Manhattan

by Steiner, Kandi

  My jaw clenched, and I turned back to my brothers long enough to flip them all off before I started swimming toward shore. I could still hear their laughter when my feet hit the sand, but I didn’t care.

  I had a different focus now — and it was keeping that slime ball away from my best friend.

  Kylie

  Worst. Idea. Ever.

  Those words were on repeat in my mind as I tried to calm my breathing and my shaking hands enough to put sunscreen on my very exposed body. I couldn’t believe I’d let Betty talk me into this, and while I’d bought into her theory when she’d first explained it all to me, I felt like an idiot now.

  A very naked idiot.

  I could feel eyes on me coming from every direction as I lathered up — perhaps the worst being the eyes from Mikey’s mom. She’d never seen me dressed like this — hell, no one had — and I tried my best to stay calm and pretend like I was unaffected by the stares, but I wondered how many of them could see the tremble in my hands.

  I wondered how many of them could see the scared little girl living inside of the seemingly confident young woman putting on sunscreen.

  “You’ve got to fake it till you make it, sweetheart,” Betty had told me when I’d brought the swim suit to the nursing home on Friday to show her. “If you’re covering yourself and fidgeting, you might as well be in a muumuu. That little red bikini isn’t just a piece of clothing, it’s an attitude — embrace it.”

  I forced a breath as I rubbed the lotion over my cleavage, reminding myself how I felt when I first put the swim suit on. I’d looked in the mirror and nearly gasped, surprised as I assumed everyone else was now that I had a body like that hiding under my t-shirts all this time. The truth of the matter was that I’d always been so obsessed with school and books and video games and volunteering, that shopping had never been a hobby for me. I’d never cared to be fashionable, or to wear clothes that showed what only I saw when I got undressed to take a shower.

  But when I’d looked in that mirror, when I’d seen the girl staring back at me with a body that felt as foreign as the swimsuit covering it… something had come alive inside me.

  Maybe it was confidence.

  Maybe it was self-love.

  Maybe it was just nausea, and I was an idiot to mistake it for anything else.

  Regardless, I let out another long exhale and tried to channel the girl who had put on this swimsuit in the dressing room and smiled. At this point, I was committed, and what did it matter if I didn’t get the reaction out of Mikey that I wanted? I felt good — and that was what mattered.

  “Need help with that?”

  I’d been so caught up in trying to get my hands to stop from shaking that I hadn’t noticed Mikey getting out of the water. But there he was — standing in front of me with water dripping down every valley and over every little hill of his body, accenting the lean, toned abs he’d had since our freshman year of high school. I could still remember the first time he took his shirt off after the summer of eighth grade, when I’d noticed that little boy body was changing into something else… something more.

  Now, he was eighteen, and every part of his body screamed that fact in my face. His biceps were cut, the veins of his forearms winding like ropes all the way down to his wrists. His chin was no longer smooth, but peppered with a scruff I was desperate to touch. That shaggy hair of his that I’d always loved fell a little into his eyes now, dripping water down his face, his neck, his chest and abs, collecting in a little river that disappeared somewhere under his black swim trunks.

  I gulped.

  “Hmm?” I asked, tearing my eyes from his abdomen and trying desperately to remember what he’d asked me.

  He smirked, reaching out a hand for the bottle of sunscreen in mine. “Figured it would be kind of hard to get your own back,” he said calmly, easily, as if the fact that he was offering to lather lotion on me when I was the most naked I’d ever been in front of him was no big deal at all.

  I realized, even when my shaking hands handed the bottle to him, that it probably wasn’t any big deal to him. Our entire friendship, Mikey had seen me through lenses that masked the fact that I was a girl — and deep down, I knew a bathing suit wouldn’t change that.

  “So,” he said when I turned and swept my hair together, gathering it in front of my left shoulder so he could apply the sunscreen. The lotion was chilled, but his hands were warm, and when they touched down on my upper back, my eyes fluttered closed on as soft of an exhale as I could manage. “Since when do you own swimsuits like this?”

