Boys of Summer (17 page)

W
hen I walk out of the hardware store, Ian looks like he's just seen a ghost. He's so visibly shaken up, I actually scan the street, fully expecting to see some horrific car accident or bike crash or downed pedestrian. But Ocean Avenue, the main shopping street of Winlock Harbor, looks the way it always looks in the summer: bustling with charm, and tourists with cash to spare.

“What's wrong?” I ask, and he startles at the sound of my voice, even though I could swear he was looking right at me.

“Nothing,” he says quickly, glancing down the small alley that leads to the beach. “Did you get what you need?”

I shake my head. “They don't keep boot vents in stock. They have to order them from the warehouse. It'll take a week.”

“A week!” he practically shouts, as if I just told him I had only that long to live.

I give him a strange look. “Everything's on a delay because of Fourth of July tomorrow.”

“But what about the roofing job?”

“I just left a message on Mr. Cartwright's cell. I'm going to have to shut down until the parts come in. It's actually a
good thing. Now I'll have some time to catch a few waves during the day and hang out with you guys. Maybe we can go to the beach.”

Ian's gaze flickers again in the direction of the alley.

“Do you want to head down there now?” I ask, locking the truck. “I can leave the car here.”

“No!” Once again his reaction is totally over-the-top.

“Okaaay,” I say with a chuckle.

“Sorry. I just really, really need to get back to the house. I, uh, promised Grayson's dad I'd check the mail while he was gone.”

Great.
Now he's acting weird too. First Grayson, now Ian. What have these two been smoking?

“And the mail won't still be there later?” I ask.

Ian looks flustered. “It's just that he's waiting for a really important document, and I have to alert him as soon as it arrives.”

I shrug and unlock the door again. “Okay.”

Ian hops into the cab faster than a golden retriever who's just been told he's going to the dog park. I get in behind the wheel and shoot him another strange look.

“What's gotten into you?” I ask once we're less than a half mile from the Cartwright house.

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. For a second I get the feeling that he's going to confess something to me. Something big. Maybe he finally wants to talk about his dad. I admit, the thought makes me feel terrified and relieved at the same time.

“It's just . . . ,” he begins hesitantly.

“Yeah?”

“It's just . . . ,” he starts again, and I'm convinced he's going to trail off once more, but then he suddenly blurts out, “It's Grayson!”

I pull into the driveway of the house, shut off the car, and look at him. “What about Grayson?”

He rubs at his eyebrow, just above the fading purple bruise that you can barely even see anymore. Whatever he's about to tell me is obviously incredibly difficult for him.

“It's his sister,” he finally says, his voice shifting ever so slightly.

“Whitney?” I ask in surprise. This was definitely
not
what I expected him to say.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “She's driving me crazy.”

I let out a laugh. “What else is new?”

“No,” he goes on, opening the door and hopping out of the truck. “I mean, she's really driving me crazy. I can't figure the girl out. Remember how she used to be so materialistic and stuck up?”

I hop out too. “
Used
to be?”

“That's the thing. It's like she's undergone some strange transformation. She dresses in completely different clothes now. She wears glasses. Glasses! Whitney! And just a few minutes ago while we were in town, I saw her buying books.”

“Books,” I repeat, certain I must have misheard.

He throws his hands into the air. “Yeah! Books!”

“Like, real books?”

He chuckles. “Right? I'm so confused.”

“Aha!” I say, with sudden realization. “Now I get it.”

“Get what?”

“You,” I tell him. “When I came out of the hardware store, you looked, I don't know, traumatized or something. Now I understand why.”

I swear I see Ian flinch, but before I can be sure, he's smiling and nodding. “Exactly. I mean, Whitney Cartwright buying books? What could be more traumatizing than that?”

He starts toward the house, walking briskly, like something is chasing him.

“Wait,” I call out, and Ian turns around. “Didn't you need to check the mail?”

It's obvious from his expression that he completely forgot about that. He runs over to the box, pulls down the little metal door, and peers inside. “Nope. Not here yet,” he announces, and then he bounds up the front steps of the house, leaving me alone to figure out what I'm going to do with my unexpected day off.

I wonder what time Julie gets off work.

IAN

I
am a coward.

A big, fucking coward.

I'm spineless. I'm weak. I'm wasted space.

If my best friend was cheating with
my
ex-girlfriend, I would want Mike to tell me. And Mike is the kind of guy who
would
tell me! Because he's a good person. Because he doesn't deserve any of this. Because
he's
not a coward like me.

I retreat to my room and pick up my guitar, strum a few bars of the song I wrote a few weeks ago. I've been tinkering with some of the chords and melodies, trying to get it just right. The sound of it now settles my roiling stomach somewhat, so I keep going, softly humming along with the melody.

The more I play, the more I start to wonder if maybe telling Mike
isn't
the right thing to do. If maybe keeping what I saw a secret is the smart decision. Maybe even the
kind
decision.

This is Grayson we're talking about. Odds are he'll be over this fling in a matter of days. And it's Harper. She has a reputation for pulling stunts like this all the time. She does this nearly every single summer. She breaks up with Mike,
she flirts with the tourists, she comes back to him. That's her MO. That's
both
of their patterns. It just so happens that this summer their patterns overlapped.

Harper and Grayson together is just a catastrophe waiting to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing blew over in less than a week. Then everything will go back to normal.

