So Over It (5 page)

“I’m sure they know other people,” Papa said. “They work, they go to church.”

“What I meant is they don’t have any
friends
. That’s why it’s so perfect that they’d move in just as Skylar comes to stay.”

“Abigail Marie!” Dad boomed.

“Coming, coming.”

“Come
now
. Everyone’s waiting on you.”

“Oh, don’t bother her, Paul,” Grammy said. When her voice took on that frosty quality, she reminded me of Mom. Grammy and Papa had never liked Dad much. His eloping with their college-aged daughter had turned them off, no matter how rich and successful he’d turned out to be. I don’t know if they knew Mom was pregnant with me when they got married. I’d only found out in January.

Abbie dropped Owen’s bouncy seat to the floor space between us and slid into the empty chair beside me. Odd that Grammy hadn’t flanked me with the boys to better my chances.

“Let’s pray,” Papa said, holding out his hands.

My stomach lurched as I remembered—they held hands when they prayed. In general, I wasn’t much of a toucher, and that especially applied when it came to prayer. The few times I’d gone to youth group, they made us hold hands when we prayed and it always felt flat-out awkward to me. And with Grammy seating me next to Justin . . .

I sucked it up and laid my hand out there for him to take. As he gingerly placed his hand on top of mine, his cheeks pinkened, which I had to admit was kinda cute.

When Papa finished praying, Abbie slid her phone onto my lap. A text message from Chris filled the screen:
Have
your sis call my bro. His pining is driving me crazy.

I shoved the phone away and helped myself to the fish. “Everything smells great, Grammy,” I said with a big smile. I had only two months to get myself over Connor. I couldn’t afford to be slowed down by contact with him.

By the time we got to dessert, I felt like a contender on a really lousy reality show. Justin and I said very little to each other because Grammy did all the talking for us.

“Skylar, Justin’s working at Kiahuna Plantation. And he’s studying hotel management.”

“Justin, Skylar thinks she should go back to Kansas in August for school. I’ve been telling her what a wonderful education she can get at UH. Don’t you agree?”

“Justin, I don’t think Skylar’s ever been on a surfboard. Isn’t that right, honey?”

I swallowed my spoonful of chocolate pudding. “Uh, no, I haven’t.”

“Don’t you boys surf?” Grammy asked with an innocent glance at them.

“Every morning,” Chase barely managed to get out before Grammy said, “I see them head down to the beach every morning. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind teaching you.”

“I think learning to surf would be awesome,” Abbie said as she stabbed at her pudding. She’d grown testier with each passing minute at the dinner table. What was up with her tonight?

“I’m sure we could teach both of you,” Justin said.

Grammy—whose face could never conceal her emotions—seemed torn about this. I imagine she felt Abbie, being a mother, shouldn’t bother with frivolous activities like surfing.

“That’d be great,” I said before Grammy had the chance to say something hurtful to Abbie. But it didn’t keep Abbie from stomping off to our room a few minutes later when Owen needed his diaper changed.

Mom and I exchanged a look across the table, and for about the millionth time I wondered if life would be easier or harder without me at home. But of course I couldn’t just hang around the house forever because Abbie had a baby, right?

After dessert, as I carried my plate into the kitchen, Grammy practically shoved me away from the sink. “No, you go relax with our guests. You shouldn’t have to work your first night here.”

“We gotta get going, Mrs. Ka’aihue,” Justin said with a glance at his watch. “There’s this thing at the church—”

Grammy hustled over. “You’re leaving already?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a men’s group thing.”

Lucky for me. Otherwise Grammy would be pushing me out the door. After a lifetime of Mom’s hands-off parenting, could I handle being smothered by Grammy for the next two months? Or possibly longer?

“Nice to meet you all,” Chase said. He glanced around. “Tell Abbie we said bye.”

“Yeah, I will.”

Chase strode to the door, seeming grateful to escape, but Justin lingered near me. “Nice meeting you.”

“You too.” I smiled, hoping it came across as friendly rather than flirtatious. The last thing I wanted was for Justin to think I’d somehow been involved in or encouraged this crazy setup of Grammy’s. “Guess I’ll be seeing you around a lot this summer.”

He nodded. “We’ll go surfing.”

“Sounds good.”

With that, he said one more thank you to Grammy and walked out the door.

“Isn’t he nice?” Grammy said as I returned to the kitchen. She no longer seemed worried about me working on my first night.

I hesitated. “They both seem nice.” I really, really hoped she’d drop the whole thing.

She did. For five minutes.

“Oh no!” Grammy dangled a key ring. “Skylar, it looks like Justin’s left his car keys. Be a dear and run these over to him, would you?”

I bit back a groan. “Sure.” I glanced at Abbie and rolled my eyes.

“Yeah,
you’ve
got such problems,” she said.

Grammy looked awfully pleased with herself as I took the keys from her hands.

“Ten bucks says she lifted these off him,” I murmured to Mom as I walked by.

Mom smiled. “No bet.”

I crossed the poorly paved road to the little yellow house. Only the screen door was shut, which left me in the awkward position of either ringing the doorbell or calling inside to them. While weighing my options, Justin approached the door, presumably on his way to his church function.

“Hi,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed to be standing there. I held out Justin’s keys. “You left these.”

“Did I?” Justin patted his pants pockets, as if his keys would be there. “Weird.”

