“I mean, you don’t have to tell me,” he added, suddenly sounding shy. It dawned on me in a rush. Was Ryan . . . jealous? Of me and Morrison? Was he asking for himself?
I suddenly couldn’t make sense of anything. The air felt hot and the stars felt too close. Ryan had been Eliza’s, every summer, without fail. If Ryan was jealous, and even if I did want him . . . that wasn’t something I could do to Eliza, was it? Her chant of “sisters before misters,” ridiculous as it was, crossed my mind.
But did that apply? Didn’t the game change now that she was getting married? I thought of the way she looked at me when Becca revealed she’d seen Ryan and me together. And the way she smiled at Ryan tonight, expecting that he’d only be interested in talking to her. What would she do right now, if she saw me and Ryan Landry, alone under the moonlight?
“No,” I said, finally. “We’re just friends.” No, I wasn’t into Morrison. And I was ready for whatever not being into Morrison meant for me and Ryan.
He looked at me then and however long it was, I could have lived in that moment forever. His gaze felt like when the sun comes out on an overcast day, warming you instantly.
“Your eyes are really pretty in this light. The blue and the brown . . . I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, studying me.
“Dahlias are like that. The flowers,” I said, the words springing from me before I could stop them. “If you plant similar enough ones near each other, they hybridize the two colors. Or something like that. I’ve always liked that it’s science that seems like magic.” Why had I chosen this moment to give Ryan a genetics lesson? About a phenomenon I didn’t even really understand, no less?
“Dahlias, huh?” he said with a sly grin, lowering his voice to barely above a whisper. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me into him slowly. I felt like we were learning how to dance. Tilting my face up to his, he leaned in and kissed me. It wasn’t a drunken kiss. It was leisurely, and flawless. His fingers found my jaw and traced their way up the back of my neck. Our bodies pressed against one another, and everything strong in him made me want to be that much closer. I gave way to the kiss, letting it wash over me in waves.
Here it is, I thought. Here we are.
Ryan Landry was kissing me. Me, and not Eliza. I wanted him. He wanted me.
And then, I panicked.
“I have to go,” I said. Somehow, I leaned away from him. Somehow, I turned around. Somehow, I got my feet to move and I didn’t stop running until I was back in my room over the garage, listening to my heart race.
CHAPTER SIX
THE MORNING CAME too fast. For the past week, I’d loved the way sun filled the studio at dawn. Today, it felt like an assault. The day had not come in peace.
I had snoozed my alarm through my swim and writing time, but I didn’t want to miss my shift at Smokey’s. It was Saturday, which meant we’d be busy—the absolute last thing I needed in my hungover state. But I also didn’t need to lie in bed all day, replaying that kiss—and my horrifying escape—over and over again.
I slunk into the house, which was still dark and quiet. A half pot of coffee was still warm on the kitchen counter. I found a travel cup and filled it, feeling slightly more human as the French roast aroma reached my nose.
The stairs creaked and I inched for the front door. But I was too slow. Eliza came down the stairs, a white bundle in her arms.
“Kate, wait . . . do you have a second?”
“Uh, sure.” Guilt, I realized, had its own special way of rendering you speechless. I felt like anything I said might reveal that I’d kissed her ex-boyfriend.
“Can you hide this in the studio for me? But hang it?” She thrust the bundle toward me.
“What is it?”
“Remember that picture of Mom, from when she was pregnant with me, in that lace dress?” Eliza was beaming. “This is the dress. I’m going to use it to make my wedding dress.”
Now I was speechless for a different reason. I must have looked dumbfounded, because Eliza peered into my face.
“Um, isn’t that a great idea?” she said. “With the shoes and the dress, it’s like making Mom part of the day.”
“Yeah, definitely.” I forced a smile. “So you need this up in the studio so Devin doesn’t see it?”
“Yes ma’am! So smart, even hungover.” She kissed me on the forehead and skipped up the stairs. I wished there was a way to transfer a hangover to someone more deserving.
