Pool Boys (3 page)

“Great! Just so you know, I’m not as good as you are.” Valerie shook her head. “So, go easy on me, okay?”

“What’s the fun of going easy?”

“Touché.” Valerie grinned.

“I’m kidding,” Georgia added, hearing the coolness in her voice.

Valerie bit her lip, and then blurted, “Is this some kind of test? Because I feel like I’m failing.”

Georgia felt a pang of guilt. What was her problem? Valerie had no idea about the history between Ethan and her, or of the history between Georgia and her friends. Valerie was just trying to be polite. Not to mention brave. She was still an outsider—even if she was a budding supermodel with a Prince Turbo Shark Oversize racket. And if somebody like
that
could let down her guard in front of a complete stranger, then so could Georgia.

“My fault,” Georgia said. “School is over, so no tests, right?” She smiled weakly. “Lame joke. Forget it. Charlotte’s the funny one, in case you haven’t already guessed…uh,
look, it’s really cool of you to come out here and introduce yourself and say all those things about my playing. Seriously. I appreciate it.”

Valerie tilted her head. “Whoa,” she marveled.

“Whoa, what?”

“I was just wondering…is everyone here as nice as you?”

Georgia laughed. “Nope. I’m the only one.”

“Then I’ll be sure to stick close to you.”

By the time the dining room opened for lunch at 11:45, Caleb Ramsey had reached the inevitable conclusion: There was no way he would lose his virginity this summer. Not a chance in the world. He was doomed to three and a half months of celibacy.
Again.

He didn’t get it. (Well, he got it on some level: He was pale and scrawny and commented on stuff that was probably best left uncommented on, but so did a lot of other people.) But he wasn’t such a bad guy. For instance, he’d never spiked the Midsummer Ball punch with LSD. No, that would be Mr. Farnsworth, back in
’75.
And true, Mr. Farnsworth had since grown up to be Brooke’s stodgy father—but still. In his disco heyday thirty years ago, he’d probably slept with half the Silver Oaks women. Free love, baby! Then he’d married Brooke’s mom. Now he ran a hedge fund. Whatever
that
was. Lucky jerk.

Caleb slumped down on a stool at the deserted dining room bar, turning his back on the photos that adorned the wall. He’d seen enough. What was he even hoping to find there? Every single member of Silver Oaks—officially
inducted or not-quite-inducted, newborn or deceased, dating all the way back to 1922—just kept smiling lifelessly at the untouched linen and polished silver, as they always had. And in a matter of minutes, those empty tables would be packed with those very same smiling faces (the living ones, anyway), fresh from the courts or golf course or pool.

The saddest part was that Caleb had studied the pictures with as open a mind as possible.
Who here is a possibility?
He wasn’t averse to going the
American Pie
route, either, i.e., hooking up with a woman his mother’s age. But most of those women were plastic surgery disasters. They all bore a freakish resemblance to Mick Jagger, with gaunt, lined faces and rubbery lips—
blech.
And the girls his age were out of the question, too. Okay, he
had
lingered on that photo of Brooke by the pool, taken last summer, in her silver bikini.
Hey, why don’t I ask Brooke over the next time my folks are out of town?
But that just gave him the creeps. It would be like hooking up with his sister. And Georgia? She was an inch taller than he was. Plus, she was obviously still hung up on Ethan. She would swat Caleb with her racket if he suggested as much.

Which left Charlotte.

In truth, Charlotte was the only real consideration. She’d pulled off the fantastically impossible stunt of growing up with Caleb—
and
making out with him—and still not crossing the lines of incestuous weirdness (Brooke) or Amazonian impossibility (Georgia). She was a special case.

But she would probably just crack jokes the whole time.

The new chick, Valerie what’s-her-face, was obviously out of his league. She was out of Brad Pitt’s freaking league. But hey, things could be worse. After all, there was a kind of nobility in preserving one’s virginity.

Caleb didn’t want to be noble, though. He wanted to get laid.

“Hey, you want to hear something funny, kid?” Jimmy the Bartender asked.

Caleb glanced up. He must have been even more despondent than he realized. He hadn’t even noticed the grizzled, grinning Jimmy come in from the kitchen.

“Sure, Jimmy,” Caleb said. “I’d love to hear something funny.”

“A dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s mouth,” Jimmy remarked. “Did you know that? It’s safer to kiss a dog! Hah!”

Caleb blinked. “Nope. Can’t say that I knew that.”

“My son the newspaper man told me that. Pretty nuts.”

Somehow, even though Jimmy the Bartender was significantly older, wiser, and just plain weirder than ninety-nine percent of the people he served or worked with, he still was called “Jimmy the Bartender”—and that had always bothered Caleb. All the other staff members were known as Mr. This or Ms. That. (Even Mr. Henry, the creepy maintenance guy.) And the unfair part was that Jimmy was one of the few adults at Silver Oaks who was truly worthy of respect.

