by Alexis Bass
“Did you bring the phone?” he asks.
“What’s it worth to you?”
“Really?” He looks away, but his lips are turned up in a smile. “Unfortunately, it’s not worth much.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.” It’s old and cheap, but still, it doesn’t seem like the kind of phone someone has by accident.
“That’s the phone I use when I take the boat out. Don’t have to worry about getting it wet.”
“But it’s valuable enough that you came here to meet me at a construction site to pick it up.”
He smiles this bashful smile, because I think he doesn’t know what to say. I like making him speechless as much as I like making him laugh, it turns out.
“What really happened to you on the island?” I have something he wants, so it’s worth a shot. Maybe, with whatever he’s involved in, he is completely guilty. And as someone who is, most of the time, completely guilty, I should be warier of him. But this actually makes me like him more. “Why were they chasing you? What did you do to them?”
He looks to the sky. His shoulders sag as he seems to have skipped over being amused or annoyed and has landed on exhausted. “That’s tempting, isn’t it?” he says to the stars. “Purge all my secrets to a stranger.”
“Hey, better me than a priest.”
He laughs, and I realize I’d been waiting for it. I’d been trying for it. I definitely like it too much when he smiles.
“It’s exactly what I told you. I lost money during a poker game. I didn’t want to pay them. Thought I could get out of it, but, well, as you witnessed, I couldn’t. Sorry the truth is so boring.”
I reach into my back pocket and retrieve his phone. I hold it out to him. He hesitates, then takes it.
“Thank you,” he says.
Why did he hesitate? Because now we’ll have no reason to be here together?—which is what I’m thinking. The fireworks crash again, and we both look to the sky. We can see the smoke but not the colorful sparks. I still have time, but not much.
“You’re lucky I was the one who found your phone.”
We’re both still looking at the sky.
I expected him to argue or ignore this, too, but he says, “I know.”
“I don’t have a lot of time left,” I say as another eruption of popping begins.
“That’s too bad, because I’ve got all the time in the world.”
That makes me smile and makes me brave enough to say, “I programmed my number in your phone,” instead of letting him discover it on his own as I’d planned. This is a new kind of exhilaration. Putting myself out there to be rejected completely. I’ve made it personal. I’ve turned the vulnerability around on myself. My heart goes crazy and my stomach is fluttering, but the rest of me is steady.
“Why?” His voice comes out a little higher than normal. He clears his throat. The idea that I’ve thrown him off again makes my stomach do somersaults.
Everything about him makes me delirious with curiosity. And I like that he is not quite what I thought, but familiar all the same.
“Because I don’t want my summer to be boring,” I say.
“Summer is supposed to be boring.”
“I need this summer to be better.”
“Better than what?”
I smile. “The best. Okay?”
“I … can’t promise best. I am really a very dull guy.”
I laugh at this, and he laughs, too.
The fireworks are getting louder, several bursts together at once. The finale.
“I have to get back,” I say, leaving the ball in his court, so to speak. I can’t be sure he’ll even be using that phone again. He holds out the lantern for me as he follows me down the lot, lighting my way to the road.
“I’m not going to call you,” he says. Bold. And disappointing. I pretend like I’m unfazed.
“But I will be here tomorrow night,” he adds. “Around eleven.”
I pinch my lips together and tighten my cheeks to keep from smiling as large as I want to, giving myself away. “I probably can’t make it out until midnight.” In a house with a delicately sleeping baby and paper-thin walls, I’ll have to make sure everyone is sound asleep before I can attempt a break out.
“I could be here at midnight,” he says, trying too hard for a casual tone.
“So okay, then.”
He smiles, and I didn’t expect him to be so blatant in his response to seeing me again.
“Okay, then,” he says as I am walking away.
This is it, I’m thinking—I’ve only been here a few days, and I’ve found the mystery that’s going to fuel my summer and the boy who’s going to make everything worth it.
Chapter 10
All day, I have been waiting for the sky to get dark. Through breakfast, where I tell the New Browns specifics about how I like my eggs, how I take my coffee, so they can start to know these things about me, as though I were really part of their family.
We sit on the beach in lawn chairs that rest unevenly on the sand. I help Trisha fix lunch, peanut butter and honey sandwiches with extra honey, the way she claims George likes them. She is right. George devours both of his in record time. For dinner, we have lasagna, and then we play cards until the fireworks start.
Finally, around 10:30, everyone goes to bed, and when it’s time, I charge out into the dark night.
Maybe there is a balance. A good day with the New Browns, a night for myself. But I am not in the mood to contemplate the logic of this for too long.
I’m the first to arrive at the cement slab, and I stare up at the sky. The stars are as dazzling as they were the night before. And it’s lighter up there. I can barely see in front of me, but against the night sky, I can see silhouettes of the tops of the trees, the glow of the moon, making everything slightly backlit. It’s glorious up there. A shooting star flies across the sky, bright and brilliant, trying to impress me, or rubbing its beauty in my face—either way, my breath flutters and a gasp comes out. I’ve never seen one before.
