Boys of Summer (14 page)

I hastily tap out a reply.

Don't come over. I'll meet you somewhere.

A few seconds later, she texts back.

Too late. I'm already here.

The doorbell rings, and I nearly jump out of my boxers. I scramble to throw on a T-shirt and shorts and run for the door, just barely managing to beat Ian, who, for some reason, looks like he's been in the boxing ring with a rabid kangaroo.

I stop just short of the door, momentarily forgetting about the disaster that's waiting outside. “Dude, what happened to your face?”

He reaches up to touch his purple cheek, and winces, his gaze darting irritably in the direction of the bedrooms and then back to me. “I fell out of bed,” he mutters.

I scowl. “Were you sleeping on the roof? Jeez, that looks bad.”

“It's no big deal.” He ducks his head and reaches for the doorknob.

“I've got it!” I say, gently nudging him aside. I try to sound cheery and not at all as frantic as I feel, but Ian gives me a strange look, letting me know how miserably I've failed.

“Fine,” he says, holding his hands up like a caught criminal. “What is
with
everyone today?” He backs away, mumbling something about going to watch TV.

I open the door a sliver, slip through the crack, and yank the door closed behind me.

Much to my dismay, Harper looks incredible. Again. She's wearing cutoff shorts and some sort of strapless
tube top thing. Her golden hair is loose, falling around her shoulders in glossy waves. If she's going to just show up here with barely any notice, the least she could do is look like crap.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss. I take her by the hand and lead her around to the pool in the back of the house.

“We need to talk,” she says, looking down. That's when I notice I'm still holding her hand.

I quickly release it.

“Ian's here,” I tell her sharply.

“So?”

I glance over her shoulder and immediately realize that the pool was a mistake. The windows in the living room look right out at us. I can see Ian carrying a bowl of cereal from the kitchen to the couch. He flips on the TV and sits down, propping his feet on the coffee table.

I grab her hand again and lead her around to the other side of the house, behind one of the landscaped hedges. “
So
,” I repeat, flustered. “It's Ian. If he sees us together, he might suspect things.”

“You're acting kind of crazy,” she points out.

“You
think
? I kissed my best friend's girlfriend. Of course I'm acting crazy!”

“
Ex
-girlfriend.”

I throw my hands up in exasperation. “That doesn't matter.”

“So you agree it was wrong?”

“Uh, yeah, it was wrong.”

She sighs in relief. “Good. Me too. I was up all night thinking about it. I feel horrible. I wanted to come by and tell you that it can't happen again.”

“Yes. I mean, no. Never again. Absolutely.”

She nods. “Good. And also, we can't tell Mike.”

Just his name on her lips makes my stomach convulse.

“Agreed.”

She sighs again. This time her breath hits my face, and I smell cherries. It immediately brings me back to that garden shed, when Harper's flashlight landed on me. Does she wear the same lip gloss she wore when she was twelve?

“I'm so glad we're on the same page about this,” she says.

“Me too.” I feel the knot in my chest start to unwind. Maybe this doesn't spell complete disaster. Maybe this was just a simple mistake that both of us can own up to and agree to never repeat. Then we can move on with our lives.

“Hug?” Harper asks, already stepping toward me with her arms outstretched.

I'm not sure it's such a good idea—being that close to her—but I don't really have time to react. Harper's arms are suddenly around me. Her body is suddenly pressed into me. She's not wearing a bra.

And that smell. What is that? It's like she bottled everything I love about summer and rolled in it.

But I can't just stand here with my arms hanging down like a chump. I have to hug her back.

She moves her head ever so slightly, and I can feel her breath on my ear. It's having a serious effect on me. The kind of effect a girl can feel when she's pressed this tightly against you.

I need to pull away. This needs to not be happening.

“Oh shit,” Harper says, her body tensing.

Damn it. It's too late. She's already felt it. She already knows.

“Mike,” she whispers into my ear, which totally confuses me, not to mention, completely solves the little problem I was having.

I pull back and hold her by the shoulders. “Okay, whispering his name into my ear is not making this any less awkward.”

“No,” she says quietly through clenched teeth. “I mean
Mike.
He's here.”

MIKE

D
uring the whole drive to Grayson's house, I tried to figure out what to say once I arrived.

Surprise! I'm going to be hanging out here every day.

Surprise! I'm now just another hired hand at the Cartwright house.

Surprise! I need your dad's money to pay my dad's mortgage.

I assured myself repeatedly that Grayson won't mind. He's never let money be an issue with us. One summer a few years back, the cleaning service that my mother works for assigned her to clean the Cartwrights' house. Grayson never let it get weird, though. He was always extra polite and respectful. He treated my mom like his own mom.

I was grateful, however, when the house got assigned to another employee the next summer.

By the time I park my dad's truck in the driveway, I decide it would be best to clear the air with Grayson first. Before I climb up a ladder and start banging around on his roof.

I stand nervously on the front porch and ring the doorbell. Then I stuff my hands into my pockets. Ian answers a few seconds later with a hell of a shiner. He looks genuinely confused to see me.

“I thought you were Grayson,” he says.

“What the hell happened to you? Did you stumble into a bar fight on your way home from the party or something?”

“Or something,” he mumbles.

I take a step closer to examine his face. “Did you put ice on it?”

“Yes,” he says dismissively, moving away from me. Whatever happened, he clearly doesn't want to talk about it, so I let it drop. “So, Grayson's not here?”

