by Inda Herwood
“That must be nice. I don’t know what it’s like to have siblings,” I admit, straining my voice to be heard above everyone else. A few times I get jostled as people come in and out of the kitchen to grab a drink or snack, pushing me into the counter. Noticing this, Catcher motions for us to go outside.
At first, I think he’s just going to have us chill by the pool, but then he and Leigha walk past it, saying hi to people here and there before leading me down to their private stretch of beach instead. Four beach chairs sit in the pearly white sand a good distance from the water, the granules feeling insanely hot between my toes as we make our way over to them. Some other teens are on the beach as well, but most are out splashing in the water, far enough away that the noise only reaches us in whispers. Compared to the noisy nightmare that was the house, it’s paradise. Especially with the warm sea air washing over my skin, helping to bury the memory.
“I can’t imagine not having siblings,” Catcher says, picking up where we left off in the conversation while leaning his long body back into the chair, part of his shirt rising with the motion; revealing a strip of tanned, toned stomach. “If my house wasn’t filled with noise every second of every day, I think I’d lose my mind.”
“No, I get it,” Leigha says to me, looking out onto the water, her feet crossed. “I’m an only child too. It gets lonely sometimes, doesn’t it?”
I nod. “Yeah, but honestly, I’m not alone very often. My nana is always around, and heaven knows she’d never let there be a dull moment.” I smile to myself, thinking of all the times she’s tried to make a boring day into something unforgettable. Like the time she decided we could make a cake from scratch, though neither of us knew how to bake. Or when she took me to the store and I tried on beautiful dresses all afternoon while she pretended to be a judge on America’s Next Top Model.
“Your grandmother lives with you? That must be interesting,” Catcher says, taking another sip of his drink.
“You have no idea,” I chuckle, deciding to let them in on the joke when they stare at me funny. I tell them about a few of her only-Nana-could-get-away-with-it moments, and before long, we’re all in stitches.
“I need to meet this woman,” Leigha says, her giggles still coming. “She sounds like a blast.”
“She really is,” I smile, kind of wishing she was here with me now. She’d love all this attention.
“We lost our grandma a few years ago. All that’s left now is our grandfather, and when he comes to see us, it’s not visits of the fun kind,” she says with a shiver, even though it has to be eighty degrees out. “The last time was for our birthday.” She points her cup at Catcher.
“Our?” I ask.
She nods. “Yep, Catcher and I share the same birthday, two hours apart.”
“I’m the older one,” Catcher says proudly, making Leigha roll her eyes.
“Wow, what are the odds of that?”
“Not sure, but all our lives we’ve basically been raised like twins. Joint birthdays, graduations, getting our driver’s licenses. Everything.” She says it like a bad thing, but her smile contradicts her tone.
“I guess you do have a sibling after all,” I say with a chuckle.
This seems to surprise her, making her laugh as well. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Who’s right?” a deep, smooth voice asks from behind us, and as if someone held a gun to my back, I go completely still.
Though I’ve never heard his voice before, on some level I know it’s him. Headphones Guy, here to inform my new friends about my strange habit of watching his window. And just when I could feel the awkwardness leaving my body…
I don’t even turn my head in his direction when I feel him take the empty seat to my right, causing my whole side to freeze up, feeling his gaze on me.
Leigha smiles when she sees him, saying, “Hey, you actually came down from your nest. I didn’t think you were going to make it to the lame high schoolers’ party this year.”
“Neither did I,” he says, then asks a minute later, “Are you going to introduce me to your little friend here, Cousin?”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” Turning to me in her seat, Leigha says with that same smile, the ocean breeze lifting her hair from her shoulders, “Beckham, this is Blaire Cromwell. She moved in next door a few days ago. And Blaire, this is my oldest cousin, Beckham. He just graduated from Horton this spring.”