With my errand complete, I should’ve turned and walked back to Grammy and Papa’s house. For some reason, I felt compelled to say, “Sorry about my grandma tonight. About the obvious setup.”

Justin grinned. “No big deal.”

“She totally sprung it on me. I swear.”

“It’s fine. When she invited us over, I thought it might be something like that.” Justin twirled his keys around his finger. “We really should go surfing, though. Not just because of your grandma.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said as I backed down the walkway. “I’ll be around.”

I felt him watch me walk away and tingled a little with excitement. Not about Justin necessarily, but the possibility that this could happen. That I really might get over Connor Ross.

5

After my week of sun and surf, I had no intentions of leaving Hawaii. Ever.

The breeze kicked up and I closed my eyes, savoring the warm wind on my face. If only my parents had chosen to raise us here. What a different person I’d be—laid back and stress free. And I’d know how to surf instead of looking like a bumbling moron on the board.

“There’s my favorite mainlander.”

I smiled and opened my eyes—Justin. “You’re calling
me
a mainlander, Mister Cumberland, Maryland?”

His grin broadened. “Well, I
have
lived here a week longer than you.”

“True.”

Justin dropped his board and sprawled out in the sand. “The waves were amazing. You should’ve come with us.”

I pursed my lips, thinking of my first and only day out with Justin and Chase. At youth group, I’d always felt stupid doing stuff like balloon soccer and amoeba races, but the shame of playing those games was nothing compared to my lack of talent for surfing. I couldn’t stand on the board. I could barely even hang on when a wave came. And let me just say that whoever designed my adorable black-and-white two-piece didn’t have surfing in mind.

“I’d like to see my nineteenth birthday, thank you very much.” I lay back on the sand as well. I might regret it later, but at the moment I didn’t care about getting grit in my hair. “Any big wipeouts?”

“None I want to admit.” Justin blinked at the vast blue sky. “I so don’t want to go to work. I should’ve moved somewhere rainy and depressing.”

I dug my toes into the warm sand and thought about thunderstorms. I liked thunderstorms. Did they have them in Hawaii?

“You won’t stay forever,” Madison had told me when I said good-bye. “You need seasons.”

Did I? Would endless days of sunshine and warm, salty breezes eventually drive me crazy?

“You think you’ll miss seasons?” I asked Justin.

He turned to me, squinting. “The day I complain about missing winter, I give you permission to shoot me.”

I smiled. “Yeah, me too. Although I like fall. And it’s fun to see everything coming back to life in the spring.”

“Sadly, you have to have winter to have spring.”

A memory came unbidden. January—Connor and I freezing on the bleachers of the baseball field where we’d first met. My hands had tingled with cold, and I kept flexing my toes to make sure they hadn’t fallen off. But then Connor had told me how beautiful I’d become inside, and it had warmed me through.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” I propped myself up and dusted the sand from my back. “Just thinking about home.”

“I did too my first week,” Justin said. “A lot. About my parents, my little church, my”—he swallowed—“ex-girlfriend. But now . . .” He shrugged as best he could lying down. “This feels more like home and less like vacation. This is my real life.”

And it could be mine too. If that’s what I wanted.

“I’ve gotta get to work.” He didn’t move a muscle.

“That’ll involve standing.”

“Right.” Justin eased himself off the sand. It coated his wetsuit but brushed off easily. “You around tonight?”

My heart fluttered—was he about to ask me out? “Guess so.”

“Maybe I’ll see you. Later.”

“Later,” I muttered, hating the way tears sprang to my eyes.

It’s not like I was into Justin, but I could really use a distraction of some sort. As eager as I’d been to get to Hawaii, it never dawned on me that I didn’t really have anything to
do
here. Other than sit around and think about life back in Kansas, the life I wanted to escape. How long would it be before I could go even five minutes without thinking of stupid Connor?

When I returned to Grammy and Papa’s house almost a half hour later, I found Abbie on the scraggly front lawn. She’d donned her sunglasses and blue bikini and stretched out on a blanket in the sun. She’d spread part of it in the shade as well, where Owen lay on his back, appearing to soak in the world around him.

She propped herself up as I approached. “Justin just left for work.”

“I saw him down at the beach.” I dropped next to Owen. He grinned at me and pumped his legs. “Hi, pal.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised by all this,” Abbie said in an airy voice as she settled back onto the blanket. “You’ve always made friends quickly with guys.”

“What am I supposed to do? Ignore him?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what? He lives across the street. I’m new. They’re new.”

She laughed. “Skylar, it was just a joke. Lighten up.”

I stroked Owen’s mound of soft hair. “It’s not my fault two guys moved in. They could’ve just as easily been girls.”

“I don’t notice you talking to Chase very often.”

“He’s got a girlfriend.”

The corners of Abbie’s mouth quirked up.

“And what I mean by that is he’s busier.”

Still Abbie smiled.

I groaned. “Shut up.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Well, stop thinking what you’re thinking.”

“You’re so touchy. If a guy like Justin noticed me, I’d be way more excited than you are.” Her face flickered with a frown. “Of course, we both know my days of that are over.”

“Guys notice you. Hello, Chris Ross? Your boyfriend?” “That’s because he knew me before. If he met me now, he’d never be interested.” Abbie squeezed one of Owen’s fat bare feet. “But that’s okay.”

I drew him into my lap. “Why don’t you go hang at the beach for a while? I can watch Owen.”