“Don’t scream.” Finn approaches holding a lantern and wearing a backpack.
“Not the best way to announce your arrival.” I wait to hear his laugh, but then I look back to the stars. “That was my first shooting star.”
He clicks off the lantern and sets it down. He comes over and stands next to me.
“Did you make a wish?”
“Oh no, I forgot!” I downright panic. “Maybe there will be another?”
He laughs at my overreaction. “What would you have wished for?”
“More wishes, of course.”
“Where I come from, that’s cheating.”
“Where are you from anyway?” No one has made Cross Cove their real home. It’s a place they go to escape.
“All over.”
“Oh, I’ve been there.”
Again, he laughs. Again, the sound goes straight to my pride.
“You’re on vacation?” he says, not even waiting for my answer. “Is this your first time here?”
“Yes, and you?” He seems to know his way around the cove; he knew this lot was empty and knew the best hiding spot for his boat on the island.
“I’ve been coming every summer since I was thirteen,” he says. “So what do you think? Other than that it’s boring.”
“I don’t know. It’s pretty, I guess. Like living in a postcard.”
“That’s why people love it.”
“Do you love it here?” I ask, shamelessly wanting to know more about what he loves.
“Sure,” he says. “Beaches, sun—what’s not to like?”
I wish he would turn on the lantern so I could see him better. I’ve had enough of the stars and am ready to see what his expression is doing as he talks about himself.
“What’s your name?” he says. “It’s weird that I don’t know it.”
“Maris,” I say. First name only since that’s all I know of his.
I hear him shuffling in the dark, watch his shadow scratch the
back of his neck. He doesn’t say anything.
I’ve never gotten to know someone organically like this, without having school and reputation to guide me, though I have tried to box him in, figure him out, based on first impressions, because what a first impression it was. You can get to know people slowly and by accident at school, even if you only know their façade. I’ve known who Trevor was ever since ninth grade. He was a senior. Too handsome and charming for his own good. A known rebel, many suspensions under his belt, a permanent seat in detention. He didn’t play sports, but he would sit in the bleachers with his friends, laughing and drinking whatever they had mixed in their Big Gulp cups, garnering more attention and admiration than the football players winning the games—at least from me. So I knew who he was when I started seeing him at parties, chatting with him in the comments of other people’s posted photos, pretending to run into him at the burger joint where he worked by the college he was most definitely not attending. And soon he knew me, too.
This makes me think of Chelsea, how she is probably so good at getting to know people who are brand-new to her world and good at welcoming them in; how she’s tried with me and I don’t know how to try back.
I want Finn to know about me as much as I want to know more about him.
“Turn on the lantern,” I say. “Let’s go in the house.” Not waiting for him, using the flashlight app on my phone to see in front of me, I start walking toward the house.
“What—why?”
He trails after me. I slow my pace when I remember that his ankle could still be sore, and when he catches up with me, he turns on the lantern.
“Because we can.”
“I’d bet that it’s locked.”
“We both know you’re bad with bets.” I watch him smile as I take the lantern from him and walk around to the side of the house. Lucky for us, and as I assumed since this is still a construction site that probably has subcontractors coming and going, there is a spare key hidden inside the breaker box. I come back and rush up the stairs. I wait until Finn is next to me before I unlock the door and let it swing open.
“Oh, look, it’s a house,” he says, sarcasm in his voice. I like this side of him, too.
It’s unlike any summer beach house I’ve seen. The New Browns’ beach house is bright and charming; this one is exquisite and modern. The outside is deceptive. In the entryway, we’re face-to-face with a tall ceiling and an iron spiral staircase. The walls are finished, but the flooring hasn’t been installed yet. The staircase leads to a huge circular skylight shaped like a wheel. I walk immediately over to it. Finn doesn’t step into the house right away, but soon he’s standing next to me, staring straight up at the skylight.
“Whoa,” he says quietly.
“Come on.” We climb the stairs as fast as we can manage with the limited lighting from my phone and the lantern and the night’s sky. We get off at the top story. It’s a circular room right below the skylight, with a big window cutout blocked by a blue tarp. He must be thinking the same thing as I am, must be as curious as I am, because when I reach for the top of the tarp on the right side, he reaches for the left side. We yank off the tarp and stand in front of a large window exposing an angle of Cross Cove I haven’t seen before. The window faces the downtown area, giving us a view of the glistening water in front of the main docks, the lighthouse in the distance. Of course, of course, there is a full moon.
I glance over at Finn, and he is like I am, his face lit up with happiness at this discovery.
“Where are you really from?” I ask.
“Not too far from here. Two hours inland.”
It’s a broad answer. The closest towns are all two hours inland.
“You?” he asks.
“Far from here.” But I don’t see any reason to play coy like he’s doing, so I add, “Phoenix.”
He doesn’t say anything, not even something predictable like, “Oh, must be hot,” or “Wow, you are a long way from home.”
