Endless Summer: The Boys Next Door; Endless Summer (26 page)

I missed him for ten seconds, looking forward to the instant he slipped back inside the truck and we laughed together again. Decision made. It wasn’t my first bad judgment leading to an Adam-Related Catastrophe, and it wouldn’t be my last.

“Adam,” Lori whispered. I’d known her all my life. I was used to her scent of warm skin and water. But in the last couple of weeks she’d started wearing perfume. I caught another whiff of it every time she shook my shoulder.

Without opening my eyes, I sniffed deeply, inhaling all the perfume I could get. Her hair tickled my face. I nuzzled her neck.

“Adam Vader.” Now her voice sounded pinched, like she was clenching her teeth. “I am trying to remain calm so as not to alarm you, but wake the hell up already.”

That made me open my eyes. She lay on top of me, looking down at me. I couldn’t see her features clearly in the shadowy cab of my truck. Her long blonde hair cascaded around me and glowed pink in the light of sunrise.

Sunrise!

“Oh, God.” I sat up, dumping her off my chest and onto the passenger side. For the perfect end to a perfect day, I’d driven her here. My secret make-out hideout was a point of land jutting into the lake with a dirt road leading to it, a primo lot that nobody had built a house on yet. It was at the other end of our neighborhood, and we could actually see our houses and my parents’ marina from here. My truck was hidden from their view by the trees around us, which was the beauty of it. I loved having the upper hand for once in my life.

But that was last night. Now the sun peeked over the highway bridge in the distance and reflected in the smooth lake.

“What time is it?” I looked toward the clock in the dashboard of my truck, which hadn’t worked since probably 1995.

“I don’t know,” she said. “My cell phone went in the lake with me a couple of nights ago. I’d say five thirty or six.” I pulled my own cell phone from my pocket. “It’s five fifty-three, and my mother’s called me eleven times.”

“Why didn’t it ring?” Lori wailed.

“My brothers kept texting me about hooking up with you. I turned off the sound.” Which was shooting myself in the foot. My brothers were good at making me do that. I turned the key in the ignition and threw the truck into reverse. We backed through the cloud of our own dust, which billowed through the open windows and glinted in the sunlight. As soon as I hit a clearing with more room, I jerked the truck around in a hasty three-point turn and hit the gas.

“Stupid,” I muttered. I would get in trouble for staying out late. She would get in more trouble because she was a girl, and her dad was kind of high-strung. Plus, we’d slept all night on that abandoned point with the windows open. I should have protected her better. Maybe I’d watched snippets of too many action movies, but it seemed to me that falling asleep with a woman was just asking for snakes.

Lori crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down her skin, warming herself. The air was heavy with humidity, and chilly. This was the coldest part of a summer day in Alabama. “Faster,” she said.

In the three weeks I’d had my license, I’d driven as fast as I could every chance I got. Most people, Lori included, thought this was not a good idea. It was a rush for her to tell me to go faster. I pressed the gas harder. “Are you sure you want me to take you home? We could run away together.” I felt her looking at me across the cab. I met her gaze and held it for one second, two seconds, three seconds longer than I should have been keeping my eyes off the road.

The truck hit gravel. I swung the steering wheel to point the truck back onto the pavement.

She laughed. “Better not.”

“You thought about it, though.” I grinned.

“I did.” She slid her hand onto my thigh, which was bare below my shorts. “Go faster.”

I put more pressure on the gas. The engine revved higher, echoing weirdly against the dense woods flashing past the open windows on both sides.

“No, wait, stop, stop, stop!”

I stomped on the brake and threw my arm in front of her to keep her from going through the windshield before I realized she had put on her seat belt. (I had not.) The truck screeched to a halt. I expected to see the huge body of a deer I’d just missed as it crashed into the woods and escaped—but outside the truck, the morning was pink and still. “What is it?”