I brought the dress carefully up the stairs to the studio, making sure not to spill coffee on it, and put it in a closet, holding the delicate lace between my fingers for an extra second. How did Eliza so casually appropriate Mom’s things without even considering how it made the rest of us feel? I wanted to say something, but I knew that wasn’t fair of me, either. Eliza had been through as much as the rest of us, and she was the one getting married. What was I really going to do with the dress, if I told Eliza she couldn’t have it? Hang it up in my closet and write a story about it?
As I made my way back out of the studio I couldn’t help but take a peek toward the Landrys’ house. Of course Ryan wasn’t there, waiting for me. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted him to be.
I jogged toward Smokey’s, hoping that even at half speed I could sweat out the toxins, and maybe my own confusion while I was at it. Why did everything this summer—Ryan, my sister, my job—feel like it had to be handled? Why was nothing feeling simple, here in this place that had always been exactly that?
“Kate!” I’d just made it to the bike path when I heard Becca’s voice. Of course, on the day when I felt most ill-equipped for even one early a.m. sister talk, I now was on number two. I half expected Tea to appear behind me.
Becca came toward me, trying to balance a donut and a cup of coffee from the Beach Ball, a diner that opened earlier than anything else on the boardwalk. I thought of the crane machine I used to play there as a kid. If only I could put in a quarter now and scoop up the answers to my problems. “Wasn’t last night fun?”
Yes, and utterly mystifying and panic-inducing and pretty much what I’m going to obsess about until the end of time. My eyes are blue and brown, hybrids like a dahlia. Ryan kissed me. Eliza will kill me. Ryan kissed me.
“Yeah, it was great,” I said nonchalantly. I needed to process things away from my sisters. Like, maybe back in New Jersey. “But I really have to get to work. Let’s talk later, okay?”
I gave her a quick peck on the cheek and tried not to notice her disappointed expression. Then I ran the rest of the way to Smokey’s.
“Miss, this boogie board doesn’t work.” A heavyset woman in a skirted bathing suit slid a blue board across the counter to me.
“Is it cracked?”
“No. It just hasn’t caught any waves. My son is very upset.” She blinked expectantly.
“Tell your son that you never truly catch a wave. You find a moment,” Smokey said.
The woman grimaced. “That’s not helpful.”
“Okay, Kate, she needs her money back.” Smokey drummed on the counter, humming. “If you don’t get the waves, you shouldn’t have to pay.” I knew this was Smokey’s version of an insult, but the woman seemed quite pleased with herself as I handed over a refund.
The day had started with irritable customers, mostly because I’d been ten minutes late opening the shop. It was continuing with more of the same. No one was happy, even though the sky was cloudless and the sun and breeze were working in perfect tandem, one warming you up and one cooling you down.
Smokey came to pat me on the shoulder. “The days Mother Nature brings it the most are always the ones when people can’t deal with the teensy shit. Weird, right? It’s like you’re this close to perfection but you just can’t handle it.”
Smokey was uncanny with his random life philosophies. And he was right, the day was perfect. But I couldn’t get past the kiss with Ryan to
just enjoy it. Though, the kiss with Ryan hardly felt like “teensy shit.”
He nodded away from the counter. “Go take your break. I got control of all this, because I know I don’t have control of anything.”
I put my hands up in defeat and retreated into the back. The shack had a surprisingly comfy break setup in a far back corner. Smokey kept the place stocked with munchies, of course, so I settled into an overstuffed armchair with a mini bag of barbeque chips, my favorite hangover food. I closed my eyes, picturing last night in my head.
Maybe I was overreacting to the kiss. Maybe it was just a weird, drunken thing that didn’t really mean anything. Ryan could have even just wanted to talk because he felt sorry for me, and then the kiss had just happened. But there was all that stuff about Morrison. Ryan had seemed almost resentful of his best friend, hadn’t he?
“Kate, know you’re on break and all, but you have a visitor.”