  My eyes flew open, nearly popping out of my head as my heart thundered to life in my chest. His warm hands weren’t enough to sooth me now, and if anything, they felt like a warm breeze on a pile of embers, stoking them back to a roaring fire.

  Maybe Betty was right.

  I cleared my throat, shrugging and aiming for nonchalant when I answered. “I don’t know, I wanted to try something new,” I said. “I know it’s not really my style, but…”

  Mikey didn’t say anything else, but his hands slid beneath the criss-crossed straps on the back of my swimsuit top, skating down my spine and over my ribs. A shiver ran over me, one I couldn’t even try to hide.

  I peeked at him over my shoulder. “Do I look stupid in it?”

  His hands stilled where they were on my lower back, and his eyes floated up to meet mine. He swallowed, and something close to a smile touched his lips, but it fell before it could reach his eyes. “No, Kylie,” he said, his voice low. “You don’t look stupid.”

  Mikey watched me for a long moment, but then his eyes fell to where his hands were on my back, and he got back to work as I turned around to face the water again.

  Every nerve of my body was aware as his hands ran over it, spreading the sunscreen over my hips and lower back. When his fingertips dipped down just below the band of my bottoms, my eyelids fluttered again and I was so close to moaning that I tore away from his grasp, offering him an awkward smile as I snatched the sunscreen bottle from his hands again.

  “Thanks!” I said, still smiling like a loon. “I think I can get the rest.”

  Mikey smirked, throwing his hands up in a surrender before he rubbed what was left of the sunscreen on them over his shoulders. He plopped down on the blanket I’d set up next, leaning back on his hands and looking out at the water.

  When every part of my skin was covered with sunscreen — including the very large portion of my ass that hung out in this little bikini — I took a seat next to him, sliding my sunglasses on and pulling my long hair up into a pony tail. Jordan was still in the water, floating on his back and looking up at the sky, while Logan toted Mallory around on the floaty she was reclined on. Noah, Ruby Grace, and Lorelei were all on the blankets just down the bank from us, talking and laughing about something as they ate lunch.

  “This was a good idea,” Mikey said after a long pause. “My brothers and I were just talking about how none of us ever thought to bring Mom out here. I guess we thought it might be hard for her, since we used to come here with Dad. But…” He smiled, nodding toward where Lorelei was. “Look at her. I haven’t seen her laugh like that in so long.”

  My heart squeezed, and I tried and failed to stamp down the little parade of hope that sprang to life in my chest at his words. I wanted so badly to show him that Stratford was more than just the memories he’d made in it with Bailey, and for the first time, I thought that maybe I had a chance.

  “It’d be even better if we could get you playing on your guitar,” I said, leaning over on my left hand until my shoulder nudged his. Mikey’s smile faltered, but I kept my gaze on him. “You ever going to tell me why you threw it in the fire at The Black Hole?”

  The Black Hole was the most popular town hangout, a weekly bonfire that people of all ages would show up at to party. There were high schoolers way too underage to be there, college kids back on break or those who stuck around after high school and got jobs in town, and of course, the residents who h
ad been in Stratford for decades, drinking the same beer or whiskey and talking about the same town gossip every week.

  Sometime just after Thanksgiving, Mikey had gotten rip-roaring drunk and caused a scene, breaking his guitar and throwing it in the fire while everyone watched from a distance. For them, it was just one more thing to gossip about.

  But for me, it was a sign that my best friend needed help more than I thought.

  That had been when I started forcing myself back into his life — whether he wanted me there or not. Still, to this day, we never talked about that night at the bonfire, about what drove him to throw away the thing that brought him the most joy in life.

  And if it was just a guitar, maybe I wouldn’t have been so worried.

  But it was the one his father gave him before he died, one he’d held onto even when he knew he needed a new one.

  Now, it was ash.