“So why the long face, kid?” Jimmy asked. He strapped
on his apron and began polishing the bar glasses. “It’s the first day of the new season. Summer’s here!”

“I know. That’s why I have the long face.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does the stuff you said about the dog,” Caleb said.

“You got me there, kid. Hey, listen. I did you a favor.”

Caleb frowned. “You did?”

Jimmy sauntered back into the kitchen through the pair of swinging doors. A moment later he reappeared, bearing a heaping plate of food: the Silver Oaks Club Sandwich, neatly cut into quarters, with a side of fries and a little dish of ketchup. It was Caleb’s favorite meal—indeed the very meal he’d been about to order. Nothing drowned sorrow and self-pity better than a triple-decker of turkey, bacon, and mayonnaise.

“What’s
this
for?” Caleb asked.

“Well, I saw you loitering in here for the past half hour, and I knew what you were gonna order anyway, so I thought I’d beat the lunch rush.” Jimmy winked and went back to polishing the glasses. “I didn’t make a mistake, did I?”

“Are you kidding?” Caleb shoved a fry into his mouth. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re the best tipper here. Nobody else ever tips. They just sign for everything. You’re gonna send my kids to college.”

“Aren’t your kids, like, thirty years old? Your son’s a newspaper man.”

“Okay, my grandkids.” Jimmy poured a glass of Coke and placed it beside Caleb’s plate.
“Bon appétit.”

A hand clapped down on Caleb’s shoulder.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” Ethan said, slouching beside him. He was flushed and his tennis whites were nearly soaked through. He nodded to Jimmy. “A glass of water, please, when you have a second? Thanks. I’m totally wiped.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Look at you,” he joked. “Some tennis pro.”

“Seriously, bro,” Caleb agreed. “You really should keep in shape over the winter. Self-improvement. That’s the ticket.”

Ethan glared at him. “Thanks. I appreciate the advice.”

Jimmy placed a glass of water in front of Ethan, and then headed back to the kitchen. “Enjoy, ladies!” he called over his shoulder. The doors swung shut behind him.

Ethan laughed.

“I’m going to have that man fired for insubordination,” Caleb pronounced, in an uncanny imitation of his own father. “So what’s up, Brennan? How’s the first day of the new season? You think Georgia and that new chick are ever gonna stop hogging the courts?”

“Why the sudden interest in Georgia?” Ethan asked, frowning.

“You mean, aside from the fact that I’ve known her since she was born?” Caleb replied dryly. “Don’t worry. I’m the one guy here who poses absolutely no threat
to you in terms of the opposite sex. Actually, I was more interested in Valerie. Not that I’d have a chance. Want a fry?”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “No, thanks. But do me a favor? Drop the insecure act. It gets annoying after a while.”

Caleb grinned. “I was just telling Charlotte the same thing.”

“You were?” Ethan scooped up his glass of water, draining most of it in one long gulp and then wiping his mouth with his arm. “Why? Did you ask her to the Midsummer Ball?”

Caleb laughed, surprised. “The Midsummer Ball? I keep forgetting that you’ve only worked here two summers. Nobody thinks about the ball, you know, until after July Fourth, at least—”

“Oh, God, no,” Ethan muttered, his eyes widening. “It’s her. Gotta run.”

All at once, Ethan was a blur of motion, gobbling up a handful of Caleb’s fries, draining his glass of water, and snatching up his tennis racket. Caleb had never seen the guy move so fast, not even out on the courts. Ethan made a swift beeline toward the glass doors that opened onto the pool patio, and was gone.

Caleb turned toward the main dining hall entrance.
Ah
…there she was, Mrs. Eliza von Klaus (she’d kept her last name after the divorce)—in all her nipped, tucked, floral-Gucci-sundress glory. And she’d brought Stella, the family’s stinky Labrador. No wonder Ethan had bolted.
Why wasn’t the “No Pets” policy ever enforced? That dog wasn’t just a menace. That dog was
evil.
It was like something out of a Stephen King novel. It drooled, it stank…and, well, here it came.

“Well, if it isn’t Caleb
Ramsey!”
shrieked Mrs. von Klaus. She sauntered forward and pecked Caleb on the cheek. “How are you, dear? It’s been
eons.”

Caleb mustered a pained smile. “Actually, I saw you last weekend.”

“Oh, right!” She laughed and clamped a bony, manicured hand over her mouth. “Sorry, dear. I’ve been a little out of sorts lately.”

“It’s okay. I think we all have.”

“You say the funniest things!” she murmured. She grasped his shoulder. “Listen, sweetie, I’m trying to find my daughter. I want a quick word with her before I change for tennis. I’ve got a one o’clock lesson with your friend Ethan Brennan.”