They’re all looking at me, waiting for me to acknowledge Beckham, but even with knowing his name, I think he’ll always be Headphones Guy to me. Bracing myself, I turn to look at him with a pinched smile, barely lifting my lips. I dip my head in acknowledgment, saying, “Nice to meet you,” all while taking in his details I couldn’t see from a house away.
His eyes aren’t the dark brown I had imagined him with. Instead they’re the lightest blue I’ve ever seen, even more so than his brothers’. They remind me of crystal when you hold it up in the sun just right, flashing bright enough to blind.
Those eyes are so spectacular that it takes me a minute to notice the rest of him. He has full, flushed lips that highlight the almost painful symmetry of his face, pairing nicely with his straight nose and pretty eyes. He has a small scar that sits along the edge of his cheekbone, another that cuts horizontally across his chin. A few of his dark curls attempt to fall into his eyes, just barely grazing the bottom of his thick eyebrows.
With the way he’s looking at me, I have the insane urge to run up the beach, across my yard, up the stairs to my house, and grab my sketchbook out of my room. He has one of those rare faces that begs to be drawn. The kind of face I could recreate over and over again and still find new angles I haven’t discovered yet.
The curse of an artist’s eye.
“Hmph,” he mutters while giving me a lazy, disapproving once-over, his broad shoulders hardly fitting in the chair. He kicks up his long legs on the adjoining footrest, and I bristle with that one sound effect.
“You’re staring,” his brother tells him, the smile evident in his voice.
“Am not.”
“Are too,” Leigha interjects. “Now stop acting like a caveman and say something human, like, Hey, it’s a pleasure to meet you too, Blaire. I’m sorry for staring at you like you have a criminal record.”
Beckham shakes his head, focusing his sights on the water instead.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, trying to be discreet about it, but the curving profile of his lips lets me know I didn’t succeed.
The other two go back to talking, once in a while asking me a question. I try to keep it all basic and without going into details. That is until Beckham decides to contribute, asking me a while later, “So where in Maryland are you from, Blaire.” He says my name like it’s amusing to him. I’m not sure why. Perhaps he came up with a name for me of his own, like I had for him, and now that we know the other’s real name, it just doesn’t seem to fit right.
“A little ways outside of Baltimore,” I tell him, clutching my can a bit tighter in my hand, though it’s long since been emptied.
“And your parents do what again?” he asks, and I feel my stomach sink like an anchor in the water.
Shifting my head to look at him, I try to see if I can find the truth in his eyes. His family has either been kind enough to see that money is a new concept for us and ignored it, or else they really are obtuse to the whole thing. But Beckham has been oddly dismissive of me, as if he already knows me and my past and decided that I’m not worth being civil to. It gives me a bad feeling.
“I never said what they do.”
He shoots a raised eyebrow at me, as if he’s surprised I caught him. “And why is that?”
“Jeez, relax, bro. You act like she’s under inspection or something,” Catcher comments, giving his brother a strange, confused look.
“I just want to know what brought her to our neck of the woods, that’s all.” His expression doesn’t match the ease of his words. This – this feels like a challe
nge, a test of sorts. He wants to see what I’ll do under pressure. Because I’m sure by now he’s picked up on the fact that I’m a shy, reserved person. He’s just trying to make me uncomfortable, that way maybe I’ll leave. That has to be it. He obviously doesn’t want his family getting chummy with the weird girl that stares at him.
I can’t really blame him, to be honest.
But still, there’s no need to be a jerk, to make me feel like the outsider I know I am. Which means I’m going to have to channel a bit of Nana with what I do next.
CHAPTER 4
Blaire
I turn my body to face him completely, letting him think I’m not afraid to look at him anymore, which is a complete lie. But even still, I want to draw every curve of his jaw, the rise and fall of his lips. I can see the colors in my mind that I would use to get the shade of his lips just right on paper. Not looking at him helps to quench the urge. A little.
“I don’t mind answering your poorly veiled question. The answer is both of my parents are retired. My dad from the automotive industry,” which is mostly true, “and my mom from the health care system.” Which is also true. She was a medical assistant for most of her life. “We moved here because my parents didn’t want the city life anymore.” Also true.
