by Vivi Greene
“Thanks, Mom,” Tess sings. She dries off her hands and reaches into the pocket of Sammy’s bag for her phone, glances quickly at the time. “I have to get ready.”
“Ready for what?” I ask.
“Yoga,” Tess answers, reaching around to unzip the back of her wet suit.
“You’re going again?” Sammy asks.
The three of us have been back to Maya’s Saturday morning yoga class twice, but lately Tess has been finding other classes to attend on her own. Tess is notoriously against any kind of organized group activity, particularly those involving exercise, so her newfound commitment to down dogs and warriors has raised a few eyebrows around here.
“I like it.” Tess peels off the thick layers of her wet suit and leaves it in a wrinkled heap on the sand. “And we’re not exactly overbooked.”
“I think it’s great,” I say, smiling at her.
“Meet you back at the house,” Tess says. “What time’s dinner?”
“Whenever we want.” With more songs under my belt, I’ve decided to switch gears and work on my other summer goal: cooking. The fact that it also distracts me from thinking about Noel is just an added bonus.
After deleting his number, I expected it wouldn’t be long until I heard from him, and I spent many nights lying awake, imagining how I’d explain myself when I did. But he never called, or texted, and even though I was the one who’d made the decision to lie low, I found myself getting frustrated that he wasn’t trying harder. Hadn’t he wondered why I didn’t show up on the beach that night? Didn’t he even care?
Sammy and I make our way lazily back to the house, and while she showers I text K2 and ask him to run me into town. Tonight I’m making my favorite: linguini in clam sauce. We picked up most of the groceries earlier in the week but I figured I’d save the seafood for last.
The fish market is at one end of Main Street, tucked against the harbor. It’s bustling with activity, fishermen hauling in the day’s catch through the back door, and shoppers standing in a line that snakes through the front. The people waiting are a mix of day-trippers, waiting to take photos of themselves with a live lobster, and islanders picking up fish for dinner. Noel taught me to recognize the difference: Day-trippers usually wear shoes and carry purses. Locals wear flip-flops, when they wear shoes at all, and tend to pay on credit.
I shuffle inside the cozy shop. Deep coolers stacked with shellfish and fillets line the walls, and a big chalkboard advertises the day’s offerings and prices. I scan a nearby refrigerator and choose a few dips and spreads, balancing them in a Tupperware tower as I head toward the register. One of the plastic containers topples to the ground, rolling along the floor and stopping at the feet of an older man.
“Here you go,” he says as he passes the container ahead to me in line. He has a scruffy gray beard and studies me with kind eyes. “Hey! Aren’t you that gal on the radio? The one my granddaughter is so nuts about?”
I smile and rearrange my pile. The people in line between us stop their conversations and a hush falls over the busy room. “I sure hope so.”
The man beams. “What the hell are you doing out here?” he asks to the amusement of the growing crowd. “Don’t they have fish out in California?”
“Not like this, they don’t!” A woman behind the counter breaks in, holding up two enormous lobsters and tossing them into a cooler in the back.
“She doesn’t care about your sea rats,” the man says, cutting the line to stage-whisper to me. “You ever want a real meal, you come to my house. I make the best fish stew on the island.” He taps my elbow with two arthritic fingers.
“Is that right?”
I realize how good it feels to be interacting with people again. This is the longest I’ve gone without doing an event or making an appearance—even an informal one like going out to lunch or surprising a fan club—and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed feeling connected.
“Keep it moving, George,” a familiar voice interrupts from just beyond the back door. “Or I’ll tell Louise you’ve been flirting again.”
I turn to see Noel dropping a heavy cooler on the dock behind the market. Our eyes meet for a quick moment and he nods, then walks back out to his boat.
“You tell her!” George shouts. “She could use a little competition.”
Laughter fills the market and George offers to buy me my clams. I decline, but promise to try his famous stew one day, and take a few photos with twin girls and their shoe-wearing parents, visiting from Montreal.