  Mikey let out a long breath, eyes still fixed on the water. “I was drunk,” he said, then muttered under breath, “obviously.” He sighed again. “And you know I don’t drink. But, for my brothers, that has always been their answer to everything. Bad day at work? Whiskey. Girl problems? Nothing a few beers can’t fix. So, I thought that was my answer, that if I got wasted, everything that had happened between me and Bailey would melt away.”

  My chest ached, because I could understand the feeling. If I knew a bottle of wine would kill my desire for my best friend to fall in love with me, I’d have become a drunk at age fourteen.

  “Well,” he continued. “Turns out that when I get drunk, I don’t forget about my problems — I text them.”

  I chuckled, and something close to a smirk found his lips before they leveled out again.

  “It was sort of funny at first, and Bailey did answer. But, the longer we talked, and the more it felt like us — like us before she left — the angrier I got. I started writing her these long texts that ranged from furiously demanding more explanation for why she left, to desperately begging her to come back. And then, she told me not to text her anymore, that I needed to let her go. And even though I sent another mountain of texts, she stopped responding.”

  Everything inside me deflated. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” he said on a nod. “Ouch.”

  “So you threw your guitar into the fire.”

  “I threw my guitar into the fire,” he echoed. “Because in that moment, it wasn’t the guitar my father gave me. It wasn’t the musical instrument that brought me joy. It was a torture device, one that would always remind me of the nights I sat with Bailey, of when I’d strum on those strings and she’d bring a song to life with her angelic voice. We made music together, you know?” he asked, turning to look at me, and I hated the pain I saw in his eyes, because it was a pain I knew would never be erased. “And I guess you could say that was the day the music died.”

  I frowned, sitting up until I was fully facing him. “I’m really sorry, Michael,” I said, eyes searching his. “For everything she put you through.”

  The little muscle that hinged his jaw tightened and released, and he tore his gaze from mine, standing before I had the chance to say another word.

  “Come on,” he said, reaching his hand down for mine with a forced smile. “Let’s get you on that rope swing.”

  I blanched. “Uh…”

  “Now, Ky,” he said, grabbing my hand and yanking me up to stand. When I was on my feet, we stood toe to toe, our chests close, and his breath heated my lips as my own caught in my chest.

  Up close, I could see the ring of a slightly darker olive green surrounding the hazel of his irises, and those eyes watched mine before they fell to my chest — and all the blood in my body rushed to my cheeks in the most furious blush of my life.

  “Better hope your new wardrobe can hold up,” he said on a smirk.

  I still hadn’t taken a breath when he grabbed my hand in his — just like he had a hundred times before — and tugged me toward the dock.

  And, at least for the moment, Bailey was forgotten.

  Though I knew it wouldn’t last.

  Michael

  By the time the sun began its descent behind the Smoky Mountains in the distance, we were all sun-kissed and pleasantly worn out. Mom and Jordan were working on packing up the coolers while Logan and Mallory folded up the blankets. Ruby Grace and Noah were sitting at the edge of the dock, feet hanging down toward the water, Ruby Grace’s head resting on Noah’s shoulder.

  Kylie watched them with bent brows, as if she was such an empath that she could feel every emotion between them. Tomorrow, Ruby Grace would head back to Utah for the last part of her year with AmeriCorps, and I knew now that they were engaged, it would be even harder to say goodbye.

  “I’m proud of you for jumping off that rope swing,” I said to her as we toweled off, trying to distract her from my brother’s sadness. If there was one thing I knew about Kylie, it was that she felt the human condition like no other person ever could. It was part of what made her an amazing daughter to her father, who was a lost soul after the death of her mom, and it was part of what convinced me that she’d somehow save the world one day, too.

  A soft smile touched her chapped lips. “I don’t know if I can say the same, seeing as how I felt like I was all flailing arms and legs coming down into the water.”

  “Oh, you were,” I teased, running my towel over my hair. “Looked like one of those wavy blow-up guys in front of Big Dog’s Auto Sales, but at least you did it.”

