First published 2016
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2016
ISBNe: 978 1 78530 027 1 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 986 9 in paperback format
Copyright © Estelle Maskame 2016
The right of Estelle Maskame to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by Iolaire, Newtonmore
To all the Tyler and Edens out there.
No te rindas.
Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Acknowledgements
As always, thank you to my readers from the very beginning who have followed this story with dedication and love. I couldn’t have done this without you, and for that, I am forever grateful. Thank you to my family, especially my parents, Fenella and Stuart, for their patience and support over the past five years while I’ve worked on this trilogy. Thank you to my best friends for keeping me sane. Thank you to my editors, Karyn, Kristen and Janne, for their expertise and guidance, and for their enthusiasm and care for Tyler and Eden’s story. Thank you to everyone at Black & White Publishing for all of the hard work each of you put into this trilogy. I think you’re all amazing, and thank you for making me feel so at home in the office in the final few weeks of writing this book. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with and I’m so, so proud to be one of your authors. You made my dream come true. Thank you.
1
The water is cold, yet that doesn’t stop me from wading into it, only up to my ankles. I have my Converse in my hands, the laces wrapped around my fingers, and the wind is picking up, like it always does. It’s too dark to see far out over the low waves, but I can still hear the ocean crashing and rolling around me, and I almost forget that I’m not alone. There’s also the sound of fireworks, of laughter and voices, celebration and joy. I almost forget, just for a second, that it’s the Fourth of July.
A girl runs past me, through the water, disrupting the calm and gentle flow. A guy is chasing her. Boyfriend, probably. He accidentally splashes water on me as he brushes past, laughing out loud before he grasps the girl and pulls her against him. I’m grinding my teeth together before I even realize it, my grip around my laces tightening. These people are around my age, but I’ve never seen them before. They’ve most likely come from out of town, from a neighboring city, to celebrate the good old Fourth of July in Santa Monica. I don’t know why. The Fourth of July isn’t anything spectacular here. Fireworks are illegal, which is the second-biggest bullshit law I’ve ever encountered in my entire life after it being illegal to pump your own gas back in Oregon. So there are no fireworks, only those from Marina del Rey to the south and Pacific Palisades to the north, which are visible from here. It’s after 9PM, so both displays have just begun. The colors light up the sky far in the distance, small and out of focus, but they’re enough to satisfy the tourists and the locals.
The couple are kissing in the water now, in the dark beneath the lights of Pacific Park. I turn my eyes away. I begin to walk away from the pier, wading slowly through the Pacific Ocean as I distance myself from all of the Fourth of July commotion. The crowds are much thicker up on the pier. Down here on the beach, it’s not so busy, so I have room to breathe. This year, I’m just not feeling the whole Independence Day excitement. There are too many memories attached to this day that I don’t want to remember, so I keep walking, further and further along the coast.
I only stop when Rachael calls my name. Until then, I’d forgotten that I’d been waiting for her to return. I turn around in the water to face my best friend as she half leaps, half jogs across the sand toward me. There’s an American flag bandana wrapped around her head and she comes bearing two sundaes. She disappeared to get them almost fifteen minutes ago from Soda Jerks, which, like most stores along the pier, is open later than usual tonight.
“I got there just as they were closing up,” Rachael says, slightly breathless. Her ponytail swings around her shoulders as she comes to a stop and hands me the sundae, but not before she licks some of the overflowing ice cream from her index finger.
I edge out of the water to join her, thanking her with a smile. I’ve been quiet all night and I still can’t bring myself to pretend that I’m okay, that I’m happy just like everyone else. So I take my sundae in my free hand, my red Converse still in the other—red footwear is as patriotic as I’m going to get today—and quickly run my eyes over the ice cream. It’s called the Toboggan Carousel, named after the Toboggan carousel itself, which is inside the Looff Hippodrome up on the pier. Soda Jerks is on the corner. In the three weeks that I’ve been home, we’ve stopped by for sundaes more than once. In fact, I think we take an ice cream break more often than we take a coffee break these days. It’s much more comforting.
“Everyone’s up on the pier,” Rachael reminds me. “Maybe we should head up.” She sounds almost cautious as she makes the suggestion, like she’s expecting me to immediately cut her off and say no. She drops her blue eyes to her ice cream and scoops up a quick mouthful.
As she swallows, my eyes drift over her shoulder to the pier. The Pacific Wheel is performing its annual Fourth of July show, where its thousands of LED lights are programmed to display transitioning sequences of red, blue and white. It started just after eight, at sunset. The two of us watched it for a few minutes when it first began, but it got very boring very fast. Holding back a sigh, I shift my gaze to the boardwalk instead. It’s way too overcrowded, yet I don’t want to test Rachael’s patience any more than I already have, so I say sure.
We turn back and head across the beach, weaving our way through the people spending their evening down on the sand, and eating our sundaes in silence from our plastic to-go trays. After a few minutes, I stop to slip my Chucks back on.
