So Over It

by Stephanie Morrill

  “Every morning,” Chase barely managed to get out before Grammy said, “I see them head down to the beach every morning. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind teaching you.”

  “I think learning to surf would be awesome,” Abbie said as she stabbed at her pudding. She’d grown testier with each passing minute at the dinner table. What was up with her tonight?

  “I’m sure we could teach both of you,” Justin said.

  Grammy—whose face could never conceal her emotions—seemed torn about this. I imagine she felt Abbie, being a mother, shouldn’t bother with frivolous activities like surfing.

  “That’d be great,” I said before Grammy had the chance to say something hurtful to Abbie. But it didn’t keep Abbie from stomping off to our room a few minutes later when Owen needed his diaper changed.

  Mom and I exchanged a look across the table, and for about the millionth time I wondered if life would be easier or harder without me at home. But of course I couldn’t just hang around the house forever because Abbie had a baby, right?

  After dessert, as I carried my plate into the kitchen, Grammy practically shoved me away from the sink. “No, you go relax with our guests. You shouldn’t have to work your first night here.”

  “We gotta get going, Mrs. Ka’aihue,” Justin said with a glance at his watch. “There’s this thing at the church—”

  Grammy hustled over. “You’re leaving already?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got a men’s group thing.”

  Lucky for me. Otherwise Grammy would be pushing me out the door. After a lifetime of Mom’s hands-off parenting, could I handle being smothered by Grammy for the next two months? Or possibly longer?

  “Nice to meet you all,” Chase said. He glanced around. “Tell Abbie we said bye.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  Chase strode to the door, seeming grateful to escape, but Justin lingered near me. “Nice meeting you.”

  “You too.” I smiled, hoping it came across as friendly rather than flirtatious. The last thing I wanted was for Justin to think I’d somehow been involved in or encouraged this crazy setup of Grammy’s. “Guess I’ll be seeing you around a lot this summer.”

  He nodded. “We’ll go surfing.”

  “Sounds good.”

  With that, he said one more thank you to Grammy and walked out the door.

  “Isn’t he nice?” Grammy said as I returned to the kitchen. She no longer seemed worried about me working on my first night.

  I hesitated. “They both seem nice.” I really, really hoped she’d drop the whole thing.

  She did. For five minutes.

  “Oh no!” Grammy dangled a key ring. “Skylar, it looks like Justin’s left his car keys. Be a dear and run these over to him, would you?”

  I bit back a groan. “Sure.” I glanced at Abbie and rolled my eyes.

  “Yeah, you’ve got such problems,” she said.

  Grammy looked awfully pleased with herself as I took the keys from her hands.

  “Ten bucks says she lifted these off him,” I murmured to Mom as I walked by.

  Mom smiled. “No bet.”

  I crossed the poorly paved road to the little yellow house. Only the screen door was shut, which left me in the awkward position of either ringing the doorbell or calling inside to them. While weighing my options, Justin approached the door, presumably on his way to his church function.

  “Hi,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed to be standing there. I held out Justin’s keys. “You left these.”

  “Did I?” Justin patted his pants pockets, as if his keys would be there. “Weird.”

  With my errand complete, I should’ve turned and walked back to Grammy and Papa’s house. For some reason, I felt compelled to say, “Sorry about my grandma tonight. About the obvious setup.”

  Justin grinned. “No big deal.”

  “She totally sprung it on me. I swear.”

  “It’s fine. When she invited us over, I thought it might be something like that.” Justin twirled his keys around his finger. “We really should go surfing, though. Not just because of your grandma.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said as I backed down the walkway. “I’ll be around.”

  I felt him watch me walk away and tingled a little with excitement. Not about Justin necessarily, but the possibility that this could happen. That I really might get over Connor Ross.

  5

  After my week of sun and surf, I had no intentions of leaving Hawaii. Ever.