I trudged out to the counter, already weary. And then I saw . . . Ryan. He didn’t look as hungover as I felt. He smiled, but not in the trademarked Ryan Landry way. His normal grin was assured, but now he looked almost sheepish.
“Hi . . .” I said, my voice barely making it over the counter. What was I supposed to say? Can I offer you a boogie board?
“Hi . . .” he said, seeming equally uncertain. He leaned across the counter, coming down to my height. Our faces were aligned, and I thought again of how our kiss had unfolded and deepened, like there’d been layers left to explore. I realized I was staring at him.
“So, I came to find you because . . .” Ryan stopped. “Can you come out here? It feels weird talking to you over the counter like this.”
I looked behind me to where Smokey was doodling on the back of a rental agreement. “I’m going to take my break out there,” I said.
“Cool” was my boss’s one-word reply.
We walked outside and came around to the front. My legs were wobbly. I leaned against the side of the shack, facing Ryan. We were tucked away from the beach, standing so no one could see. I managed to speak. “So you came to find me because . . .” You think last night was a mistake. You were drunk and didn’t mean to. You don’t want things between us to be weird for the rest of the summer.
I looked at him, steeling myself.
“Well, what happened last night?” he said, studying my face with real concern. “Why’d you run off?”
Oh. That was what was bothering him? And how did I answer that? “It, well, I . . .” I took a deep breath. I was so bad at this stuff. If only I could just write it down first. “You were Eliza’s for so long. I guess I just panicked.”
Ryan grinned. It was back to his typical grin again. “But I’m not Eliza’s now, am I?” He looked down at himself, grabbing the hem of his shirt as if checking for a mark, or a tag. I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I laughed, but then shook my head. “Well, no. She’s getting married.” It came out more matter-of-fact and guarded than I’d intended.
“But I mean, even before I knew that, I wasn’t hers,” he said. I liked the way he put it. “And, you’re not anybody’s, right?”
“I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.” There was Matt, of course, but it wasn’t like we were together, and he felt very, very far away right now.
“Well, that’s good for me.” Next to me, Ryan leaned against the shack and tilted his head up to take in the sun. His sunglasses slipped off his head and smacked down onto his nose. With a smirk, he lifted them back into his curls. I didn’t think that had turned into the suave move he had expected it to be. Nor was this the conversation I’d been expecting to have with him. If anything, I’d been expecting to avoid Ryan until I absolutely had to cross paths with him again. But now, here he was. This wasn’t some hallucination, or fantasy. My neck was stiff from the weird position I’d fallen asleep. My eyes hurt. My head still throbbed; kids shrieking as they splashed in the ocean made me want to yell, “Keep it down!” So, if those sensations were all real, wasn’t the warmth felt from Ryan’s words—I’m not Eliza’s now, am I?–just as real?
“You could look at it that way.”
“I do. Look at it that way. And, one more thing, it’s a little weird but . . .” I tried to think of something weirder than what was already happening. The sky turning green and a marching band of dolphins stomping out of the sea? “. . . But, I came here to maybe get your phone number?”
I smiled. I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. “You’ve called our house before,” I said.
“I know how to call the house. But maybe I want to call just you.” He moved closer to me, his shadow falling over my body. The pangs in my head and my neck faded, replaced with the liquid heat of my blood moving more quickly through my veins.
I grabbed a crumpled rental agreement from my pocket and a pen from behind my ear, scrawling my number across it.
Ryan folded it and put it in his pocket. “Thanks. You know I’m going to ask you out, right?” He smiled and, gently pulling me to him with his hand on my upper arm, gave me a lips-only kiss that was short, but long enough to make me glad I was still leaning against the shack. Before I knew what was happening, he was jogging off with my phone number in his pocket.
Smokey poked his head out the side door. “You need to extend your break?”
I nodded, sliding down the wall of the shack and into the sand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SUNDAY WAS MY day off. Smokey thought work-life balance was important. What he didn’t get was that my routine kept me sane.