“Did you find Meghan yet?”
I glance up at Rachael as I finish tucking my laces in. “Haven’t seen her.” In all honesty, I haven’t been looking. Although Meghan is an old friend of ours, that’s all she seems to be. Nothing more than that. But she’s home for the summer too, so Rachael’s making the effort to reunite our former trio.
“We’ll find her eventually,” she says, and then changes the subject almost immediately by adding, “Did you hear that the wheel is apparently programmed to the beat of a Daft Punk song this year?” She skips ahead of me, twirling on the sand and shimmying back over. She reaches for my free hand and pulls me toward her, her grin wide and dazzling as she spins me around. Unwillingly, I dance a little with her despite the fact that there’s no music. “Another summer, another year.”
I pull back from her, careful not to drop my sundae, and study her. She’s still swaying, sti
ll dancing to whatever song is in her head. As she closes her eyes and twirls again, I think about her words. Another summer, another year. It’s our fourth summer of being best friends, and despite a slight fallout last year, we’re as close as ever. I wasn’t sure if she’d ever forgive me for the mistakes I made, but she did. She let it go, because there were more important things to focus on. Like supplying me with ice cream and taking me on road trips around the state to distract me, to make me feel better. Desperate times call for best friends. Yet despite the fact that the time came for me to head off to Chicago, where I’ve spent the past year surviving my freshman year of college, we’ve still remained best friends. Now that I’m back in Santa Monica until September, we have months to hang out together.
“You’re drawing a crowd,” I tell her. The corners of my lips pull up into a smile as her eyes flash open, her cheeks flushing with color as she glances around. Several people nearby have been observing her silent dancing.
“Time to make our getaway,” she whispers. She latches onto my wrist and starts to run. She yanks me across the beach, kicking up the sand beneath our feet, our laughter echoing around us as I’m given no option but to dash off with her. We don’t run far: only a few yards, far enough to get her away from her spectators. “In my defense,” she huffs, “you’re allowed to look like an idiot on the Fourth of July. It’s a rite of passage. It emphasizes the fact that we’re a free nation. You know, ’cause we can do whatever the hell we want.”
I wish that was the case. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my nineteen years of breathing, it’s that we most certainly can’t do whatever the hell we want. We can’t pump our own gas. We can’t set off fireworks. We can’t touch the Hollywood Sign. We can’t trespass. We can’t kiss our stepbrothers. Of course, we can do these things, but only if we’re brave enough to face the consequences.
I roll my eyes at Rachael as we ascend the steps up to the pier, the music from Pacific Park gradually growing louder the nearer we get. The ferris wheel is still flashing with red, blue, and white. The rest of the amusement park is also illuminated, albeit not so patriotically. We’re weaving our way through the upper parking lot on the pier, squeezing between cars that are parked way too close to one another, when I spot Jamie. He’s with his girlfriend, Jen. They’ve been dating for almost two years now. Over by the corner of the lot, he has her pressed against the passenger door of an old, beat-up Chevy. They’re making out. Obviously.
Rachael must notice them too because she pauses alongside me and rests her eyes on the scene. “I’ve heard he’s quite the troublemaker,” she murmurs. “He’s like a miniature blond version of his brother when he was that age.”
I flash Rachael a warning glance almost automatically at the mention of Jamie’s brother, who is also my stepbrother. We don’t talk about him. We don’t ever say his name. Not anymore. Rachael notices the sudden tautness in my face and the sharpness in my expression, because when she realizes her mistake she mouths a quick apology and then presses her hand over her lips.
Relaxing only slightly, I look back at Jamie and Jen. Still kissing. Rolling my eyes, I toss the remainder of my ice cream into a nearby trash can and then clear my throat, yelling, “Don’t forget to breathe, Jay!”
Rachael laughs under her breath and playfully swats my shoulder. When Jamie glances up, eyes glossy and hair ruffled, I lift my hand and wave. Unlike Jen, who almost collapses dead with embarrassment the second she spots me, my stepbrother only gets pissed off, the same way he always does whenever I try to say anything to him.
“Screw you, Eden!” he yells across the lot, his coarse voice echoing around the cars. Grabbing Jen’s hand, he turns and yanks her away in the opposite direction. He’s most likely been trying his best to avoid Ella the entire night, because when all you want to do is hook up with your girlfriend, the last person you want spotting you is your mom.
“He’s still not talking to you?” Rachael asks once she stops snickering.
Shrugging, I start to walk again as I run my fingers through the ends of my hair. It’s just below my shoulders now. I cut it back in the winter. “Last week he asked me to pass him the salt,” I say. “Does that count?”
“No.”
“Then I guess we’re still not talking.”
