“An excellent directorial debut,” Pete adds, passing me a small, cellophane-wrapped bouquet of pink roses. “I wanted to get the carnations that were dyed red, white, and blue, but Kris nixed that.”
“Those Franken-flowers were gross,” she says with a laugh. I take the bouquet and cradle it in my arms. All around me the kids are holding similar bouquets, a tradition I didn’t even know existed until just now. I can’t help but smile.
“Thank you,” I say. “And thanks for coming.”
“We wouldn’t have missed it,” Kris says, pulling me into a hug. I’m becoming used to her kamikaze embraces, and this one I don’t even try to resist. I throw my arms around her neck and use the bouquet in my hand to pat her gently on the back. When we pull apart, I notice her eyes are wet, but she looks away quickly, and when she meets my eyes again, any trace of tears is gone. “Okay, well, we’re off to get food. We’ll let you guys have fun sans grown-ups.”
I glance at Spencer. It hadn’t occurred to me that we’d be spending the evening together, but he smiles at them and gives them a wave as they head back through the crowd.
“So, food?”
“Lead the way,” I reply.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The buffet is set up right on the sandy strip of beach, the tide pulling farther and farther from the line of tables as the sun gets closer to the horizon. The usual smell of salt has been overtaken by charcoal and smoke and barbecue. There are a number of stations set up, but Spencer seems to key in on one table in particular. I follow him and hop to the end of the line, which moves quickly.
At the front, there’s an enormous silver dish piled high with cooked crabs. Spencer takes one of those paper boat things and piles three into it. Then he takes another and puts three more in, handing that one to me. I inhale the salty, briny scent of them, my mouth starting to water. Spencer grabs for a fat stack of napkins and what looks like a surgical kit from another tray, then cocks his head for me to follow him.
“Where are we going?”
“Secret place. C’mon.”
I follow him back through the crowd and up the stairs, into the club, and around to the back.
“If you’re taking me to the staff lounge, think again,” I say, the smell of the steaming crab still drifting up and making my mouth water. “That place smells like a locker room.”
Spencer pauses at a door at the end of a long hall. It has one of those bright red push bars across it that warn of an alarm sounding if you so much as look wrong at it. Spencer turns to me and leans his back into it, and I brace myself for the siren that doesn’t come.
“It’s broken,” he says with a wink. The door swings open to reveal a dim stairwell. “Up.”
And so we climb, around and up two, maybe three stories; it’s hard to tell without floor markers. The only stop is the metal door at the top, which also opens with only a rusty protest. I emerge onto the roof of the club just as the sun is making its initial arc of descent. The sky is an incredible display of orange and pink and purple.
There’s nothing up here, save for big metal contraptions that must be air conditioners or water tanks or something. Spencer plops down right in the middle, where we can see past the railing to the vast expanse of the ocean, already dark out on the horizon.
“You know how to break down a crab?” He reaches for one and shakes it, the juices running onto the ground beside him.
“I have to do this myself?” I say, my voice squeaking. The closest I’ve ever come to crabs is watching them in a Red Lobster commercial, and those always look like someone has at least started the dirty work for you.
Spencer sets to work methodically cracking the shells like it’s nothing. “You’ve just got to imagine it’s a piece of fruit or a vegetable you’ve got to open up. Like a pomegranate or an artichoke.”
Sure, because those are daily parts of my diet.
“Try it once, and if it freaks you out, I’ll open them for you.”
Something about his tone picks at me. Maybe it’s the boy savior thing of him having to help me, a damsel in distress, eat her dinner, or maybe it’s a bit of rich boy snobbery he doesn’t even realize he has. Whatever it is, it sends my hand straight into my plate, pulling out a medium-sized crab. I take one of the silver cracker things from him and mimic his movements, placing it on the joint of one of the legs and squeezing. My first two attempts splinter the shell into enough pieces that I practically have to do surgery to get the meat out. But by my third crab, I’m starting to get the hang of it. When a claw slides easily from the shell, leaving a perfect lollipop of meat behind, I practically squeal in delight. And once I don’t have to work so hard, I’m able to enjoy the flavor, which is salty and buttery and sort of sweet.