  She smacked my chest, but my hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, tugging her into my arms before she had the chance to fight it. She dropped her towel and mine fell from off my shoulders as I prepared her for the classic noogie I’d tortured her with since we were kids.

  “DON’T YOU DARE, MICHAEL BECKER!”

  I just laughed harder, tickling her until I could get her in a firm hold. And I did. I had her — right there in my grasp, squealing and trying to worm her way out, my knuckle just above her head — when a third, unwelcome party joined us.

  “Hey, Kylie,” Parker said, sliding his hands into the pockets of his swim trunks when he was in front of us.

  Kylie went completely still in my arms, her eyes wide, damp hair falling in front of her face. Then, she scrambled out of my hold, as if she was suddenly embarrassed by us touching.

  Parker’s eyes eagerly devoured her once she was standing on her own, like there wasn’t an ounce of shame in him, but his charming smile when his eyes found hers again masked the wolf that I saw underneath it.

  “Hi,” she squeaked.

  That made him smile wider, and only then did he give me a half glance. “Mikey,” he said simply, nodding his head up a bit as if we were best buds.

  “Parker,” I replied flatly.

  “I saw you going off the rope swing,” he said, turning his attention back to Kylie. “That was pretty cool. We tried to get some of the girls here with us to do it, but they were all worried about getting their hair wet.”

  He laughed and rolled his eyes, and Kylie laughed a little, too which, for some reason, made my neck heat.

  “Yeah, well, they probably actually know how to do their hair,” she said, tugging on a handful of her own. “Not such a big deal to get it wet when it’s just limp and straight like this.”

  Parker reached forward, tucking the hair she’d just pulled on behind her ear. “I like your hair,” he said — simply, stupidly — but with the way Kylie’s eyes doubled in size, you would have thought he was a god telling her he would make her immortal.

  I cleared my throat. “We should probably help pack up the cars,” I said, reaching for Kylie’s hand. “Nice talking to you, Parker. Good luck with your senior year.”

  Parker smiled, but not at me — his attention was all on Kylie, and the fact that her hand was in mine didn’t seem to faze him at all. “Thanks, man,” he said, but then he took a step closer to Kylie. “I hope I see you around this summer.”

  She swallowed, trying and failing to smil
e back. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  Parker nodded, giving her one last dazzling smile before he turned and jogged his buff, shirtless, douchebag self back to his group of friends.

  Kylie turned, looking at me with eyes the size of baseballs. “What the hell was that?” she asked me, laughing hysterically as I tugged her toward Mom and Jordan.

  I smirked, trying to ignore the knot in my throat. “I think Parker Morris was flirting with you.”

  She snort-laughed, slamming her hand over her mouth as soon as the sound let loose. She shook her head. “That’s absolutely absurd.”

  I shrugged in lieu of an answer, mostly because I was having a hard time understanding why my jaw was so tight, why the fingers not laced with hers were curled into my palms with a pressure that would surely leave a mark. My heart was beating too fast, the hair on my neck raised like my territory had just been threatened.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  I blew out a breath, releasing her hand when we reached the rest of our crew, and I got to work loading up the cars without another word on the subject.

  Kylie

  Brett Eldridge crooned on the radio on our drive home, and I tapped my toes on Michael’s dashboard, a permanent smile on my face as I watched dusk slowly turn to night in front of us. We had the windows of his old Camry rolled down, and the warm summer breeze danced through my hair. I was humming along to the song, thinking about how perfect the day had been, about how everything had gone right.

  Mikey had fun.

  I knew it without asking him. I’d watched him laugh and wrestle with his brothers, heard him scream like a banshee before flying off the rope swing, and felt the calmness of his heart like I hadn’t in months as he spent the day with his family.

  Maybe mudding hadn’t been the best idea, but today was a win.

  And I’d take it.

  “We should go to Blondies,” I shouted over the music.