  The breeze kicked up and I closed my eyes, savoring the warm wind on my face. If only my parents had chosen to raise us here. What a different person I’d be—laid back and stress free. And I’d know how to surf instead of looking like a bumbling moron on the board.

  “There’s my favorite mainlander.”

  I smiled and opened my eyes—Justin. “You’re calling me a mainlander, Mister Cumberland, Maryland?”

  His grin broadened. “Well, I have lived here a week longer than you.”

  “True.”

  Justin dropped his board and sprawled out in the sand. “The waves were amazing. You should’ve come with us.”

  I pursed my lips, thinking of my first and only day out with Justin and Chase. At youth group, I’d always felt stupid doing stuff like balloon soccer and amoeba races, but the shame of playing those games was nothing compared to my lack of talent for surfing. I couldn’t stand on the board. I could barely even hang on when a wave came. And let me just say that whoever designed my adorable black-and-white two-piece didn’t have surfing in mind.

  “I’d like to see my nineteenth birthday, thank you very much.” I lay back on the sand as well. I might regret it later, but at the moment I didn’t care about getting grit in my hair. “Any big wipeouts?”

  “None I want to admit.” Justin blinked at the vast blue sky. “I so don’t want to go to work. I should’ve moved somewhere rainy and depressing.”

  I dug my toes into the warm sand and thought about thunderstorms. I liked thunderstorms. Did they have them in Hawaii?

  “You won’t stay forever,” Madison had told me when I said good-bye. “You need seasons.”

  Did I? Would endless days of sunshine and warm, salty breezes eventually drive me crazy?

  “You think you’ll miss seasons?” I asked Justin.

  He turned to me, squinting. “The day I complain about missing winter, I give you permission to shoot me.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, me too. Although I like fall. And it’s fun to see everything coming back to life in the spring.”

  “Sadly, you have to have winter to have spring.”

  A memory came unbidden. January—Connor and I freezing on the bleachers of the baseball field where we’d first met. My hands had tingled with cold, and I kept flexing my toes to make sure they hadn’t fallen off. But then Connor had told me how beautiful I’d become inside, and it had warmed me through.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I propped myself up and dusted the sand from my back. “Just thinking about home.”

  “I did too my first week,” Justin said. “A lot. About my parents, my little church, my”—he swallowed—“ex-girlfriend. But now . . .” He shrugged as best he could lying down. “This feels more like home and less like vacation. This is my real life.”

  And it could be mine too. If that’s what I wanted.

  “I’ve gotta get to work.” He didn’t move a muscle.

  “That’ll involve standing.”

  “Right.” Justin eased himself off the sand. It coated his wetsuit but brushed off easily. “You around tonight?”

  My heart fluttered—was he about to ask me out? “Guess so.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you. Later.”

  “Later,” I muttered, hating the way tears sprang to my eyes.

  It’s not like I was into Justin, but I could really use a distraction of some sort. As eager as I’d been to get to Hawaii, it never dawned on me that I didn’t really have anything to do here. Other than sit around and think
about life back in Kansas, the life I wanted to escape. How long would it be before I could go even five minutes without thinking of stupid Connor?

  When I returned to Grammy and Papa’s house almost a half hour later, I found Abbie on the scraggly front lawn. She’d donned her sunglasses and blue bikini and stretched out on a blanket in the sun. She’d spread part of it in the shade as well, where Owen lay on his back, appearing to soak in the world around him.

  She propped herself up as I approached. “Justin just left for work.”

  “I saw him down at the beach.” I dropped next to Owen. He grinned at me and pumped his legs. “Hi, pal.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised by all this,” Abbie said in an airy voice as she settled back onto the blanket. “You’ve always made friends quickly with guys.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Ignore him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what? He lives across the street. I’m new. They’re new.”

  She laughed. “Skylar, it was just a joke. Lighten up.”

  I stroked Owen’s mound of soft hair. “It’s not my fault two guys moved in. They could’ve just as easily been girls.”

