Golden (24 page)

Trevor turns to me. “You wanna talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About whatever's bugging you. Kat, that journal, this trip . . .”

“No. Thank you.”

“All right,” he says. He sits back next to me like he's ready to settle in and get comfortable, which strikes me as funny since this bench is about the furthest thing from comfortable I can imagine.

I set the journal down and tuck my legs up under me. “Thank you for sticking around. You didn't have to. Kat's probably more fun right now.”

“I'm good here,” he says, and he leans his head back on the bench.

We're quiet, which I guess is my fault since I said I didn't want to talk about anything, but now the silence feels too heavy, and actually, I do want to talk about it, because I have no idea what just happened with Kat.

“I don't understand what her problem is, you know?” I say it more to the sky than to Trevor. “One second she wants me to ‘take chances,' and ‘go on adventures,' and ‘seize the day,' ”—I notch angry air quotes around each of the phrases—“and when I finally decide to, she could care less. She'd rather go spend the day at the beach. What the hell?” I stand up and kick a rock without taking my eyes off the gallery, just in case. I shake my head and
sit back down. “I can't figure her out right now.”

“She's scared,” Trevor says, matter-of-factly.

I scoff. “Kat's never been afraid of anything in her life.”

“Yeah, I think that's kind of a front.” He peels a curl of paint from the bench and flicks it.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “Back at the rest stop, when you guys were fighting. You sounded mad, but she sounded worried.”

“You heard that whole thing?” I reach back for what exactly we said, and hope at the same time, it wasn't too much.

“Not the whole thing,” he says. “Just the tail end of it.” A little smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, and he looks away. We fall quiet again, and now I'm sure he heard the whole thing.

“I get it,” he says. “Why she's worried. You guys are like a team. The only thing she ever talks to me about is you.”

A heavy dose of guilt hits me along with his words. I'm the one breaking up the team by leaving. “So what am I supposed to do? Not go? I can't stay at home. I'm done there. And she won't come with me, I've tried.”

Trevor thinks about it a moment, and though I'm determined not to take my eyes off the gallery, they drift back to his and watch as they run over the endless green hills in the distance. It startles me when they meet mine as he speaks.

“Maybe just . . . tell her that. Before it's too late and you guys misunderstand each other and make all kinds of wrong assumptions like girls always do.” That right there catches me. And the way his eyes hold mine when he says it. I swear
they flash with some sort of double meaning, like Kat's not the only thing he's talking about.

“I bet she'll come around if you do,” he adds. “Just tell her, straight out . . . how you feel.” He doesn't look away, and neither do I, and all of a sudden I'm positive we're not talking about Kat anymore.

“Oh, yeah? You have a lot of experience with that? Being straightforward?”

He grins. “I haven't been anything
but
with you for the last six years.”

I nearly choke on the laugh that rises, sudden and nervous, in my throat. We've always walked the line between being genuine and joking, and right now I can't tell which side of it he's on. I decide to bring us back to joking, where it's safe. “
Really?
So had I ever taken you up on the art closet thing, it would've lasted less than four minutes?”

Now he laughs. “No. That was just an appeal to your practical, nonditching ways. I'd take my time with you. I
have
taken my time with you.”

I open my mouth but no words come out. No joke or sarcastic remark. He's stunned me silent, and what makes it worse is that though I can feel how ridiculous I must look with my mouth hanging wide open like that, I can't seem to close it.
He's taken his time?
Flirting and joking around for six years could qualify, I guess. But still. He's had plenty of girls to keep him busy in the meantime. He hasn't exactly waited around for me.

I'm about to say so, but I think better of it. And then because I'm feeling brave, but not brave enough to make a
real first move, I keep my eyes on his and say, “I wish everyone would say how they really feel. In plain words.”

I throw it out like a challenge. An invitation to cross the line, like Julianna had said, between something and nothing, or before and after. And then I panic inside, but I don't look away, and neither does Trevor, and I know we're
right
there. So close it would only take a second to close up the space between us and tell him how I really feel without needing any words at all. I want to lean in and just kiss him like I didn't do that day in my car. Kiss him like I've been telling myself I didn't want to for just as long as he's maybe been waiting for me to do it. I swear he's thinking the same thing, because the air between us is charged with more than just the hint of a storm.

A smile breaks over his lips, and he looks down at his lap, almost laughing to himself.

“What?”
I snap out of it, feeling fluttery and defensive. He shakes his head, laughs some more. “Oh my God,
what?
What did I say that's so funny?”

Trevor gets a hold of himself. “Nothing, just the straightforward thing.” He smiles. “You should try it some time—being honest about what
you
want.” His eyes run over me, searching for a reaction. “Or maybe you're still not sure.”

Indignation drops my jaw this time. I want to come back with something—an argument, a joke, a pointed comment about how maybe he's not sure either because he could've kissed me just as easily. What
is
it with him?

Trevor stands slowly, and in that motion, heads off any response from me. “Anyway . . . you wanna get some ice
cream? I think it might be the only thing they sell to eat in this town.”

“No. Thanks.” I shake my head and focus all of my attention on the door of the gallery.

He glances over at it, then back to me. “Finding her means a lot to you, huh?”

I look at the journal in my lap, fight the urge to trace her name with my fingers. “Yeah. I don't know why. It probably seems stupid to even hope.”