“Sorry,” she sighed. “I just realized we need to pick up where we left off last night and enjoy it for a few minutes. I have a feeling we won’t get to do it again for a while.” Her eyes were sad as she said this. I should have bear-hugged her and comforted her. But when the girl of your dreams, who you’ve been chasing for years and have finally caught, tells you to make out with her, are you going to tell her you’d rather just hold each other for a while? Why, hell no. I put the truck in park.

Then I put my hands on her face and kissed her. She opened her mouth. Funny that she’d been so unsure about this when we’d first fake dated a couple of weeks ago, but she caught on quickly. Sometimes she even took the lead. Like now. She drew back from the kiss, touched her lips so gently to mine, licked my bottom lip with the very tip of her tongue. A chill ran through me and I shuddered.

She kissed me again. “Mmm,” she said. I thought she was telling me how much she enjoyed it. I agreed completely. When her shoulders shook, I figured out she was crying.

I kissed her cheek. “Hey. Don’t cry.” I couldn’t stand to see her cry. She’d already bawled in the boat when we got together. I’d gotten a little watery-eyed myself, which my brothers loved. It had been such a relief to call her mine after wanting her so long. For the happiest day of my life, the one I’d dreamed about forever, we sure were crying a lot.

As it turned out, we would have good reason.

But then, in the truck, I didn’t know this. I wiped her tears away with my thumb. “What are you crying about?”

“We’re finally together,” she sobbed, “and now we won’t go out for the rest of the summer. My dad will ground me until Labor Day!”

“You don’t know that.” I ran my fingers through her hair. Now it was dark blonde, but as the summer went on, it would turn lighter until the front was almost white, just like every year. “We’ll explain what happened. It was an honest mistake. Don’t cry. Not yet.” She was making me antsier than I let on, though. I pulled away from her, put the truck back in drive, and sped down the road.

“What did happen?” she asked. “Clearly we don’t find each other as exciting as we thought.” I laughed. “I remember you were biting my earlobe—”

“I remember biting your earlobe,” she said dreamily.

“—but sleep finally caught up with me.”

“Me too.” She scooted closer to me on the seat and put her head on my shoulder.

I drove with my left hand and slipped my right arm around her waist. For thirty more seconds, she was my girlfriend.

Finally I parked in her driveway. “I’ll walk you to the d—”

She slammed the passenger door and dashed through the trees to her house. One of her pink flip-flops flew into an azalea and she never slowed down. I don’t know why she was in such a hurry. Seemed to me that 6:01 a.m. was just as grounded as 6:02.

Her father was already yelling at her when he opened the door. His voice faded and the bright rectangle of light shrank as he swung the door closed behind her.

I murmured, “Happy sweet sixteen, Lori.”

I backed down her driveway, drove a few feet, and pulled into my own driveway. My mom must have heard my truck. She was waiting in our own open doorway in her bathrobe with her arms crossed.

Up until the moment I saw her, I’d planned to tiptoe into the house and hope nobody had missed me. It had worked for my brothers before. If I did encounter my parents, I would tell them the truth: Lori and I had fallen asleep, we never meant to be out until morning, and I was sorry.

But there was something about seeing my mother there, arms folded, ready for a fight, that pissed me off. Instead of standing on the porch and apologizing to her, I squeezed past her into the house like nothing was wrong. And I said, “You’re up early.”

She grabbed the back of my neck and pointed me toward the kitchen. “Sssssssit. Down.”

I huffed out a sigh and walked into the kitchen. It was a little early for everyone to be up and getting ready to go to work at the marina down the hill. My dad sat at the table, drinking coffee. He didn’t share Mom’s frazzled appearance, though. I doubt he’d lost much sleep over my status as a missing person. My oldest brother, Cameron, must have been asleep too—he never got up until the very last second—but my other brother, Sean, lounged at the head of the table, smirking at me. I gathered he was still mad at me for nearly breaking his nose when he jumped on me a few nights ago. The swelling had gone down and it seemed to be healing nicely, so I didn’t know what his problem was.

“Sit down,” Mom repeated.