Blinking a few times just to make it seem like I’m bored, I ask him, “Is that enough of an answer for you?”
He shifts in his seat, his lips forming a strict line of annoyance. It gives me a bizarre amount of pleasure to see that I surprised him.
“I’d think twice about the tone you use with her next time,” Catcher suggests to his brother, snickering at the exchange. “She’s not like the rest of your girls who think your rudeness is sexy.”
“Broodiness is sexy, but not rudeness,” Leigha states like it’s fact. “Guys that are silent and broody always have a girl’s vote. But guys that act like they’re the rulers of the universe are beyond annoying.”
“If that’s so, then I’m going to have to up my game. Maybe start wearing leather jackets and moping on my way to class,” Catcher says with a grin, looking at me now. “What do you think, Blaire?”
Heart still pounding from relaying my parents’ life story to Beckham, I ask him, “What do you mean?”
“Is my cousin right about moody bad boys being every girl’s cup of tea?”
Without meaning to, I turn my head back in Beckham’s direction, seeing that he’s untangling a pair of earbuds from his pockets.
Does the guy have an addiction to music or something?
Ignoring him, I say to his brother, “Not to me they aren’t.”
***
A little while later, Leigha goes to refill her drink, and a pretty redhead comes down to the dock to lure away Catcher, leaving just me and Beckham alone to stew. I want to get up and leave, but I know Leigha will be coming back soon. When she does, I’ll tell her I have to get going. If I do it now, Beckham will think that I’m doing it because I’m uncomfortable to be alone with him. Pathetically, that is the truth, but he doesn’t need to know that.
After a while of just sitting here in silence, growing bored, I instead try to put a finger on the exact feeling Beckham gives me, and eventually I go with unbalanced. He leaves me with an unbalanced feeling, like being blindfolded on the edge of a cliff. One wrong move and that’s it, done. It also doesn’t help that every time he shifts in his chair, I feel my own body fidget, like an automatic response. It’s irritating. And the tension that has been brewing between us is getting to a level I can’t really stand anymore.
I shift my legs under my body, hoping that will help.
It doesn’t.
“If you want to run away, I’ll make up an excuse to Leigha for you,” he says, still with his earbuds in, head looking down at his phone.
The offer makes me bristle. “I’m not going to run away. Even though I know you’d love it if I did that.”
“And how would you know what I’d love? Just because you’ve been staring at me doesn’t mean you know me,” he says, matter-of-fact, as if this whole thing is one-sided. As if I haven’t caught him doing the exact same thing to me.
“Don’t be a hypocrite. You were doing it too, and don’t act like I’m some weirdo that goes window peeking for a hobby. My spying on you was an accident,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, taking on a powerful posture. Or so I hope. I don’t fight with people I don’t know on a regular basis, though I feel Beckham Lyons probably does so daily.
“How does one ‘accidentally’ spy on someone else?” he asks, using overly emphasized air quotes. “Did your eyes start acting of their own accord and force you to look at me?”
Is he serious? “I was setting things up in my room and looked out the window. You just happened to be there, and on a terrible stroke of luck, saw me, too. I wasn’t doing anything scandalous or wrong. But you, you were purposely staring at me the other night when I was drawing.”
“Yeah, because I wanted you to know how it felt. Not so great, is it?” When I don’t respond, he says, “See? Now, I’d appreciate it if you stopped invading my privacy, Cromwell.” He goes back to his phone, pretending as if I don’t exist.
“Then close your stupid curtains, Lyons.” That’s it. Standing up, I grab my empty soda can and power walk my way back up the beach, my cheeks feeling red as a blood moon. Halfway to the backyard, Leigha comes back, a happy smile on her face until she sees the scowl on my own.
Taking my forearm in her hand, she asks worriedly, “Hey, is something wrong?”
