“No shit?” exclaims Max. “Oh my God! They were my favorite band as a kid!” He then proceeds to jump on the couch and sing their biggest hit—“Night of the Dragon,” a song that largely involves screeching only those four words, again and again, with a sporadic refrain of “You won’t know what hit ya!”
“Didn’t your mom date him, back in the day?” Ginny asks.
“Hey,” says Max, “was that your mom in the video for ‘White Hot Love’?”
He runs to get his laptop and is back 20 seconds later, trying to pull up the video on YouTube, with Ginny and James behind him, waiting.
“Found it,” says Max, watching me turn away. “Don’t you want to see it?”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask. “No, I don’t want to see my mother dancing like a skank all over a dude wearing a leather vest and no shirt.”
But both Ginny and James have crossed the room to watch over his shoulder.
“God, your mom is hot,” whispers Max, no longer joking. “She could be your fucking twin.” At which point James shuts the laptop.
“What?” asks Max, bewildered.
“You want to be pervy about her mom, be my guest,” says James. “But don’t bring her into it.” And he storms out of the room.
The three of us look at each other, and only Max seems to find the whole thing amusing. Once again, it’s nice that James wants to defend my honor. I’m just not sure why he seems so pissed off about doing it.
That night they’re all on the deck when I get home. I grab a chair, content just to have James near. He’s less stressed, less hostile toward me at night. I listen to him tease Ginny, and as the laughter bubbles in my chest, I realize that, no matter how he’s treating me, these are my favorite moments—these evenings spent in the darkness and the swampy heat, waiting for tendrils of a breeze to graze us. They’re not just my favorite of the day, but of the summer, of the year, of many years. There’s something whole and content in me. Max has suggested that I never live in the moment, that I spend most of my day wishing my life was different, and at times like this—times when I want absolutely nothing—I realize he is right.
Ironically, it is Max who does not share my contentment. No sooner does he arrive than he receives a text and jumps to his feet. “I’m out of here,” he says.
“Where are you going?” asks Ginny. “It’s 1 AM.”
“If you’d ever acted like a normal college student, rather than a 40-year-old soccer mom, you wouldn’t need to ask me that.”
He leaves, and she grips the arms of her chair with her eyes blazing. “You know, what Alex and I have is what everyone wants,” she says, voice clipped. “All these people flirting and hooking up right and left, acting like it’s so much fun and telling me I’m missing out. All they want is to be where I already am.”
“Settle down,” says James. “No one means anything by it.”
“Don’t you tell me to settle down!” she shouts, jumping to her feet. “You’re listening to him too. I know you are. He’s probably the reason you keep breaking up with Allison, and if she hadn’t talked you back to your senses, you’d be doing the same thing he is.”
She storms inside while I sit there, my entire circulatory system screeching to a halt. They broke up?
He lets out a tired exhale. “I don’t know what her deal is this summer,” he says. “She’s so volatile.”
I struggle for a moment to focus on what he’s saying. It’s difficult with my brain gleefully probing the fact that he wanted to break up with Allison.
“She won’t admit it,” I finally say, “but I think she’s starting to sense that she’s missing out, being with Alex.”
“She’ll get over it,” he says. “They’re so well-suited for each other. They believe in all the same shit. Politics and all that.”
“You should write romance novels,” I tease. My voice goes low and breathy. “‘Oh, Fabio, I love the way you share my political views.’”
He laughs, but shakes his head. “When it all comes down to it, after all the infatuation shit goes away, that’s probably more than most people have. You’re better off that way anyhow. Love makes people stupid.”
I wonder if he’s thinking of his parents. I never saw them fight, but it also doesn’t sound like they’ve been happy for a long time.
“What you’re describing doesn’t even sound like something worth having,” I counter. “I’d rather be alone than just have some like-minded companion around all the time.”
He looks at me, and for just a moment it’s as if a part of him has really listened. And maybe hopes I’m right.
I rise reluctantly. “I should go check on Ginny.” I take one step before my toe catches on something, and I fly forward. He tries to brace my fall, but he can’t before I’ve practically landed on top of him.
Oh my God. I’m literally smothering him with my cleavage. Not embarrassing at all.
He flinches, draws in a quick breath as if he’s been injured and is trying not to show it.
“Sorry,” I gasp, struggling to get up, to ignore his tight clasp on my hips and his breath on my skin. The smell of him—pine and sea air. My hands are on his shoulders as I push off. His perfect, broad, taut shoulders. Even under extremely humiliating circumstances, I can’t stop mentally molesting him. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he says, but the word is tight and controlled.
“My foot caught on something…” I explain.
“Nails,” he says hoarsely as I stand.
“Huh?”
I’m the one who fell, but he’s the one who sounds breathless, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded. He clears his throat. “There are nails popping up on the deck. That’s what tripped you. I’ll fix them.”
He jumps to his feet. “I’m going running,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. But he’s already halfway down the stairs.
Chapter 14
JAMES
What the fuck is wrong with me? Aside from actually assaulting her, it would have been impossible for me to handle that worse than I did.
