests. Her smile is over-bright—instead of disguising her concern, it highlights it.
My parents’ carelessness is a source of shame for me. If I were a different child, a better one, maybe they’d care the way they’re supposed to. So I lie. I tell my teacher I was told to walk home today. She scolds me for not saying so sooner.
I make it to the end of the block, but that’s where my knowledge ends. The houses on both sides look familiar to me. I turn right solely because I don’t want to have to cross the street, but after a block, something feels wrong. This street is too long. I start to turn, and a big kid on a bike knocks my art project out of my hands, yelling at me to watch where I’m going.
I look down at my feet. My building lies shattered on the sidewalk, beyond saving. The world is all tall homes and empty sky, cars that fly by without slowing down. The truth sinks into my stomach, into my bones: I am alone in the world. No one will fix my things when they break. No one will help me find my way home.
That’s when James appears, looking in dismay at my project scattered all over the sidewalk. I start to cry—in part over the ruined project, in part because of the look on his face, which tells me something I think I already knew: life is not supposed to be this way. I’m not supposed to be here, lost and alone, the way that I am.
His friends yell at him to hurry, and he waves them on, dropping his bike and kneeling to the ground to pick up all the pieces. “We can fix it,” he promises.
I wake remembering this, realizing that at heart, James is still that same boy. The same boy who’s going to marry someone else.
I remain vaguely depressed when I get downstairs, and it must be obvious, because Max sees me and insists I accompany him to y
oga. “You’re way too serious for someone your age,” he informs me.
The odds of me accepting life advice from a stoned college dropout are slim, but I agree to go. If I’m really going to stay here all summer feeling heartbroken about James, I will probably need a little outside support.
When we return, Ginny is running around getting ready to leave for work, and James is reading, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“What would you guys do without me?” Max asks. “I’m guessing it would be all Downton Abbey re-runs and Scrabble tournaments.”
“I’d kick your ass at Scrabble,” says James.
“I’m sure you would, but the fact that you’d even brag about that is a perfect illustration of my point,” counters Max. “We’re having a blow-out tonight, by the way, since you’re all off.”
“As opposed to what you host every other night of the week?” Ginny asks.
Max’s parties irritate Ginny to no end. Actually, everything about Max seems to irritate Ginny to no end. Mostly, she’s just appalled that he’s not more like her—that he dropped out of college only one semester shy of graduation and appears to have no interest in returning, that he spends his winters as a ski instructor and his summers tending bar and seems completely content. These are decisions Ginny finds unimaginable.
“I’m doing it for you, Gin Gin,” he replies. “To help you remove the large stick that seems to have accidentally been wedged in your ass.”
“How do you think you’ll ever support a family, living the way you do?”
He grins. “What part of my behavior has led you to think for one moment that I’m interested in having a family?”
“So all you want out of life is to bang a different girl every night?” she demands.
“No,” he says with a shrug. “If we’re talking about ideal outcomes, I’d bang two or three.”
“He’s such a pig,” Ginny says that night as we get ready for the party neither of us wants to attend. “But at least there will be lots of men.”
“Did something happen between you and Alex?” The idea is almost unthinkable. They are as alike as two people ever were.
“No,” she says. “But I can look. Besides, I meant for you.”
“I think I’m over men for a while,” I tell her.
What I really mean is that I am over all men but one. Albeit, a man who has a girlfriend and often doesn’t seem to notice I’m in the room.
“You can’t let that thing with Ryan kill your mojo,” she says, heading toward the stairs.
“It has nothing to do with Ryan. There’s just enough drama with my family to keep me busy for one summer.”
“That’s exactly why you need a man,” she counters. “To take your mind off things.”
I look down from the landing to the crowd below, wondering if finding someone to take my mind off James isn’t such a bad idea, but I find everyone I can see curiously lacking. I suspect what they’re lacking is that they’re not James.
“Ugh, gross,” Ginny whispers. “Let’s go around the back way. Martin is here.” Martin is our strange next-door neighbor, significantly older than the rest of us. He doesn’t seem to work and spends most of his day just hanging out on his front stoop, engaging whoever walks by in awkward, unending conversation.
We wind our way to the back deck and sit with James and Max. I don’t say much, content merely to be near James, and I stare a little when I can get away with it. People come and go all night, but it’s really just the four of us for the most part. I briefly wonder why Max insists on these parties at all—he only seems to want to sit here needling Ginny no matter who else comes.
“I still can’t believe,” says Max, observing me, “that idiot boyfriend of yours told you he couldn’t go without getting laid all summer.”
Ginny snorts. “Right, like you could? You wouldn’t even make it a week.”
“I could for the right girl, Gin Gin,” he purrs. “Why don’t you dump that tool you’re dating and find out?”