We spend the next fifteen minutes eating like savages, tearing at the poor little creatures and slurping out bits of meat from the shell. By the time we’re done, my hands are salty and covered in the red seasoning from the crabs. I’m pretty sure my face hasn’t escaped the wrath either. One look at Spencer, who has a streak of red dripping down his chin, and I know it doesn’t matter. We’re in this thing together.
We attack the stack of napkins and tear into the little packets of wet wipes, basically giving ourselves a mini sponge bath.
“All good?” Spencer asks, wadding up a napkin and tossing it into his paper plate, now littered with bits of shells and claws.
“It looks like a massacre,” I say, nodding at the carnage.
“All the best food does,” he says.
“Yeah, I’m going to test your premise on that one,” I say, wiping my hands on a last Wet-Nap. “Reese’s Cups? German chocolate cake? Almond Joy?”
“Ugh, you eat those? They taste like chocolate-coated sunscreen.”
I wrinkle my nose at him. “Look, I’m very sorry that someone performed some terrible coconut-related tragedy on you at some point, but that’s not an excuse to take it out on the best candy bar there ever was. Anyway, don’t distract from my point, which is that very few of the best foods look like a massacre.”
“You listen to me when I talk?” He laughs. “Usually I’m just saying stuff to see what sticks.”
He sets his plate down on the ground next to him and wanders over to the railing that faces the ocean. I follow. We can see flits of sparklers weaving through crowds, the flickering of tiki torches stuck in the sand giving a warm glow to the festivities down below.
“Do you ever wish you still lived in New York?” I ask.
He shrugs, shaking his curls. “Nah. I mean, it would be cool to go to Knicks games and concerts and stuff, but this is way better. Winter sucks, and I need more space than we had there.” He pulls himself off and ambles toward the stone ledge that surrounds the roof. “Hey, look,” he says, pointing. “Dolphins!”
I jump up and hustle over, scanning the water, but I don’t see them until Spencer steps behind me, takes my hand in his, and then lifts it until he’s using my hand as a guide, pointing until I spot the fin. First one, then a second, bobbing up and down in the water. And then a third appears.
“I see them!” I giggle. I’ve never seen a dolphin that wasn’t in an aquarium, and something about their playful jumping in that big blue ocean makes me giddy. Or maybe it’s that, even after spotting the fins, Spencer is still behind me, his arm out, his hand wrapped gently around my wrist, pointing. And then he rests his chin on my shoulder, just for a split second, and sighs. I start to tilt my head into his just out of sheer instinct, because it feels like the right thing to do, like when you spot two puzzle pieces in a thousand-piece box and realize they go together. An inevitability. But then he steps back and drops my arm, moving next to me, and the moment passes.
I allow myself a sneaking sideways glance and see a blush creeping into his cheeks that I suspect has nothing to do with the sun beating down. I wish I could see his eyes, but they’re hidden behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. All I have to go on in that moment is his chin heavy on my shoulder, his brea
th in my ear, and the delicate feeling of his fingers on my skin.
“Do you get seasick?” he asks.
“Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
“No,” I reply, though I’m not sure if it’s the truth. The truth is that I’ve never actually been on a boat before, which is insane to say when you’ve grown up on the coast of Florida. But my Florida childhood wasn’t Spencer’s Florida childhood. I didn’t grow up on the water, I grew up surrounded by concrete and pavement, apartment buildings and strip malls, cars and buses and streetlights.
“Good, because I just stuffed you full of crab, and I really don’t want to see that in reverse.” He stands up, takes my plate, and stacks it atop his, then grabs my hand and pulls me back through the door. We weave back down the stairs and through the club. He dumps our plates in a trash can, then keeps going. I follow him all the way out to the parking lot, where his little blue car is parked. He opens the passenger door of the MG, and I climb in. He doesn’t say a word, just flashes me a mysterious grin as we pull out of the parking lot.