I got too comfortable, let my guard down. We were having a good conversation, the kind I might have with a friend, and yeah, that led to the dangerous thoughts that always come up around her...I wish she was older, I wish things were different. She was playing with this chain around her neck, the charm falling again and again to that warm cleft between her breasts. And every time it fell, I pictured the same thing—my nose buried there, the smell of her soap heightened by the damp heat of her skin.
But I was good. I was responsible. I shut each of those thoughts down, again and again, hopeful that things could just be normal with her if I did it enough.
And then out of nowhere she was in my lap, and I was hard enough to break nails, my mind so consumed with all the ways I could take advantage of the situation that I could barely form words.
I go for a long run, but I don’t come back feeling calm, or resolved, the way I have before. I feel fucked, because if I stay here I’m going to mess up. At this point it’s almost inevitable. There’s a reason recovering alcoholics avoid bars and gambling addicts avoid Vegas. Same reason I need to be somewhere Elle is not.
The next morning my mother calls, cutting into my thoughts of Elle with...more thoughts of Elle.
“She needs to go home,” my mother announces. “I tried asking nicely, and now I’m telling you.”
It’s perfect, isn’t it? I wanted her to go, and now my parents are going to demand it. And yet I know there’s not a chance I’d be able to do it, or allow Ginny to do it either.
“On what basis? Ginny invited her for the summer.”
“On the basis that I don’t want anything to do with that family. It’s my home. I don’t have to give any more reason than that.”
“She’s 19, Mom. And she has nowhere else to stay. Besides, she’s nothing like her parents.”
“That’s not my problem. I will not lift a finger to help any member of that family. Besid
es, I’m sure she can find someplace else to stay. They always land on their feet.”
“You’re being unfair. She’s nothing like her parents.”
“I’ve seen Ginny’s pictures. Elle looks exactly like her mother.”
“That doesn’t mean she is her mother. Remember what a nice little kid she was? It’s no more fair to hate her because of her parents now than it would’ve been then. Besides, you know what a shitty situation she’s in.”
“Her situation doesn’t surprise me at all. I don’t believe for a minute that there was nothing going on with Edward Ferris. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I am skating on thin ice, and beneath that ice lies the thing we never talk about: the real reason she hates the Graysons so much. I didn’t want to hear it from my dad, and I wouldn’t dream of asking my mom because it takes so little to set her off.
“Mom, Elle is nothing like that. At all. There isn’t a chance in the world she was having an affair with Ferris.”
“Are you sure?” she snaps. “Or maybe she’s got you wrapped around her finger the way her mom does every other man alive.”
“I really hope you’re not implying what I think you are.”
There’s a long pause. “James, I know you wouldn’t... Just don’t underestimate her. Women like that have this power over men. They just snap their fingers to get anyone and anything they want.”
Given how much time Elle is inside my head, I’m hard pressed to argue with her. She’s so fucking compelling, she could convince you all the things you’d have to give up to be with her don’t matter. For the first time, I am capable of truly imagining that my father cheated. Because Elle makes me want all manner of inadvisable things.
“Mom, she’s a kid. You’re worrying about nothing,” I tell her before we hang up.
Maybe it’s a lie. Maybe it’s not nothing. But I’m going to make sure it doesn’t go any farther than it has.
One of us has to leave the beach, but I refuse to let it be her.
Chapter 15
ELLE
He didn’t even say goodbye. It wasn’t until I got to work that I learned James had gone to DC. And that’s when I learned he might stay.
“Do you know why he took off like that?” I ask Ginny.
I don’t want to believe this could have something to do with me, but the timing of it is troubling. Did he realize I fell in his lap by accident, or does he think it was a ploy of some kind? Doesn’t he know me better than that? Of course he doesn’t. He hasn’t seen me in five years, and I came back here looking just like someone with a very different reputation.
“He said he had an interview there,” she says. “I told him it had better be at a damn law firm. At the rate he’s going, he’ll wind up tending bar like Max for the rest of his life.”
“An interview? So he’ll, like, stay there?”
She shrugs. “I have no idea. He’ll have to at least come back for his stuff, because if he thinks I’m packing all his shit before school starts, he’s dead wrong. He asked Brian for the whole week off, though, so I assume he’ll be gone that long at the very least.”
I’d have thought a reprieve from his recent belligerence would be welcome, but it’s not. The night drags on without him behind the bar. By the second day, I am a mess, troubled as much by his absence as the realization that only a total masochist would prefer the sting of rejection over nothing at all. On the third day, I don’t even want to be here anymore.
Ginny and I get back after work on the fourth night and find him sitting on the back deck like he never left. It feels like the sun has just burst out after the longest winter.
“You came back early,” I say. “Or are you just here to get your stuff?”
He looks at me, holding my gaze longer than he ever has before. “No, I’m staying. Did you miss me?”
“We didn’t even know you were gone,” replies Ginny, though the question was clearly addressed to me. “Why are you back so soon? I thought you were staying there a week at least.”