She rolls her eyes. “Please.”
“Oh, what’s that?” asks Max, holding a hand to his ear. “Did you fail to write me into your 10-year plan? I think you might have forgotten the following bullet point: ‘sexual awakening that occurs once I suspect my high school boyfriend sucks in bed’.”
“I already have something that makes me happy. You’re just shitting on it because you don’t.”
He arches a brow. “Or maybe you just think he makes you happy because you’re too scared of who you are when all of your boxes aren’t checked.”
“How very philosophical, Max,” she says, her voice dripping with condescension.
“I like to keep a few of those lines in my back pocket. They’re good for seducing girls from liberal arts schools,” he replies with a grin.
“If the girls you’ve brought home so far have ever set foot on a college campus, I’d be shocked.”
James just laughs. His eyes are softer, almost liquid, in the moonlight. He’s sprawled out in the chair he’s too big for, an easy smile on his face. It’s impossible not to be drawn to him in moments like this.
Ginny and Max are consumed by their bickering, which I sense they both secretly enjoy.
“They’re going to do this all summer, aren’t they?” I ask James.
“Yep.” He sighs. “Maybe I should have stayed at that internship after all.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No,” he says. “Nothing could be worth working there again.”
“Why did you hate it so much?” I ask.
He takes a quick glance at Ginny, but she’s too busy arguing with Max to notice. “I just didn’t care about the work,” he says. “I don’t want to give up my whole life to help some rich asshole avoid criminal charges. They’ve made most of their money defending jackasses like Edward Ferris, you know? Shit never even goes to trial. My father goes running at anyone about to print a story or say something damaging to his client, usually something true, and threatens them until they shut it down. It’s disgusting.”
“You don’t have to do what your parents do. There are millions of ways you can use a law degree.”
“The ways I’d want to use it aren’t ways that make money, though.”
“You’ll be fine,” I tease. “You can just room with Max for the rest of your life.”
He grins at me. “Don’t think I won’t kick your chair over just because you’re a girl.”
I laugh, and in the moment, being with him feels right, and easy, and slightly miraculous, as if I’ve finally lined up all the notches and ended up in the perfect place. I open my eyes, though, to find he’s no longer smiling. He’s looking at me in a way he never has before, eyes heavy-lidded, mouth slightly ajar.
He blinks hard and the look disappears. Then he rises and goes inside without a word.
Chapter 9
JAMES
This is why I can’t drink around her. Because I relax and find myself telling her things I shouldn’t. And then she makes me relax further, and I find myself thinking things I shouldn’t. Like just now, as I watched her throwing her head back to laugh. In one breath I’m complaining about babysitting this girl, and in the next I’m thinking of all the things I’d like to do with her mouth. Just fucking outstanding.
I run on the beach, as hard as I can, trying to drive Elle from my head.
I return home to find the party dwindling. Max is the only one of my housemates who’s still awake, thank God.
He cocks a brow at me. “It’s two in the morning. Why the fuck did you go running?”
I shrug, collapsing into a chair. “Just needed to clear my head.”
“Quick question: this thing you’re trying to clear out of your head—is it blond, about 5’10”, legs for days?”
“Fuck off, Max.”
“I’m gonna take that as a yes. If you want her so much, why not just go for it?”
I look at him blankly. “I don’t know. Maybe because I have a girlfriend,
or because I used to babysit her? Maybe because a year ago she was still in fucking high school?”
“You keep bringing up her age like she’s 12, when she’s only a few years younger than you. What’s really going on?”
“There’s a world of difference between 19 and 25.”
“You’re getting hung up on nothing.”
“I’m not dating a freaking college freshman. Especially not her. I told you my parents hate her family. My mom is fragile enough without bringing that into the mix.”
“I don’t get it. Elle is impossible to hate. What did her parents do to yours?”
I shrug and tell Max I have no idea, which isn’t entirely true. Because the summer my mom started hating the Graysons was also the summer my parents separated temporarily. And I can’t help but think those things are related.
I’ve been trying to avoid Elle, to not think the wrong kind of thoughts about her. Tonight, and this conversation, are a reminder: I need to try harder.
Chapter 10
ELLE
I enjoyed my internship—parts of it, anyway—but it never compelled me to leap from bed the way I do now, knowing that James sits just downstairs. The mental image of him, all lean muscle and intense stares, is better than a shot of caffeine.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table, and his posture is relaxed into what I’ve already come to think of as “the James sprawl.” Too big and too long for normal-people furniture, his legs spread wide, his arms are everywhere. Max is talking smack, and James’ mouth is turned up—a smile about to morph into laughter. I remember that look. It affects me even more now than it did then.
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