I admit I feel somewhat relieved. Maybe it would be easier to just start working and explain myself later.

“Dunno,” Ian says. “Someone rang the bell, and before I could answer it, he disappeared out the front door and hasn't come back since.”

“Probably another random girl he hooked up with,” I say with a laugh, hoping it will raise Ian's spirits a bit. He's obviously in a miserable mood.

He barely cracks a smile. “Probably. Although he was acting really cagey. It was weird. So, are you coming to hang out?” His spirits seem to lift at the question, which makes mine shatter into a million pieces. “I haven't watched the newest
Crusade of Kings
yet. I mean, I only watched the first five minutes of it. We could put it on.”

I feel a stab of guilt in my chest.
Crusade of Kings
has been one of our summertime staples for the past three years. The new season always starts in mid-June and goes through the end of August, ceremoniously marking the start and end of each summer. We always used to watch the new episodes together when they aired Sunday nights or first thing Monday mornings, commiserating over the loss of our favorite characters, cringing at the gratuitously violent battle scenes, and drinking at every single appearance
of female genitalia. Needless to say, we were always pretty wasted by the end of the sixty minutes. It's hard to imagine a summer in the Locks without that tradition. But things happen and things change.

“Actually,” I say remorsefully, “I can't. I'm starting a new job today.”

Baffled, Ian looks around the outside of the house. “What? Here?”

I point up. “There. I'm replacing the roof.”

Ian peers behind me at the truck in the driveway with the Metzler Roofing logo on the side, and a flash of comprehension comes over his face. He must know why I'm so uncomfortable right now. If anyone gets what it's like to be an outsider on your own island, it's him. Even though he's not technically a local, he's not really a tourist, either. His grandparents have a house on the beach, but they certainly aren't dripping with cash like all of their neighbors. Ian and I have always had a kind of kinship that way. The two “poorer” friends of Grayson Cartwright.

“Is that gonna be weird?” he asks.

I shrug. “I hope not. But I'm gonna talk to Grayson about it, just to make sure.”

“Good idea. Maybe check around by the pool?”

“Thanks. I'll see you around?”

“Sure,” he mumbles, and it's like I can see the cloud of heaviness drift back over him again. I feel the urge to question him about it, but what do I say? How do I even bring it up?

“You doing okay?” I ask lamely.

He seems to perk up a little at the question. “As good as can be expected, I guess.”

And then he just watches me, like he's waiting for me to dish out some Yoda-like wisdom about life and death
and the great, unexplained mysteries of the universe. But I don't have any of that. I don't know any of that wisdom. So I just say, “Good. Well, I better get to work.”

“Yeah,” Ian mutters. “See ya.”

“Maybe we can watch the episode when I'm done?”

Ian nods. “Okay.” And then he closes the door.

I walk around the side of the house to the pool but am stopped halfway when Grayson suddenly comes spilling out of the bushes, looking incredibly flustered.

“Mike!” he says, his voice way too high and squeaky for a six-foot-two football player.

“Hi,” I say hesitantly. “What are you doing out here?”

He brushes a few stray leaves from his shirt. “Me? Oh, you know, just trimming some edges.”

“You mean ‘hedges'?”

He seems completely distracted, like he can't quite focus on my face. “Yeah. That.”

I have to laugh at the idea of Grayson doing yard work. Or any work at all, for that matter. “Since when do you garden?”

“Uh,” he says haltingly. “Since recently. I just got into it.”

I look back to the bush he just tumbled out of. For a second I swear I see it move, but it's probably only the breeze. I point to an overgrown bulge on the side and start walking toward it. “Looks like you missed a spot.”

Grayson lets out a strange yelping sound and runs to step in front of me. “Let's not talk about gardening. That's so boring. What's up? Why are you here?”

I almost forgot the real reason I came. For just a second it was every other summer, and I simply stopped by to hang out at Grayson's pool or play football on the beach.

Then the second is over and the reality of
this
summer comes rushing back to me.

I take a deep breath and steel myself for what I'm about to say. “Actually, there's something I want to talk to you about. It's a little . . . um, awkward.”

Grayson looks like he just swallowed a spider. He glances uneasily over his shoulder. “Sure. What is it?”

“I didn't really want to bring it up because it's kind of, I don't know, embarrassing, but now I think I have to.”

Grayson looks confused. His brow furrows tightly, and he rubs at the stubble on his chin. “Okaaay,” he says slowly, like he's convinced I'm going to say something horrible next.

“A few months ago my dad had an accident on a roofing job. He hurt his leg. It's not healing the way the doctors want, so he hasn't been able to work for a while. That's why I've had to pick up some of the slack this summer to help with the bills, and my dad got word of a new roofing job and . . .” I let my voice trail off, hoping Grayson will pick up on the implication and I won't actually have to spell it out, but he still looks like he hasn't followed anything I've said.

“I didn't know it was here until after I agreed to take it,” I tell him. “I just hope it won't be, you know, weird.”

“Wait,” he says, after an awfully long pause. “You're going to be working
here
? On
this
roof? All summer?”

Finally. Jeez, that took long enough.

“If it's too weird, I understand,” I rush to say, looking anxiously down at my feet and praying he won't tell me that it is. “It's just that we could really use the money. And if Harper and I leave for New York in the fall—”

“Harper?” he blurts out. “You and Harper? Are you back together?”

God, he really is acting crazy. Maybe the idea of me working for his family
is
too much.