He glances at me again and looks away. “There’s something about the beach. I just couldn’t imagine staying away.”
“To answer your previous question,” I say softly, “yes, we missed you.”
He closes his eyes, leaning his head against the back of his chair and sighing. “I missed you too.” He says it as if it’s a bad thing, but all night long, every word he speaks seems addressed to me.
He goes back to being a dick the very next day.
Ginny and I walk into the house from the beach, and he’s sitting there waiting, arms folded across his chest. “You got flowers.”
He says this as if the flowers have inconvenienced him somehow.
I turn to look toward the kitchen but see nothing. Ginny, behind me, asks the question. “Are they invisible flowers?”
“In the laundry room,” he grumbles.
“Why the fuck would you put her flowers in the laundry room?” she demands.
I don’t bother listening to his response while I go in search of them.
The bouquet is massive. My first thought is that they can’t be for me. Ryan has given me flowers before, but he’s more the type to steal them from someone’s yard—or grave—than this. And this bouquet is hardly a “Come back to me, college girlfriend” one anyway. It says something more along the lines of “Marry me, Kim Kardashian.” It’s that big. Like a bouquet that ate all the others around it right before it left the shop.
I approach the card cautiously. Maybe my father, apologizing? File that under Things Least Likely to Happen in This Lifetime.
The card is written in curling, feminine script—clearly a flower store employee did the work—but its contents make my skin crawl.
“Ugh,” I groan. I grab the whole vase and march to the trash can, where I am body-blocked by Ginny.
“Stop!” she screams. “That’s, like, $500 worth of flowers! Are you crazy?”
I shove the vase at her. “Fine,” I say. “Now they’re yours. But I don’t want to look at them.”
She sets them down and grabs the card off the counter, reading it aloud. “‘Elle, you are the springtime I dreamed of so desperately during the cold winter chills. Edward’ Did he write that? What the hell does that even mean?”
“It’s Wagner,” says Max easily. “Act One of The Valkyries.”
“Damn, Max,” replies Ginny. “The drugs haven’t killed all your brain cells after all.”
James’ voice comes next, a low growl that sends a chill up my spine. “Why the fuck is he sending you flowers?”
I round on him. “Why are you acting like I’ve done something wrong?”
His jaw sets. “I didn’t mean that to come out the way it did. That guy just makes me sick. It’s time you told him to cut this shit out.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” I snap.
But there are really no words to express the dread I feel at the prospect.
I wait until they’ve all left for work to make the call. I also time it, conveniently, during Edward’s show. I leave him a voicemail thanking him for the flowers but telling him it needs to stop.
“I’m really not interested in that kind of a relationship,” I say, flinching even though he can’t respond. I know, as I hang up, that I should have been more clear about this from the start. From the very first time Edward called me, I should have stated, unequivocally, that I was not interested. It was childish not to. I suppose if I want James to think of me as an adult, I might want to consider acting like one.
Chapter 16
ELLE
A few afternoons later, I walk into the den where the guys are collapsed on the couch. James is shirtless and tan, legs spread wide. I have a brief image of all the things I could do to him in that position, and find that I’m actually shaking my head to dispel the thought. If he’s going to act like I don’t exist, the least I can do is try to pretend he doesn’t either.
“I have a friend coming into town thi
s weekend,” I announce. “Do you mind if he crashes here?”
James does not look pleased by the question. His brows come together as his jaw sets.
“He?” asks Max.
“Yes,” I sigh. “He.” The truth is that he is Ryan, my ex. When he texted to tell me his band was coming to town at the end of June, I was tempted to delete it, but I couldn’t. It’s impossible not to be friends with Ryan. Even people who want to hate him can’t quite pull it off. He sucks you into his orbit, no matter how hard you resist. And with his looks, he sucks you into other things, too—things I’d rather avoid. God knows I could use a distraction from James, but Ryan is a particularly dangerous distraction.
Max is still smiling. “And is he someone who will be staying in your room, perchance?”
James’ face gets stormier still.
“I don’t care where he sleeps. I don’t even care if you say no. He’s asking me,” I say, holding my phone aloft. “So I’m asking you.”
Max looks at James and grins even wider. “Sure, he can stay,” he says with slightly too much enthusiasm. “Any friend of Elle’s is a friend of ours, right, James?”
James turns his glare toward Max, and then back to me. “He stays on the first floor,” he warns. God, his voice is hot when he’s being bossy. It makes my insides completely liquid. “He sets one foot on those stairs, and I’m throwing his ass out.”
I roll my eyes. “You know, if you’re trying to preserve your sister’s chastity, I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.”
Max laughs. “Yeah, James. Stop worrying so much about Ginny.”
“Whatever. First floor or he leaves this house missing parts,” says James.
I am not able to get off the schedule on Friday, the night Ryan gets in. He’s already at the house, being entertained by Ginny and Max, when James and I head home.
“So who is this guy anyway?” James asks as he climbs into the driver’s seat.
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