“Never heard of it?” I say before the silence stretches on too long.
This makes him laugh. “Come to think of it, it sounds familiar.” He checks carefully to make sure I’m laughing at that—I like that he cares. We take turns, looking at each other, looking at the view, like holding eye contact is too much. A passing breeze moves through the open-air window.
This is nice, but I don’t like that he’s gone quiet.
“What’s in your backpack?”
He grips the strap, like he forgot he was wearing it. “Oh.” He seems embarrassed in a way I find adorable, and it makes me even more curious. “It’s … nothing.”
I test the waters and put my hand on the zipper; when he doesn’t flinch away, I start to unzip it. When it’s nearly all the way open, he swings it off his back and holds it steady for me as I root through it. I pull out a rolled-up brown-and-red plaid blanket.
“I thought if we were outside on the cement … we’d need something to sit on.” He’s still looking down, still being bashful. “I didn’t know we’d be breaking and entering.” But the floor here is still unfinished, so I spread the blanket out over the plywood.
“What else have you got in here?” I reach in, and again he doesn’t stop me. I dig out a bottle, heavy to indicate it’s full. I hold it against the light to read the label. Some kind of champagne, though it’s not a full-size bottle.
“Oh, um.” He shifts from one foot to the other, shrugs twice, like he was bold enough to bring the champagne but not quite bold enough to offer it to me. “Just something I had, you know, lying around.” He’s smiling a little now that he can see how this pleases me.
“And here I didn’t bring anything at all.” I tease him and watch him look to his feet again, his smile beaming.
I like that he had some sort of plan for us. He wanted us to sit on a blanket under the stars sipping on champagne. I mean, I guess what else were we going to do, meeting here in the middle of the night—the barrage of possibilities makes me blush on command. I distract myself by opening the bottle.
“I forgot glasses,” he says. The cork pops off; I hold it tight in my hand to keep it from flying out the window.
I take the first sip, then pass it to him. I have no idea if this is what is considered “good” champagne, but I like it for the usual reasons, that it’s sort of sweet and the bubbles tickle my throat. I like it more because he brought it for us. Taking the bottle from him, I sit on the blanket, facing the window—we’ll have a view whether we look up or straight ahead. He eases himself down to join me on the blanket, careful not to put too much weight on his hurt ankle.
“How’s your ankle?”
“It’s not so bad.” He shrugs.
We pass the bottle back and forth one more time. I hold it loosely at the neck because it’s cold against my palm. Finn notices and takes it from me, sets it in between us.
“So, hey, what was your losing hand?”
“Excuse me?”
“The poker game. Doesn’t everyone remember their losing hand—especially if they lost big?” I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt about the poker game, even if it sounds like I’m testing him.
“The winning hand was a full house, and that’s all that matters.”
I know nothing about poker, but still respond with, “That’s rough.”
“You ever play poker?”
I shake my head, and he smiles in this smug but adorable way, like he knew it and he’s onto me. I very much like him being onto me.
“You should teach me.”
“Oh, sure, except are you sure you want me to teach you since…” He breaks; his face slowly morphs into a smile, like he’s on the verge of laughing. I like that he can’t keep a straight face around me for too long—I like that I’m the same way right now, anticipating what he’s going to say next, deep down already knowing what’s funny before he says it. “I’m not very good at it.” And now we are both laughing, even as the bruise is still fresh on his face and the stab wound on Archale
tta’s neck hasn’t even had the time to scab. But I don’t care. Even more than I like being the one to make him laugh, I like when we are laughing together.
“I like my odds, playing for the first time against you,” I say, laughter still in my throat.
“It’s not really about winning for me.”
“Clearly,” I say. “Then what’s the point?”
“The game. The bluffing, the strategy, the high stakes.”
On the island, he seemed like such an obvious liar—the opposite of smooth and definitely not what I would have called a poker face. Lots of backtracking, too many excuses. Maybe he was just shaken up. Maybe these are things he wants to be but not things he’s good at, and he likes the intrigue but doesn’t know what to do when it backfires on him.
“Whoa, did you see that?” He reaches out and touches my arm. He points to the skylight.
“I missed another one?” My voice turns shrill, but I don’t think he minds; I think he enjoys it, the excitement I have over seeing a shooting star.
We seem to get the idea at the same time. We scoot down so we’re lying flat on the blanket and we’re gazing at the night sky through the large skylight. In case another one is coming, we aren’t going to miss it.
He’s closer than before. The fabric of our sweatshirts is touching. If I moved over an inch, my arm would be pressed against his.
“There’ll be another one,” he says, his voice full of hope, like he’s trying to reassure me.
“Who gets the wish?”
He laughs. “If we both see it, we both get it. That’s how it works. Anyone who sees it gets to wish on it, whether they’re together or not.” And as he says that, I feel so, so glad that we are not seeing the same star miles apart.
“What are you going to wish for?” I say.