  “I don’t notice you talking to Chase very often.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend.”

  The corners of Abbie’s mouth quirked up.

  “And what I mean by that is he’s busier.”

  Still Abbie smiled.

  I groaned. “Shut up.”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Well, stop thinking what you’re thinking.”

  “You’re so touchy. If a guy like Justin noticed me, I’d be way more excited than you are.” Her face flickered with a frown. “Of course, we both know my days of that are over.”

  “Guys notice you. Hello, Chris Ross? Your boyfriend?” “That’s because he knew me before. If he met me now, he’d never be interested.” Abbie squeezed one of Owen’s fat bare feet. “But that’s okay.”

  I drew him into my lap. “Why don’t you go hang at the beach for a while? I can watch Owen.”

  Abbie looked toward the ocean. “Yeah?”

  “Sure. The sand is way nicer than this.” I gestured to Grammy and Papa’s lean lawn. “When does he eat again?”

  “Around ten. There’s a bottle in the fridge.” She beamed at me as she stood. “Thanks. I’ll just grab a towel and magazine and go.”

  Halfway to the door, she turned, her face serious. “Connor called your cell earlier. I told him you couldn’t talk.”

  “Why’d you answer my phone?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why’d you leave it on my bed?”

  “Not so you could jabber with everyone who called.”

  “I think you should talk to him.”

  “I didn’t ask your opinion.”

  “He can’t hurt you way out here.”

  “Unless he called to say he’s dating Jodi.”

  “I’ve seen him with Jodi. It’s nothing like the way he is with you.”

  I had a love/hate relationship with these kinds of comments from Abbie. While nice to hear, they made resisting Connor so much harder.

  When I didn’t answer, Abbie lifted her shoulders in a mild shrug. “Whatever. I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

  Ha. More and more, it felt like I never would.

  Mom and Grammy returned from their trip to the grocery store just as I laid Owen down for a nap in the room he, Abbie, and I shared.

  Grammy greeted me. “Justin came by looking for you this morning. Did he find you, princess?”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes twinkled. “He ask you out yet?”

  “Mom . . .” my mom said with a sigh.

  “What? We can all tell he likes her. I don’t understand what he’s waiting for.”

  “Maybe to know her longer than a week.”

  “Your father asked me to marry him two months after we met. Two months.”

  “Well, you’re unusual.” Mom piled mangoes in the fruit bowl. “And we’re not looking to marry Skylar off this summer, okay? Keep that in mind after we’re gone.”

  Grammy ignored this and looked around the living room, kitchen, and dining room. “Where’s Abbie?” Her voice lilted with suspicion, as if Abbie could be running around getting pregnant as we stood there.

  I popped a grape in my mouth. “She’s at the beach.”

  Grammy’s brow furrowed. “By herself?”

  “Well, Dad and Papa are still at the golf course, you guys were at the store, and she can’t take Owen. He’d be miserable in the sun.”

  “It’s good for her to have a break,” Mom said. “That was nice of you, Skylar.”

  Grammy’s jaw clenched as if she completely disagreed, but she surprised me by keeping quiet about it.

  When Grammy turned her back to put away bread, Mom winked at me and I smiled. It’d been years since Mom and I got along so well. Kinda made me sad that in a few days they’d leave, and it’d be just me, grumpy Papa, and meddling, suffocating Grammy.

  6

  He happened to call at a moment when I was thinking about him, missing him. That’s why I answered.

  “Oh. Hi,” Connor said.

  “Were you expecting someone else?” I asked.

  “No.” Pause. “I mean, kinda.” Another pause. “It’s been awhile since you actually answered one of my calls.”

  “I’m on vacation.” I stretched out my legs and let the grass tickle my feet. “I’ve got stuff going on.”

  He didn’t need to know that “stuff” involved sitting on my grandparents’ porch, half-hoping Justin might walk over and ask me to do something so I’d stop thinking about Connor for thirty seconds.