Jamie doesn’t particularly like me. Not because he’s seventeen with a serious attitude problem that came out of nowhere last year, but because he’s still sickened by me. And his eldest brother. He can’t stand either of us, and no matter how many times I’ve tried to convince him that there’s nothing to worry about anymore, he refuses to believe me. He usually storms away and slams a door or two in the process. I sigh with frustration as Rachael and I head over onto the main boardwalk, which is still as busy as it was hours ago. There are a lot of parents with small kids and a lot of dogs dodging the mass of strollers. There are many young couples, like the pair back on the beach, in the water. I can’t bear to look at any of them. Their interlocked hands and exchanged smiles only make my stomach knot. And not in the way that creates butterflies, but in the way that physically hurts. Today of all days, here of all places, I despise each and every couple I see.
Rachael stops after a few minutes to talk to some girls she knows who were in her grade back in school. I remember them only vaguely, from passing them years ago at school or at the promenade. I don’t know them. They know me, though. Everyone knows me now. I’m her. I’m that Eden. I’m the girl who gets disgusted glances cast over me, the girl who gets sneered and snickered at wherever I go. It’s exactly what’s happening now. No matter how hard I try to offer these girls a warm smile, it’s not returned. Both of them fire me a sharp glare out of the corners of their eyes and then angle their bodies away from me, stepping closer to Rachael and cutting me out completely. I press my lips together and fold my arms across my chest, kicking at the wood beneath my feet as I wait for Rachael to finish.
This is exactly the kind of thing that happens every time I come home to Santa Monica. People don’t like me here anymore. They think I’m crazy and weird. There are the few exceptions, like my mom and Rachael, but that’s about it. Everyone else just judges, but they don’t know the full story. I think the worst was when I came home for Thanksgiving last year. It was the first time I’d come home since I left for college in September, and word had gotten out and had spread like wildfire in the mere month that I’d been gone. So by Thanksgiving, everyone knew. At first, I didn’t know what was going on and why things were suddenly different. I didn’t know why Katy Vance, a girl I shared some classes with back in school, put her head down and turned in the opposite direction when I waved at her. I didn’t know why the young girl ringing me up at the grocery store laughed to her coworker as I was leaving. I had no idea why these things were happening, not until I was at LAX on Sunday waiting to board my flight back to Chicago, when a girl I’d never seen before in my life quietly asked, “You’re the girl that dated her stepbrother, right?”
Rachael doesn’t talk for long. She glances warily over at me every few seconds, as though she’s trying to gauge if I’m okay or not, and even though I shrug nonchalantly back at her in an attempt to reassure her that I’m fine, she still cuts the conversation short and tells the girls that we need to be somewhere, even when we don’t. That’s why I love Rachael.
“For that, I’m never talking to them ever again,” she states once the girls walk off, her voice firm as she throws her sundae into the trash and hooks her arm around mine instead. She spins me around toward Pacific Park so fast that it almost gives me whiplash.
“Honestly, it really doesn’t bother me anymore,” I try to tell her. We’re drifting through the crowd, which actually doesn’t feel that thick once we’re in the middle of it, and I let her pull me along the boardwalk.
“Uh-huh,” Rachael says in a distant voice, like she doesn’t believe me.
I’m about to argue my point even further, telling her that no, really, it’s fine, I’m fine, everything is f
ine when both our attention is grasped before I’ve even opened my mouth. Jake Maxwell has come barreling toward us out of nowhere, sliding in front of us and stopping us dead in our tracks. He’s an even older friend of ours than Meghan is, and we’ve already spoken to him tonight. That was a couple hours ago, when he was still mostly sober. The same can’t be said now.
“There you guys are!” Reaching for our interlocked arms, he separates us and takes both our hands in his and places a sloppy kiss on our knuckles.
It’s the first summer that Jake has come home from Ohio, and when we bumped into him earlier, for the first time in two years, I was surprised to discover that he’s now sporting a beard and he was even more surprised to discover that I still live in Santa Monica. He had somehow gotten the idea that I’d moved back to Portland like forever ago. But beard and assumptions aside, he hasn’t changed. He’s still a player and he still doesn’t try to deny it. When Rachael asked him how he was doing, he told us that it’s not going too great, because both of his two girlfriends have recently broken up with him and he still doesn’t know why. I could guess.
“Where do you keep getting the beer from?” Rachael asks, wrinkling her nose as she pulls her hand back from him. She has to talk over the sound of the music from Pacific Park.
“TJ’s,” Jake says. And in case we don’t know, he rolls his eyes over his shoulder and points his thumb behind him, off into the distance. TJ has a condo over on the beachfront. Like I could forget. My stomach flips at the thought of it. “He’s sent me over here to round up the troops. Are you guys down for an after-party?” His eyes light up at the word and I find it hard to take the tank top he’s wearing seriously. It’s got an eagle on it. Placed on top of the US flag. With “FREEDOM” written in block capitals across the eagle’s feet. It looks totally ridiculous, yet not as crazy as the temporary eagle tattoo he’s wearing proudly on his left cheek. I’m starting to wonder if he’s buzzed from more than just beer.
Did I Mention I Miss You? Page 1