My lack of anything to do left me lounging on the couch in front of the television, far too absorbed in an edited-for-TV version of Pulp Fiction. It made almost no sense, thanks to the alteration of all the questionable dialogue. Every time my phone buzzed or dinged with an alert, I first hoped it was Ryan, and then looked up in a panic to see if one of my sisters had entered the room. But all my dings were just Facebook notifications and a few funny reddits from Matt.
So when I got a text from Jessica asking if I wanted to lie out on the beach, I said yes immediately. I needed to get out of the house. I texted Matt back with a funny emoji in return, avoiding his mention of a visit.
“Did you see Alison Climes pass out right on Zach Taylor? That girl talks a big game but she’s a lightweight. Cannot hold her liquor.” Jessica examined her nails, which bore a striped print even more complex than the one on her bikini. My own nails were bare and my swimsuit was a faded blue one-piece. Maybe it was time for a new one.
I’d suggested the quiet of Pleasant Street Beach but Jessica had wanted a pineapple smoothie from one of the stands at Morning, so we’d lugged our stuff and staked out a place on the sand. On one side of us were two middle-aged women giggling over a book with a half-naked man on the cover, and on the other, a gaggle of skinny preteenage boys who kept ogling Jessica.
“I missed the Alison thing, but more importantly, what happened with you and Aaron Gray?”
Jessica smiled like a cat who’d eaten a canary. “I think I have him where I want him. At least for the summer,” she said proudly. “He’s a little full of himself, though, just because he’s headed to Syracuse. You know, Mr. Bigshot getting out of Harborville. But it’s cool. I’ll represent for Cape Cod Community.”
I couldn’t tell if Jessica felt as blasé as she sounded. Mostly, people in Harborville stuck around after high school to get their associates at the community college, or went as far as UMass Dartmouth, then maybe finished up with a teaching or nursing degree at a nearby state school. Even Ryan had gone to CCC for two years before moving back home. The people who did leave, like Aaron, were rare. It made me question whether I should even talk about Berkeley, or if that would somehow be rubbing it in. I flipped onto my stomach, to try and get some color on my back, but also so my baseball cap shaded my face from Jessica.
“And, what did you guys talk about? I aske
d, changing the subject. “Or did you go mute again?” Despite her thick auburn hair, confident style, and pixieish face, Jessica had always been pretty shy, especially around Aaron. Her marching up to him the other night was at least partially a by-product of beer, though she definitely was gutsier now than when we were younger.
“What can I say? I finally found my voice.” She grinned again and I could tell there was more she wanted to say.
“Did you find it behind his tonsils?” I raised an eyebrow.
“There may have been some aggressive making out,” Jessica said, sitting up to reapply some sunblock. Her adolescent fan club did everything but take pictures. “PDA is so not hot when you get old, so I’m enjoying it while I can. And anyway, it’s Aaron. You know better than anyone what this means.”
I nodded, because I did know. I wanted to tell her about Ryan so badly it almost felt like needing to pee. Of everyone, Jessica would appreciate my news the most. She’d been there from the early stages of my crush all the way to when it consumed me like a disease. But Ryan hadn’t even called yet, and I didn’t want to jinx anything. More than that, I was worried Jessica might let it slip to someone, and the last thing I wanted was for Eliza to hear.
“Speaking of public displays, Morrison got pretty flirty with you,” Jessica said. “He would not stop talking about you after you left.”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t stop talking, period.”
“No, this was different. Are you interested?” Jessica peered at me over the rim of her oversized sunglasses as she lay back down.
I took a long sip of my iced coffee before I answered. “I mean, he’s Morrison. He’s great, and obviously he’s really cute. But . . .” I’m kind of obsessed with his best friend. And I’m kind of hoping he might feel the same way about me. Instead I said, “I just got out of a long-term thing back home.” I hated not telling Jessica the truth, but it wasn’t technically a lie, and if anything did happen with Ryan, I would tell her eventually.
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