I remember the bouquet of flowers I stupidly left up on the roof. “Hey, I don’t want to spoil your surprise, but I should probably let Kris know where I’m going,” I say.
“Tell her we’re headed back to my house, and that my parents are home, so no worries,” he says. I tap the message into my phone, and within seconds I see the little dots indicating a reply.
Kris: Thanks for the heads-up. Be safe. See you at home!
When we arrive, Spencer puts the car in park and leads me down to the beach behind his house. I haven’t been on his side of the beach yet, and when we get down to the sand, I’m surprised to find boats pulled ashore, anchored to big pylons driven into the sand. There’s a rowboat and a pair of kayaks, something small and sporty with a rolled-up sail, and at the end, a long, narrow metal boat with a motor on one end. He tromps through the sand to this one and untethers it from its chain.
“You go around back and push; I’ll pull,” he says, and for a moment I’m sure he must be joking. There’s no way the two of us will be able to move this thing, but within seconds it’s sliding across the sand nearly silent and with little effort, much lighter than it looks. Spencer kicks his flip-flops into the boat and tromps into the water up to his knees, the hem of his shorts getting damp, before he turns around to the back.
“Okay, you first.” He steadies the front of the boat as I climb in. He gives it a running push until it’s fully in the water, then takes a flying leap into the back. It bobs heavily, then settles. Spencer lowers the motor, fidgets with it for a second, then gives the string a hard tug until it sputters to life. It sounds only slightly better than his car, but that hasn’t let us down yet, so I let go of any worry I have about sinking or throwing up. Instead, I turn my face out to the open blackness of the ocean, then gaze up at the moon, which is full and crystal clear.
“People always say there’s a man in the moon, but I can’t not see a rabbit riding a bicycle,” I call over the roar of the engine.
“I’m sorry, did you just say a rabbit? Riding a bicycle?” he shouts back.
“Yeah!” I point, my finger arcing the bike’s path up the side of the moon. “You don’t see it?”
I look back at him and watch him squint up at it, his nose scrunching as the smile widens on his face.
“A rabbit riding a bicycle,” he says with a laugh. “I think I do.”
We stare at it for another beat, and then he tells me to hang on. Not knowing what I’m supposed to hang on to, I hunker down onto the seat and grab the sides of the boat. And then we’re off. And if I thought the MG had some pickup, this boat, this little nothing of a metal bin, is suddenly flying across the water. No, on top of the water, the nose rising up high with the speed. We bounce over waves, sometimes banging down hard. I allow myself a glance over my shoulder to see Spencer piloting the boat with utter confidence, his hair blown back in the wind, a smile on his face. He looks so happy. So at ease. So in his element. I want to be that sure about anything.
We bounce across the water for a few minutes, then the engine cuts out. I’m nervous at first, thinking something has gone wrong, but then I see Spencer drop an anchor.
“We have arrived,” he says as the anchor splashes and disappears below.
“To the place where you’re going to drop my body?” I ask, but he doesn’t laugh. Instead, he reaches for my shoulders and points me toward the shore. And then as if he commanded it, the sky explodes in a shower of rainbow sparks. I feel the attendant booms deep in my bones.
“This is the best view of them, I think,” he says as the fireworks light up the sky over and over again. He climbs over and settles next to me on the seat. It isn’t until that moment that I realize it’s a bit cold out on the water, what with the ocean breeze, and so I lean into him until his arm goes around my waist. I tuck my shoulder under his and settle into him. We sit there, bobbing up and down in the water, for what feels like an hour, but is probably only a few minutes. And during that time, I feel acutely aware of every fiber of my body, every place that mine is touching his. Every place where we’re connected feels warm and tingly, a sensation I’m not eager to lose. I tilt my head to the side and rest it on his shoulder, and he tilts his head to meet it. I take a deep breath and sigh out all the happiness this night has filled me with, blowing it out onto the breeze like I’m releasing it back into the world, just hoping it will come back to me.
