Maine Squeeze (4 page)

When we pulled up in front of the house it was getting close to seven thirty and dusk was falling, but I immediately spotted Samantha sitting on the porch with Haley.

“Sam!” I closed the car door and ran over to the porch steps. We could unpack the groceries later.

“Colleen!” Samantha jumped up and gave me a big hug. “How's it going?”

“Wow, you look fantastic,” I said, stepping back to admire her. She wore faded stretch boot-cut jeans, boots, and a light-orange T-shirt with cap sleeves that looked great against her dark brown skin. She wore her hair pulled back in a gold barrette at the base of her neck. “Did you get taller over the winter or what?”

“No, you got shorter,” she replied. “It's the heels, of course. Hey, Erica!” Sam quickly hugged Erica, and then Erica hugged Haley.

I ran inside and brought out four glasses and a pitcher of iced tea while Erica put all the cold groceries in the fridge and freezer. Then we all sat on the porch, talking and laughing. It felt exactly like the end of last summer, sort of like no time had elapsed at all. I love that about summer.

Sam and her family had rented a place on the island last summer, after coming the year before that for a shorter vacation and falling in love with the place. They lived in Richmond, Virginia, for the rest of the year, and her parents were both university professors, which gave them the summers off. I've never been to Virginia, but from what Sam has told me, it sounds pretty different from here. I know it's a lot
warmer
, which is why Sam had decided to stay down there for college and attend the University of Virginia. I was kind of envious of that, and planned on visiting her during key months of the year—like February. And March. And April. (It usually doesn't get really warm and springlike here until May.)

Sam and I e-mailed each other once a week, at least, so we knew everything that had been going on over the past year in each other's lives. I knew how she'd done on her college entrance exams, who she'd gone to her prom with, how her parents had taken her cell phone away during finals week, which senior awards she'd won, that she was still addicted to Heath candy bars, and that her parents were spending a week in late August on the island and the rest of the summer researching new books.

So catching up when she got to the island didn't take long. But of course we went over it all again anyway. Sometimes it was hard for us to shut up and let someone else do the talking.

One thing I really like about Sam is that she always speaks her mind. You don't have to worry about where you stand or what she thinks of a person or a situation. She'll tell you. But not in a mean way—she's just very honest and forthright. You can trust her not to lie to you. If you ask her, “Does this shirt look all right?” she might say, “It's perfect,” or she might say, “Not with those pants, no.” And she'd immediately go to your—or her—closet and find something that looked better.

She could even make her Bobb's outfit look okay. And she was such a good server, too. She could remember twenty orders and get all the details right. Her tips always outnumbered mine, but she didn't brag about it.

She was the kind of person who'd pitch in when someone else got slammed with too many tables wanting too many things. And she always tipped out the bussers and dishwashers really well. She was generous to a fault, sort of like Erica, but it was a great fault when you were her friend.

At the end of last summer, Samantha had treated me, Erica, Haley, and some other friends to an all-day sailboat cruise on the ocean. It was something tourists always did, but we never thought of doing it ourselves. For one thing, it was expensive. For another, it was … touristy. It was the equivalent of us tying on plastic lobster-eating bibs and saddling up at picnic tables outside Bobb's for the Friday night early-bird special lobster boil: “Reserve Now—the Early Bird Catches the Lobster!” As if birds caught lobsters. But whatever.

After we got over feeling slightly embarrassed, we had an amazing time, cruising from the island over to and around other islands, making our way along the rocky coast, sitting in the sun drinking spritzers and eating a gourmet lunch while getting what was essentially a tour of our own backyard.

“Genius. Pure genius. You're coming back next year—you
have
to,” Haley had told her—Haley, who'd initially thought the sailboat cruise idea was ludicrous and a waste of time.

I suddenly remembered that Evan had been there on the sailboat, too. I remembered leaning back against him and the wind whipping my hair and him giving me his baseball cap and the sun sparkling on the water and the sound of the hull slicing through the water.

There were so many memories with Evan that I'd been trying to forget over the last year. Fortunately, he wouldn't be around this summer to remind me. Nobody had heard he was coming—not my boss, Trudy; and not his cousin Jake, who he lived with last summer. And especially not
me
. I hadn't heard he was coming—or what he was doing this summer.

Of course, he'd quit writing me back in November. Not that I was feeling angry and bitter about it—at least, not anymore. I was taking the whole fun-while-it-lasted approach. Apparently, Evan was the type of guy who was completely and utterly devoted to you—until suddenly one day he wasn't, and you never heard from him again.

You know that type. A terrible, horrible person.

“So. Now what?” I asked after we'd drained the pitcher of iced tea, the ice in our glasses had melted, and we'd gone through the short versions of all of our lives.

“Now we unpack the rest of the groceries,” Erica said. She had helped me stock up on things at the supermarket before we caught the ferry to the island. We have only a small market here, and it's more expensive, so we'd tried to buy in bulk. “Then we decide what we're grilling for dinner. But first I'd better call my grandparents and tell them I'm here, so they don't worry—and so they don't call my parents and make
them
worry.”

We all filed into the house, and while Erica was on the telephone with her grandparents, Haley, Sam, and I went upstairs. “So, which room did you choose?” I asked Sam as we stood at the top of the stairs.

“The guest room,” she said. “Since I slept in it a few times last summer, it sort of felt like home already.”