After I’ve paid, I sneak through the back door and glance around the dock for Noel.
I find his boat docked near the fuel pump, and see him huddled together with Latham and J.T. They’re busy unloading traps and gear, and I wait for the guys to leave, shuttling coolers back to the fish market. I take a breath and walk out onto the pier, the uneven wooden decking creaking beneath my feet.
Murphy sees me first. He races toward me, his tail wagging ferociously. I scratch behind his ears and keep walking, his nose nudging the side of my knee.
“Hey,” I call out. Noel’s back is to me on the boat and he doesn’t turn around. I feel my face getting hot—is he really going to ignore me?—until I notice the white cord of his earbuds running from his ears to his pocket.
I grab on to one of the tall wooden pylons and lean into the boat, tapping Noel on the shoulder. He jumps slightly and plucks the earbuds from his ears.
“Anything good?” I ask him as he stashes his phone in his pocket. My arms are folded tightly across my chest and I can feel my heart beating against my wrist, so intensely that I worry it may be shaking the whole boat.
“Just your average clown rap.” It’s a joke, but his eyes aren’t smiling. They look tired, their usual sparkle flattened and dull. “Hope George wasn’t giving you too much of a hard time in there.”
“Not at all. He seemed sweet.”
“He’s a troublemaker.” We stand for a few moments in quiet before he clears his throat. “How have you been? Good?”
“Really good,” I say, my voice strained and too loud. “Everything’s great. I just . . . you know . . . I wanted to apologize for the other night.”
He keeps busy as I’m talking, hopping onto the dock and uncoiling a long, damp rope. I’m not sure why I feel the need to lie to him, to make it seem like I haven’t missed him every second of every day. I lean heavily into the pillar.
“The other night?” he asks distractedly.
“At the beach,” I say, my face flushing. He bends down to loop the rope around a metal cleat. “And for not calling. It’s been . . . things have been kind of crazy.”
He inches by me, our shoulders bumping as he passes. A shock of electricity runs through me and I want more than anything to touch him, to hug him, to sit on the boat beside him and steam off toward the horizon. I take a deep breath. “I’ve been doing a lot of writing,” I say. “And hanging out with my friends. You know, that’s really why I came out here. It was supposed to be this, like, bonding trip, and so, I don’t know, I guess I just decided that . . .”
Noel rummages loudly through the storage bench. He takes out a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle and starts to scrub the windows of the cockpit. The towels squeak across the glass in intense circles. “Can you please stop?” I finally shout.
Noel pauses mid-wipe and balls the towel up in his hand before tossing it into the back of the boat. With crossed arms, he sits down on top of the bench and chews the inside of one cheek.
I take a deep breath. “Sorry. I just . . . I’m trying to explain . . .”
He looks up at me abruptly. “Explain what?”
His voice is harsh. I feel flustered, and then annoyed. Why is he making this so difficult?
“Look,” he says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I don’t?”
He shakes his head. “No. I get it. It’s not like I thought this was a real thing, or whatever. I kn
ow you’re busy. And I’m . . .” He gestures out to the water. “I’m here. It’s fine. It is what it is.”
I stare at him. There’s so much I want to say that it feels like the words are trampling over each other, tumbling around and getting mixed up. I want to tell him that this week has felt like an eternity, that it’s taken every ounce of willpower I have not to call him. That going to the beach with my friends has been torture because every time I see the water I think of him. I want to tell him that I don’t want to be busy. I want to be here, too.
But then I see the familiar shape of two girls walking along the pier in yoga clothes. It takes me a minute to realize that it’s Tess and Maya, and they’re laughing, each holding an ice cream cone. It’s not until they get a few paces closer that I realize their free hands are clasped together between them.
“What’s wrong?” Noel asks. I realize that my mouth has dropped open. I’m frozen in place. Tess and Maya?
I keep watching as they pass the fish market. Maya looks out toward the water, squinting into the sun, and Tess turns, too.