  “Right. So. How’s everything going?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  “I mean great. Except I suck at surfing.”

  Connor chuckled. It sounded forced. “Must be the Midwestern girl in you.”

  “Must be.”

  Yet another pause. “Things here are good.”

  “Good.”

  “Dad, Chris, and I are playing softball on the church team. We’re three and oh.”

  “Cool.”

  “I tried talking Eli into playing with us, but he hasn’t shown up yet.”

  Why’d he bring up Eli? “Huh.”

  “Is now a bad time? You sound distracted.”

  “I’m not distracted. I just . . .” I ran my hands through my windblown hair, grateful Connor couldn’t see how it aggravated me to talk to him. “I guess I don’t understand what you want from me.”

  “What I want from you? I don’t want anything.”

  “Everybody wants something.” But I thought of the Monday before I left for Hawaii, how Connor took care of me twice and Eli just took care to proposition me.

  “All I want is for us to be like we were.”

  “When?”

  “Your choice.”

  “Well, we’re already kinda like we were last summer. I thought you were annoying.”

  I thought this would offend him, but instead he laughed. “If annoyance is all you feel for me, then I’ll take it. Sounds like an upgrade.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Cameron and Curtis miss you.”

  Thinking of them made me smile. I was so not a kid person, but something about those boys touched my heart. “I miss them too.”

  “Curtis has asked a couple times if you’ll be back for his party.”

  “When is it?”

  “July 3.”

  “You know I won’t be back by then.”

  “I told him that. He says you will.”

  The thought of five-year-old—almost six-year-old—Curtis wanting me at his party tugged at my heart. Last winter, when Dad spilled about having an affair and Mom took off, the Rosses became my family. And when Connor and I broke up, not only did I lose my best friend and boyfriend, it felt like I lost a couple brothers and a set of sane parents.

  “Maybe I could come b
ack for a little bit. Abbie’s birthday is around then too.”

  “A vacation from your vacation,” Connor said. “When’s her birthday?”

  “The sixth. It could work out pretty nice.”

  “Well . . . I won’t tell Curtis you’re thinking about coming. I don’t want to get his hopes up.”

  “I’ll talk to my parents and let you know.”

  Justin’s truck puttered up the road. It had such a distinct sound I could recognize it even after my short time here. He hung his hand out the window and did that Hawaiian thing that seemed to mean “aloha,” “thanks,” “take it easy,” and a myriad of other goodwill phrases. I waved back.

  “Skylar, you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I said as Justin climbed out of his truck. “I asked you about Owen. How’s he doing?”

  “Fine. He’s getting lots of attention.”

  “Abbie said he screamed on the plane.”

  “Just for the first and last hour.”

  Justin crossed the street and smiled at me. I signaled I’d be off the phone soon.

  “Take your time,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “Has he laughed yet?” Connor asked.

  “Not yet. Grammy and Papa are doing everything they can to get him to. They’re dying to hear it.”

  Across the street, Chase poked his head out the door. When he spotted Justin on our front porch, he yelled, “Still cool if I borrow your truck, dude?”

  “Sure,” Justin hollered back as he fished for his keys.

  “Who’s that?” Connor asked. Anyone would’ve recognized his jealousy. He rarely masked emotions. It wasn’t in him to be duplicitous.

  I glanced at Justin. “Neighbor.”

  Justin covered his mouth, as if he shouldn’t have said anything, but I shook my head, assuring him it was fine.

  “They must build the houses right on top of each other. He sounds close.”

  “Well, he’s sitting here with me—”

  “Oh,” Connor said. “I don’t want to interrupt. I’ll let you go.”

  “Okay. Hey, tell your mom—” But the line sounded curiously quiet. I pulled the phone away from my ear to find it flashing call ended. Great.

  “Sorry,” Justin said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.” I sighed. “It’s fine. It’s just this . . .” How to describe Connor? “Just this stupid guy from back home.”