“Okay. So that leaves my parents' room open, since Erica won't be here. Maybe one of you guys wants to move in there?”

Wait a second. It was the biggest room in the house, with the best view. Maybe
I
wanted to move in there.

But no, that would be weird. It would have my parents' vibes. Not that there was anything wrong with them, but it would just feel strange, and giving up my room would be strange, too.

“No. Let's just keep this room vacant,” Sam suggested. “That way, when people come to visit they'll have a really nice place to stay.”

“Who's coming to visit?” I asked.

“I don't know. Your brother. My parents. Orlando Bloom.” Samantha smiled.

Haley and I laughed. We'd all thought we saw Orlando Bloom getting off the ferry last year, and had been convinced he was summering somewhere on the island. We rode our bikes all over the place, hung out at the general store, stalked a few B&Bs, did everything we could to find out where he might be staying. But we never spotted Orlando—or his very-good-looking look-alike—again, until someone reported they'd seen him getting back
on
the ferry and leaving the island.

I brushed my hair and headed downstairs to help get dinner ready. I was good at setting the table. I could do that, and dishes, quite well. The rest of the meal should be left to other people with actual skill.

Almost as soon as Erica hung up the phone, promising her grandparents she'd be over when we finished dinner, it rang again. I grabbed it.

“Hey, you're there!” Ben said. “I thought you were going to call when you got home from Portland.”

“I was, I was! But I kind of got caught up in … catching up. You know.” I laughed.

“So how was the drive? Did it go okay? How's Erica?” Ben asked.

“You know, it was fine, but my parents got pretty upset at the airport.” Best to lay it all on my parents. After all, they were in Europe now and couldn't defend themselves. “And then it turns out Erica can't live with us, but that's okay—she's here now, making dinner. I'll take her over to her grandparents' later.”

“So what are you doing tonight?” Ben asked.

“We're just going to eat and hang out,” I said. “I think it's kind of a girls' night thing. But I'll see you tomorrow—after work?”

“Sounds good. Hey, tell Sam I'm looking forward to meeting her, okay?”

“I will. I missed you today. Bye, sweetie!” I clicked off the phone. “That was Ben. He said to tell you he's looking forward to meeting you tomorrow.”

“So what's this Ben guy
really
like?” Sam asked as she chopped vegetables for a salad.

“He's great. We hang out all the time,” Haley said as she got four glasses out of the cabinet. “And he treats Colleen really well. In comparison to certain other boyfriends she's had.”

I groaned. “Did you have to mention him? I've been trying so hard not to think about him.”

“So don't. He's not worth it,” Haley declared. “Ben's taller. And nicer. Sweeter. I like him a lot more than I ever liked Evan,” she said. “And you can actually trust him, too.”

“What? All that and a cute face, too? Sounds too good to be true,” Sam commented. “How did you get so lucky, Coll?”

“I know!” Haley said. “Not that I think Evan was great, but this is a place with a limited population. We get one new, nice, cute guy, and she gets to go out with him.
Again
.”

“Come on!” I laughed. “There are a lot more guys around here. Or at least there will be this summer.”

“And who cares, really? Because it's not all about the guys. In fact, it's not even
half
about them,” Sam declared.

“Yeah. It's about earning tons of money for next year—”

“And hanging out together—”

“And the book club.”

“Of course. We can't forget the book club.”

“When's our first meeting?” Haley asked.

“Friday at three. Of course, just like always,” Sam said with a smile.

Chapter 4

The next morning at ten o'clock, Sam, Erica, and I walked to work together. Erica had come over at nine to make sure Sam and I were awake and getting ready—she had a tendency to look after other people like that.

Sam and I had stayed up so late talking and watching TV the night before that the walk to Bobb's felt a lot longer than a mile to me. I had no energy, which wasn't exactly a good way to start off a forty-plus-hour workweek.

“We should have driven,” I said as we trudged down the road for our first lunch shift of the summer. Bobb's was only open on weekends during the off-season, and wasn't busy enough to hire me for that. It would be hard, getting back into the swing of work again. I felt more like lying in bed until noon, then taking a long, hot shower, then sitting in the sun. Eventually getting around to making something to eat. Meeting Ben when he got through with work. You know.

“We're going to walk to Bobb's all summer. It's our exercise plan, remember?” Sam said. “One of them, anyway.”

“Whose dumb idea was that,” I grumbled.

“Mine,” Sam said. “Thanks.”

“Sorry.” I reached up to push a lock of hair off my cheek. I have these short parts in my hair that are layered, and they insist on escaping barrettes. My hair was shaping up to be a real frizzone that day. Frizzone, by the way, isn't an Italian pastry; it's the name we came up with last summer for out-of-control hair after we kept calling the island the Frizz Zone. In fact, you can pretty much forecast the weather here by what your hair does. It would be humid today, with a chance of rain tonight. Those of us with long-ish, wavy-ish hair were natural-born forecasters.

I'd been working at Bobb's since I was fourteen years old. I started out behind the takeout window, taking and ringing up customer orders. “To go or to eat here?” was the line of that summer. (At the takeout window, “here” meant sitting at a couple of picnic tables right beside the parking lot, so not very glam.) When it was slow, we'd watch people walk up toward the restaurant and we'd bet on whether they were coming in to eat or would get their food to go and sit at the little picnic area.