Noel follows my silent gaze. “Is that Tess? Who is she with?”
“Our yoga teacher.” I hold my hand over my head to wave, and watch Tess’s eyes widen as she sees me. There’s a moment where she looks like she wants to run away, her eyes darting frantically toward the parking lot, the water, searching for the quickest escape.
“That’s Maya Scott,” Noel says.
“You know her?”
He nods. “She was a grade above me. Valedictorian of her class. Way to go, Tess.”
Tess holds Maya’s hand tighter and together they walk toward us on the dock.
“Hey, Birdie. Noel.” Tess greets him with a big smile, as if she’d planned the whole thing: running into the two of us together, being with Maya, all of it. “I was hoping to catch you guys.”
“You were?” I eye her skeptically, before smiling at Maya. “How was class?”
“It was great,” Maya says. “Even got this one to stay awake.”
She nudges Tess playfully. Despite being caught off guard, Tess seems happy and calm in a way I haven’t ever seen before.
Noel is back to tinkering with his boat and Tess looks from him to me, trying to telepathically communicate something. I shrug, not sure what she’s asking, and she clears her throat.
“Noel, I don’t know what Lily’s told you, but I want to apologize,” she says. I try to catch her eye again, to wordlessly communicate that it’s not necessary, but she stares steadily at Noel. “I was . . . I was having a hard time with . . . lots of things . . . and I kind of freaked out. This place was always special to me . . .”
I glance at Maya and see her give Tess a reassuring smile. I can’t be sure, but I have a strong suspicion she’s heard at least part of this before. I feel a quick spike of jealousy, realizing that Tess has been confiding in someone else.
“You were part of that,” Tess goes on. “And when Lily told me you guys were seeing each other, I think I was scared of losing it all. So if she’s been weird . . . weirder than usual, I mean . . . it’s my fault.” She turns to me with a smile. “The truth is, I haven’t seen her this happy, like, ever. And if, for some strange reason, that has something to do with you, how could I stand in the way?”
Noel blushes and looks down at the shifting slats of the dock. My shoulders suddenly relax, a flood of warmth filling my body.
“And now that we’ve all survived my very first grown-up apology,” Tess continues, “who wants to go surfing?” She looks from Noel to me, gently squeezing my elbow. “This girl is dying for a lesson.”
Noel looks to me uncertainly. “Really?”
I beam. “Absolutely.”
Noel jumps from the boat to the dock to stand beside me. I want to hug Tess, I want her to know how grateful I am, that she’s opening up, not just to the idea that Noel truly makes me happy, but to the possibility of being happy with somebody, herself.
While the three of them are chatting, I notice the white tangle of Noel’s earbuds dangling from his pocket, slipping toward the ocean.
“Careful,” I say, quickly reaching for them. His phone tumbles out into my hands and I hear the soft, distant beat of music still playing through the tiny speakers. I glance at the screen of his phone and see the cover of my last album staring back at me.
Perfect red circles bloom on his cheeks and he stuffs the phone back into his pocket.
“Clown rap, huh?” I whisper.
He shrugs and takes my hand, and suddenly, everything feels right again.
19
51 Days Until Tour
July 23rd
THE NEXT DAY, Noel offers to take us all out on his boat to a nearby island, a local surf spot that’s apparently so secret it doesn’t have a name. “We just call it ‘off-shore,’” explains J.T., zipping into his wet suit on the dark and pebbly sand once we’ve docked. I should be working on the last few songs for the album, but somehow it’s starting to feel less important. Now that I’m back with Noel, summer is winding down too fast. Maybe Terry is right—maybe I won’t push it. Maybe I’ll just release the tour EP, a special gift for my fans.
“Off-shore” turns out to be an uninhabited island, thickly settled with looming evergreens and acres of brambly shrubs. Rolling waves break in a steady line parallel with the short, secluded beach. As soon as Latham has slathered on some sunscreen, he and J.T. belly-flop onto their boards and start paddling out away from land, their arms digging into the water in long, determined strokes.