Caleb glanced toward the patio. “I think Charlotte’s out by the—”

“Down, Stella!” Mrs. von Klaus yelled. “Down!”

Caleb turned back toward his plate. Stella’s snout was now resting comfortably on Caleb’s french fries, the dog’s tentacle-like tongue furiously licking at the Silver Oaks Club Sandwich. Mrs. von Klaus yanked Stella away—but not before the beast managed to pluck a strip of bacon and gobble it down.

“I’d better get him out of here,” Mrs. von Klaus grunted,
dragging the dog toward the patio doors. Stella’s paws scratched the wooden floor. He started whining. Apparently, he felt robbed. Caleb could relate. “I can find Charlotte myself!” she added shrilly. “Don’t worry about me, Caleb!”

Caleb opened his mouth. But before he could reply, she slammed the patio doors behind her. He let out a long sigh. “Okay, Mrs. von Klaus,” he told the deserted dining room. “I won’t worry.”

He began to debate how to leave the plate of barely touched food without offending Jimmy (probably best just to bolt, Ethan-style)—when the patio doors burst back open, and in strolled Marcus Craft.

Crap
, Caleb thought.

If Caleb clung to any impossible dream of losing his virginity this summer, that dream had just died. This guy was good-looking to the point of being unreal. He shouldn’t even
be
here. This was Connecticut. He should be in Hollywood, starring on
The
O.C. It wasn’t fair.

Marcus’s lifeguard shift was over; he’d wiped the zinc from his nose and changed into his Silver Oaks polo shirt, shorts, and pool sandals—and Caleb could just imagine all the awful, embarrassing comments all the women would make, young or old…Actually, best not to go there. He’d gone there when Ethan had showed up two years ago. And all Caleb had gotten out of
that
was a summer of bitterness and angst, listening to the Silver Oaks women fawn over the “handsome new guy.” Even worse, Ethan
hadn’t turned out to be shallow or stupid or mean, so Caleb couldn’t even hate him.

Maybe Marcus would turn out to be cool and funny, too. That would be just perfect. Yep. In that case, Caleb might have to run away and join a traveling circus.

“Hey,” Marcus said. “You’re Carter, right?”

Caleb laughed in spite of himself. “Caleb,” he corrected.

Marcus pulled up a stool and sat beside him, eyeing his plate. “Hey, dude, can I ask you something? Do you go to Old Fairfield Country Day?”

“Uh…yeah. Why?”

“Why do you call it the Tombs?” Marcus asked.

“My friend Charlotte made it up.” Caleb hesitated. “It’s because of a deep, dark secret. The school is built on an ancient Native American burial ground.” He lowered his voice and hissed, “There’s a curse on it! It’s haunted!”

“Oh.” Marcus glanced around the empty room, as if he hadn’t heard. Either that, or he longed to be somewhere else. Caleb couldn’t exactly blame him.

“Nah, I’m just kidding,” Caleb said. “It was actually built on a toxic waste dump.” He paused. Still no response. “Kidding again! See, Charlotte came up with the name because we went on this field trip to Washington, DC, last year. We got separated from the group, and we wound up at this really strange bar called The Tombs. And they let us in, even though we’re underage. And it was
filled with a bunch of college kids who looked exactly like everybody you see on those Young Republican websites—”

“Charlotte?” Marcus interrupted, finally paying attention. “The weird redhead?”

Caleb laughed stiffly. “The what?”

“You know. The chick with the flat chest.”

Caleb didn’t answer. For a second, he wondered what it would feel like to punch Marcus in his upturned nose.

Marcus didn’t seem to notice, however. He pointed to Caleb’s sandwich. “You gonna eat that?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, see, employees get a fifty percent discount on meals. But if you aren’t hungry, I’ll have it. That way I get to eat for free. I’m just asking. You know, if you aren’t gonna touch it.” Marcus glanced up at him.

Caleb smiled broadly. “Be my guest,” he said.

“What’s so funny?” Marcus demanded.

“Nothing,” Caleb said. “Inside Silver Oaks joke.”

“There seem to be a lot of inside jokes around here,” Marcus mused.

“I guess there are. It’s that kind of place.”

“Figures,” Marcus said.

And with that, the New Sex God of Silver Oaks shoved the sandwich that Stella had sampled right into his mouth, without even so much as a thank-you. And in spite of Caleb’s urge to gag, he began to feel better. Maybe this summer wouldn’t be so terrible after all. It might very well
turn out to be the best Silver Oaks summer ever. Marcus Craft
wasn’t
another Ethan Brennan.

Caleb clapped Marcus on the back and rummaged through his bathing suit pocket, fishing out a soggy twenty-dollar bill, which he promptly slapped down on the mahogany bar. It was Jimmy’s tip, very well deserved. And then he marched out the patio doors into the chilly June sunshine.