“Your cousin is a jerk,” I explain simply, starting to let the anger drain out of me. It’s not her fault, after all. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. Thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed getting to know you and Catcher.”
I release myself from her grip and start walking again. I hear her call my name a few times, but before long, it gets swallowed up in the dozens of other voices fighting to be heard.
Stepping into the house, I take my first full breath since Beckham sat down next to me, the cool air helping to calm my nerves. I can’t remember the last time I fought with someone like that. Or felt that kind of fury. I pride myself on being a peaceful person. I don’t believe aggression or cruel words are the answer. But there must be something special about the eldest Lyons brother, because he makes me want to nail him with a baseball bat every time he opens his mouth.
“Oh, you’re back. Did you have fun?” Mom asks once she appears in the foyer, her smile hopeful until she sees the look on my face. I’ve been doing that a lot today.
“Yeah, it was fine,” I tell her, suddenly remembering the image of Beckham looking at me like some irritating little fruit fly that wouldn’t go away. “Leigha and her cousin are really nice.” I add, wanting to erase the worry in her eyes.
“Well that’s good. Did you say hi to Mrs. Lyons?” she asks, dusting around the vase of white roses on the entry table.
“I didn’t see her,” I admit, knowing that’s a red flag I probably shouldn’t have mentioned.
Mom furrows her brows, looking at me over her shoulder. “I thought they were supposed to be there supervising?”
I shrug. “I mostly stayed outside, down by the beach. I’m sure they were probably inside and I just didn’t see them.”
“Okay. Well, maybe I’ll have you run their bread pan over for me tomorrow. I forgot to have you take it before you left. No biggie though.” Giving me a quick kiss on the cheek, Mom says before disappearing down the hall, “Dinner’s in the fridge if you get hungry.”
Fat chance. Her request just zapped any hunger I might have felt.
Seriously, she thinks I’m going to go back over there?
I don’t think so.
Trekking up the stairs to my room, I shut the door behind me with a slam, immediately walking over to my window and shutting the curtains, blocking my view of the crowded yard below. I half wonder if I could just super glue them to the window so there’s no chance of them coming open again.
&n
bsp; Stepping over to my desk, I check on Sir Leopold. He’s lazily moving from one side of the tank to the other, looking at me with his big black eyes. Grabbing his food flakes, I drop a few into the water, watching as he moves to the surface and gobbles them up.
“I wish you could talk, bud. I could really use some advice right about now.” Flopping down in the swivel chair, I wonder to myself how everything got so messed up. I didn’t do anything to warrant such blatant disrespect from that guy. And on top of everything else, I now have to put up with a jerk-tastic neighbor, one I am going to actively avoid at all costs from here on out.
***
Standing in front of the Lyons’ ridiculously tall, impressive front door, making me feel like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz with its size, I hold their clean, empty bread pan in my hands; my mind replaying the argument I had with Mom and Nana in the kitchen not fifteen minutes ago, telling them why it shouldn’t be me who does this chore.
“I just went over there yesterday. They’ll think I’m being clingy if I go over twice in two days.”
Mom just shook her head. “You were invited the first time, and all you’ll be doing is returning something that’s theirs. I’d hardly say that’s being clingy.”
“Why can’t you do it? I’m sure Mrs. Lyons would be happy to finally meet you in person.” I tried to argue, my hands grasping for any excuse I could find.
“I’m heading to town today to get some painting supplies for the spare bedrooms,” she said.
“Nan?” I turned a hopeful eye on her. “Want to come with me at least?” I doubt Beckham would be a douche canoe if I had my grandmother in tow. You know, in the rare chance he happened to be the one who answered the door. Leigha said he rarely leaves his cave. I’m hoping he doesn’t break tradition with me today.
She gave me a look; a look that said she knows more about why I don’t want to go over there than she should. “You need to face your fears, girl. Show that boy who has the balls between the two of you.”
As happens every day, a chorus of, “Nana,” rose up through the house.