I pulled out a chair and sat. I wanted some of that coffee first, but something told me I should not ask for this right now.

Mom sat directly across from me, where she could vaporize my brain with her stare. “Where were you?”

The fact that I was only two minutes away from home and could see the house the entire time I was gone might have helped me. But I had planned a whole summer of taking Lori back to that spot. I didn’t want to give it away. Sean and Cameron would be lying in wait for us next time, armed with camera phones and cans of whipped cream. I said, “We fell asleep.”

Sean snorted into his coffee.

Mom silenced him with her stare. Then she turned it back on me. “Trevor McGillicuddy called me and woke me up in the middle of the night. Imagine how embarrassed I was that my son had his daughter out at all hours, after he has been so good to us. He did some fancy legal footwork to get Cameron out of that speeding ticket.”

“And his second speeding ticket,” I said.

“And his second speeding ticket,” she acknowledged.

“And he got Sean out of his speeding ticket.” I took the opportunity to remind her how horrible her other sons were. Since I’d been driving for only three weeks, I was still golden, at least in that area.

Sean mimicked me in a bratty tone. “And he got Sean out of his speeding ticket.”

“That is not the point!” Mom yelled. “You expect me to call Lori’s father and tell him you had Lori out until six a.m. because you fell asleep?”

“Well, we did.” That’s all I said, though I wanted to tell her we’d gambled away the night and my granddad’s life savings at the Indian casino in Wetumpka. She was acting like we’d done something that awful.

Judging from the look on her face, you’d think I’d gone ahead and said this. Sean didn’t help by prompting me, “Why’d you fall asleep? What were you doing before that?”

Mom watched me expectantly, as if she wanted to know the answer to that question too, and as if my older brother had just as much right as my parents to interrogate me.

“Nothing,” I said.

Sean laughed.

“Nothing?” Mom yelled.

No, not nothing. The highlight of the night, at least for me, had been when Lori wrestled me down on the seat of the truck, straddled me, held my wrists above my head, and kissed my neck. She’d pretended she’d overpowered me. I could have easily pushed her off me, but I didn’t. It was very sexy. I could still feel her lips on my neck.

God, that had felt good.

“Adam!”

I jumped when Mom hollered at me again. My hand was pressed to my neck where Lori’s lips had been. I put my hand down. “Maybe not nothing, but not what you smutty-minded people are thinking.”

“You just stayed out all night with the girl you’ve had a crush on since you were four,” Mom said, “and nothing happened? What do you take me for, Adam?” I wondered how my mom knew I’d had a crush on Lori for so long. That was creepy. But what I yelled back was, “What do you take me for? What do you think I did to her? You think I’m stupid?”

“No!” Sean gasped.

Normally Mom would have rushed to my defense over that sarcasm from Sean. Of all the things Sean and Cameron picked on me about, my ADHD and my tendency to flunk school because of it was the one topic that was off-limits, at least while Mom was around.

This time she said, “I’m beginning to wonder. Lori’s father wants to ban you and Lori from seeing each other for the rest of your lives.” I said, “He can try.”

“Adam, your father and I want to help you, but we can’t if you don’t help yourself. You’re not doing yourself any favors with that attitude.”

“What attitude? I don’t think I’m being helped right now.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Mom snapped. “I was worried sick last night. Your father was worried sick.” Dad shrugged.

“Trevor was worried sick about his only daughter staying out all night on her sixteenth birthday,” Mom shrieked, “and you don’t even take it seriously.”

“It’s hard to take seriously when I’m in trouble for something I didn’t even do,” I shouted back.

“Son,” my dad said.

“What!”

He stared at me for a few long seconds, letting me know I’d crossed the line, before he answered. “Shut up and listen to your mother.”

“Lori’s father will calm down,” Mom said. “He always does. When that happens, your father and I will talk to him about letting you see Lori again. But in the meantime, you must exercise some restraint. Stay away from her, just as he wants, or we won’t be able to put in a good word for you.”