“Ready?” Noel asks Tess, who has agreed to be his first student. Sammy and I bring beach chairs and towels to a sandy spot near the dunes, and I rummage through my tote for sunglasses.
“Ready for my daily near-drowning?” Tess shoots back, with an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up. “You bet!”
We offer calls of encouragement as Tess wobbles onto her board, and Noel follows her out toward where the waves are breaking. Murphy paddles alongside them for a few feet before losing interest and turning back to join us, panting heavily as he cools off in the sand beside us.
In the distance, Noel has stopped Tess in a calm section of the cove and they practice getting into position. Noel stands waist-deep beside her, keeping the board steady, and Tess lies flat on her belly with her toes pointing back. When Noel shouts “Go!” she assumes push-up stance, hops her feet to the middle of the board, and twists to the side, one foot forward and the other straddled back.
Sammy and I cheer wildly and Tess turns to us, losing focus and tumbling backward into the shallow sea. Noel shakes his head and gestures for Tess to follow him out deeper, where they can work undisturbed.
“She seems so happy.” Sammy smiles at the closed book in her lap. From the dog-eared page in the middle, it looks like she still hasn’t made much progress.
“I know,” I say, rubbing sunscreen on my arms. “It’s weird.”
Sammy laughs and fidgets in her chair, adjusting the seam of her black-and-white polka-dotted bandeau top. “You do, too. Noel is really sweet.”
There’s a fluttering near my heart, the slightly embarrassing, gushy feeling I get whenever I see Noel or so much as hear his name. I reach down to pat the coarse wet fur beneath Murphy’s collar. “He is,” I say, hearing the dreamy quality in my voice. I clear my throat, weirdly self-conscious, and study the chipped red polish on my fingernails. I feel Sammy’s eyes on me and worry that there’s something new and almost uncomfortable between us.
For most of our lives, Sam has been the one person I’ve always been able to be myself around. Even when everyone else thought I was too intense, always writing or singing or talking about writing and singing, she made me feel like I was special. She promised that one day, everyone else would see it, too. I figured that when I came clean about Noel, things would go back to the way they’d always been, that whatever tension I’d been feeling between us would lift because there were no secrets anymore. But it’s still there, this awkward delay betwee
n the things we want to say and the things we’re actually saying, and I don’t know what to do about it.
“I hate that I lied to you,” I blurt, a pressure in my jaw, too-late tears stinging the corners of my eyes.
“I know,” Sammy says. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” I insist. “It was stupid. I was just . . . I was scared. I didn’t want you guys to tell me I was making another mistake.”
“I wouldn’t have said it was a mistake . . .” Sam digs at the sand with her bare heels.
I study her disbelievingly until she relents.
“Fine.” She holds up her hands. “I may have gently reminded you that the whole point of this summer was to spend time on your own. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that you lied.”
“I know it doesn’t,” I say softly. “I hate when you’re mad at me. It makes my stomach hurt.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she insists. “I can never stay mad at you.”
I laugh abruptly. “Remember when I had that audition and missed your Halloween party?” I ask. “You made me wear a different costume every time I came over until Christmas!”
“That’s true,” Sam admits, her eyes taking on a faraway look as she thinks back to a simpler time, a time when all we had to worry about were rides to the mall and multiple-choice tests. “But I wasn’t mad.”
We turn our attention back to the ocean, where Tess and Noel are sitting up on their boards, their legs dangling in the water. Every so often, Noel turns his head to check for incoming waves. Latham and J.T. are floating blobs of color on the horizon, bobbing in the growing swell.
Sammy fidgets again with her book and clears her throat. It looks like there’s more she wants to ask, or say. I realize with a guilty shock that maybe she has something else on her mind. Maybe whatever it is that’s bothering her has nothing at all to do with me.