“No, it doesn't,” Trevor says. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “It'd be like a movie. Like one of those chick flicks. If you find her, it means all those things are out there to believe in—true love, and fate, and all that.”

I don't know what to do with this, what he just said. I search his face for any trace of teasing, but there's none. He just looks at me like it's the simplest thing in the world to understand. He put into words something I didn't even know I thought, but as soon as he said it, I knew it couldn't be any more true. That's exactly it. If I could actually find Julianna, and tell her about Orion and the café, and her painting, it would mean something. If I could get her to go back for him, to find him where he went back to find her, it would mean things like that really were possible. True love, meant to be, fate, destiny, serendipity, kismet. They're all big, romantic words. Words saved for movies and books and fiction. Not for real life. In real life parents get divorced, and people live unfulfilled lives, and love goes unrequited, and there are no second chances, or do-overs, or perfect moments.

“Am I wrong?” Trevor asks me.

“No, no . . . I just . . . how did you know that? I don't even think I knew that, but it's true.”

He smiles. “I have three older sisters, Frost. I've seen a lot of chick flicks against my will. Everyone wants the people to end up together in the end. It's human nature. The funny thing is, you always know they're going to. You just never know how.”

I look down at the journal. “That's the best part. The how.”

Again we're quiet, but this time there's no tension. It feels like we've just agreed on something. Trevor looks from me to the gallery and back again. “So how 'bout this?” He reaches down, and I'm surprised when he takes my hand, but I let him pull me up from the bench so we stand facing each other.

“I'm willing to bet that we can walk around this entire town—and not lose sight of that gallery,” he says.

I glance over at it, then sweep my eyes up and down the empty street. He's right. And we're holding hands, and his grip is firm, and I don't want to let go. “All right,” I say, trying to hide a smile. “Twist my arm.”

Instead, he squeezes my hand, and we walk, knowing where we're going, just not sure about how we'll get there.

“So all who hide too well away

Must speak and tell us where they are.”

—“REVELATION”

In the space of an hour we've managed to tour the entire “town” of Harmony without ever taking our eyes off the gallery, and not one person has come in or out of it. After stopping by the old creamery for ice cream, we found a closed saloon, an open wine-tasting room that does, in fact, check IDs, a wedding chapel, and a glass blowing studio full of beautiful, swirled “tobacco” pipes hand blown by an aging hippie who didn't bother to pull his wild gray hair back into a ponytail. Apparently this is one of those places that people only come to for art, drinking, smoking, and getting married.

By the time we finish our lap, the clouds have multiplied
and deepened to an ominous shade of gray. We sit back down on the bench, and the easy talking and laughing of our walk subsides into quiet. I check my phone for the millionth time. No missed calls. Not from my mom, which is a good thing, but not from Kat either, which worries me a little. It's late afternoon now, and I would've thought that even if she were mad at me, she would've called or come back by now.

My hopes lift a bit at the sound of a car coming from the direction of the highway, but when it makes the turn onto the main street, I see it's just a beat-up pickup truck. The truck slows and comes to a stop, and a man and a woman get out and begin unloading the back. They take out one of those fold-up tables and a few chairs, then begin to cover the table with cardboard cases full of oranges and avocados. In the next few minutes several other trucks and cars pull up, all of them setting up makeshift produce stands.

“Guess Harmony has a farmers' market too,” I say to Trevor.

He's eyeing a truck that arrived towing a large, half barrel that's now sending wood smoke drifting in our direction. “More importantly, they have barbecue.”

We watch as the empty main street of the town becomes an outdoor country market filled with citrus and olive oil, avocados and honey-filled mason jars in flavors like lavender and orange blossom. Other cars begin to pull up, and families with strollers and people toting reusable shopping bags fill the street. A music trio sets up near our bench and a woman wearing a long skirt and Birkenstocks tests the microphone while the two guys who are with her tune their guitars. In no time the ghost town we've spent the afternoon walking
around becomes a bustling outdoor market filled with live music, barbecue smoke, and kids running around with painted faces and cotton candy.

“Wow,” Trevor says. “Who knew?”

“Really.” I scan the crowd, being careful to keep the gallery in my sights. “Where did all these people just come from?”

Trevor shrugs. “There're all kinds of little towns nearby. Maybe this is what they all do on Mondays. Wanna check it out?”

“Sure.” I stand, wanting to find a place closer to the gallery now that there are so many people milling around. As we walk, I scan for blond hair and come up with matches in every direction. It makes me nervous as I search each of their faces for some trace of the girl whose journal I'm still holding. I want to think that I would recognize her right away, but the truth is, ten years is a long time, and she could be any one of these people walking around me. She could have a child with her, or be strolling down the street holding hands with a new love. There's nothing that says she'll be alone. Or easy to recognize.

“You wanna stick close to the gallery?” Trevor asks. His eyes run over the people we pass too, and it makes me feel good that both of us are looking for her.

I nod and we duck between two booths selling the same assortment of oranges, lemons, and avocados. It's getting harder to make out people's faces in the dusky light, so camping out in front of the gallery seems the safest bet. We stand in front of the window, hands in our pockets, with nothing else that we can really do except wait.

Inside the gallery a few people mill about, and I see that Ashley has put out wine and a cheese platter. She's standing in front of the ocean painting, having an animated, one-sided conversation with a woman who holds a glass of wine in one hand and a cracker in the other and doesn't seem to be listening.