“Good night?” Spencer asks.
“The best,” I reply. “And what about you?”
“It was pretty good,” he says. “I mean, I think it could be better.”
“Oh?”
I feel him shift, turn slightly, and when I look up, I see his eyes gazing down at mine. A shudder starts deep in my chest and rushes up through my neck and shoulders, and I shiver, but I’m not cold. He ducks, and I close my eyes, and then his lips are on mine, salty from the ocean spray and warm. He gives me the slightest nudge with his tongue, and I part my lips for him. His arms snake around my waist, and I let mine wander around his neck until we’re pulling each other tight, core to core. We sink into the rhythm of the water that is sending the boat bobbing up and down, and I let myself get carried away by it.
He leans back slightly and bumps my nose with his.
“Now it’s the best,” he says, planting the softest kiss on my forehead, and I’m so happy I can’t even find the words to agree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When I wake to the sun streaming through my open windows, I can still taste the lingering salt on my lips. Though the flavor is light, the memory is vivid, and I want to wrap myself in my blankets and roll over and fall back into a dream so I can experience it again.
“Breakfast!” Kris trills from downstairs, so I fling off the covers and leap out of bed. Because it occurs to me, maybe I don’t have to dream about the kiss. Maybe this is my reality now.
I rummage through my drawers for a pair of shorts and a tank top, slip my feet into my flip-flops, and slap down the stairs to the kitchen where Kris is making some kind of egg situation. I take a seat at the table and sip my orange juice, freshly squeezed, and let myself wonder how in the living hell I got this damn lucky. First a kiss with a hot guy, then a home-cooked breakfast? It definitely doesn’t suck.
Kris comes over with the hot pan and slides a piece of toast onto my plate, a perfectly round circle in the middle filled with fried egg.
“What’s this?” I ask, leaning in to smell the butter and salt and yeasty goodness.
“Eggs in a basket. Or egg in a hole. Or, like, a million other names, but my mom always called it egg in a basket. She used to make it for me every Sunday morning, so I figured I’d make it for you since you seemed to have had quite a night.”
My eyes widen with my grin. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, please, you practically floated through that door as if carried in on angel’s wings with some heavenly glow about you.”
She puts a piece of egg toast on her own plate, places the pan in the sink, then takes a seat across from me at the table. She arches an eyebrow. “I was young once, you know.”
I laugh, but it isn’t hard to imagine her young. She’s barely forty, but I can see the teenager still in her face. Maybe it’s the light in her eyes or the way she’s so quick with a smile and a laugh, but she feels so much more like a friend than a mom.
“What was it like back then?” I ask, though what I want to ask was what was she like back then.
“Helena? Well, there were fewer full-timers on the island then, so it was kind of lonely in the winter. None of the other houses you see around were here. We were basically alone out on the point.”
“It sounds peaceful.”
“It’s peaceful now, but when I was seventeen it was boring as all get-out. That’s why I couldn’t wait to get the hell off the island.”
“Seriously? You wanted to leave?”
“Absolutely. I wanted out like a captive. I ran all the way to New York trying to escape Helena, not just geographically, but culturally. I swore I’d never come back.”
“So how did you end up here?”
“Believe it or not, it was a broken heart.”
Now that is not what I was expecting.
“I finished my undergrad at Columbia, was dating this great guy, thought I had it all figured out. I was going to apply to grad school in New York, we were going to get married, start a family. And then one day not long after graduation, that was all gone. He just up and decided he wasn’t ready, and wouldn’t be ready for a long time. At least not with me.”
“And so you left New York?”
“Looking back, it was probably overly impulsive, but I had wrapped my whole life up in this guy. And then he was gone, and I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore. Or at least I didn’t know who I was going to be.”
It sounds awfully familiar.
“Anyway, my dad had always said he was going to move to Paris when he finally retired. I always figured it was a joke, but it turned out that he’d literally saved every penny and invested and prepared. So while my life was falling apart, my parents were like, ‘Au revoir, honey!’”
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