Grayson will go back to hitting on girls at beach parties. Harper will go back to Mike. And I can go back to moping around the house while trying to avoid another infuriating confrontation with Whitney.

But if I told Mike about Grayson and Harper, all hell would break loose. I'd basically be bringing about the end of our friendship. It's not worth destroying what we have for a stupid summer fling, is it?

No, definitely not.

I'll just lie low and pretend I never saw anything. And really, what
did
I see? A harmless little chase game on the street? An
almost
kiss? It could be nothing. It probably
was
nothing.

I'm staying out of it.

Besides, I'm not sure I can handle the emotional burden right now. Not with my mother still texting me nonstop trying to get me to come over to watch home movies or browse through photo albums, or take a tour of all the places on the island my dad loved to visit. I don't know how many times I have to turn her down before she finally gets it. I have no interest in skipping merrily down memory lane with her.

I hear a strange scraping sound outside my window. I assume it's Mike packing up his truck, but I pull back the curtain to check anyway.

Outside by the pool Whitney is rearranging lounge chairs. She's wearing a one-piece bathing suit, an oversize
sun hat, and a sarong. The way the sarong is cut, every time she takes a step, the fabric inches up her thigh, revealing one of her long, lean legs.

She finally positions the chair to her liking and plops down, propping her knees up so that the sarong falls down around her hips, giving me a perfect view of both legs.

My stomach does a series of crazy acrobatic moves.

When did Whitney become so sexy? I mean, she's always
dressed
sexy, but it was like a little girl who had raided her mother's closet and makeup drawer. It always looked like she was trying too hard. And she used to have these scrawny little legs that were way too skinny, and puny arms that I probably could have wrapped my hand around twice.

But now it's evident that sometime in the past two years, she acquired a few curves. And in all the right places too.

I soon realize how creepy and pervy I am, just sitting here, staring at her through the window. I'm about to let the curtain fall back down, when Whitney pulls a giant hardcover out of her bag, flips it open to a marked page, and starts reading.

So I wasn't hallucinating when I saw her come out of that bookstore. Whitney Cartwright is sitting by the pool reading a
book
.

Hell has officially frozen over.

I have to get to the bottom of this.

I drop the curtain, letting it swish back into place, and walk out to the pool. She doesn't look up from her book, but she must notice my presence because she says, “About time you stopped being a total perv and came out here.”

So she saw me. Great.

I plop down onto the next chair, angling my body so I can face her. She stays focused on her book.

I flick my finger at one of the pages. “So what's this all about? Trying to impress a college guy?”

She sneers. “Did you have to wait for your boner to go down before you came out here to talk to me, or are you just hiding it between your legs?”

I feel a flicker of exhilaration pass through me. The thrill of arguing with Whitney, of desperately grasping for the better comeback, is starting to become an all-too-familiar sensation. One that I'm afraid might actually turn into a full-on addiction.

“Let me know if you come across any big words that you don't understand.”

“I will,” she immediately retorts, still not looking at me, “so I can send you to fetch a dictionary.”

I tilt my head so I can see the title of the book. “
Sense and Sensibility
,” I read aloud. “Two things that you severely lack. Is this a self-help book?”

“Actually, yes.” She stretches out her legs, crossing them at the ankles. “I'm learning lots of useful things, like how to stay away from Willoughbys like you.”

I assume this is a reference to something in the book and I grudgingly admit that I've never read it. I hate that she has the upper hand here and can get in jabs that I don't even understand.

“Seriously,” I say, trying not to stare at her body. “What is this about? The glasses? The books? Did you join a cult or something?”

“I didn't realize reading was a crime.”

“For you, it might as well be.”

She sets the book down on her stomach, and I see the flash of anger in her eyes. “Why do you even care?”

She's totally stumped me there. Why
do
I even care?

“I—I,” I stammer. “I'm living in this house now, and
you're my best friend's little sister. I care about what goes on around here.”

She breaks into a sarcastic laugh. “You're so full of shit, Ian. All you care about is your stupid guitar and playing your stupid sappy love ballads until four in the morning.” She smirks at my reaction. “Oh, yeah. I hear things. The walls are not that thick.”

I feel frustration boil up inside me. She heard me singing? Did she hear the lyrics? Does she know they're about her?

“At least I'm doing something with my life,” I shoot back, even though it's a pitiful argument and I'm running out of steam. I'm like a pitcher who's pitched eight and a half innings and all I've got left is a pathetic excuse for a fastball, with no oomph. “At least I'm not spending every waking hour of my day shopping and texting and being vapid.”

She sits bolt upright, glaring at me from behind those admittedly sexy-as-hell tortoiseshell glasses. “If I'm so vapid and useless, why are you even out here with me? Why aren't you in your room saving the world with your super-important music?”

I shoot to my feet and yell, “I came out here to . . . to . . .” But I can't think of a single thing to say. My witty comebacks are gone, and now all I'm left with is the truth. A truth I don't even realize until it comes tumbling out of my mouth.

“To ask you out!” I finish, my voice still loud and full of angst.

“You came out here to ask me out?” she screams. “Like on a date?”

“Yes!” I fire back.

“Fine!” she roars. “Eight o'clock tonight. Don't be late. And don't wear those stupid shorts.”