Unbreak My Heart (12 page)

I took out a red Sour Patch Kid and a green Gummy Bear to show Ethan how soft and gooey the Bears were compared to the Kids. He eventually relented.

And this is how our evening went. From serious to silly, from awkward to so comfortable.

When he left I had this big smile on my face. Things were okay. He’d made it clear that we were
friends.
That was all. Isn’t that what I’d wanted to set straight? Mission accomplished.

I put the CD on the corner of my desk when I got home. I didn’t need to hear it right away, I told myself.

Seven minutes later, I downloaded it to an iPod playlist.

I’d listened straight through twice by the time I fell asleep.

chapter seventeen

I’ve already finished the three books I was allowed to bring in hardcopy form, so I approach my mom about giving up her e-reader for the afternoon. I downloaded fifteen more titles there because, let’s be real, I knew I’d have some downtime out on the water this summer. Getting Mom to let me take the e-reader out in the dinghy, on the other hand, is less of a sure thing.

“I’ll keep it in this plastic bag and I’ll be so, so careful,” I promise her. “Please, I just need some … quiet time.” I glance at my little sister, who’s happily stripping a string cheese down to its last string while she hums a Lady Gaga song.

Mom looks at me sternly, but I can tell she’s cracking.

“Do not splash, put it back in the bag if a big wake is coming, and under no circumstances are you to stand up or shift your weight while you’re reading—just stay still and hold it far away from the water.”

“No problem!” I nod enthusiastically and she hands it over. We’re docked for the day, but even just floating in the dinghy while it’s twenty feet from the boat is a relief. It feels like my own personal island.

I stretch out in the
Sea Ya
for an hour with a life jacket behind my head as a pillow and lose myself in a story about sisters, one of whom may or may not have magical powers. When I feel my eyelids getting heavy, I sink a little deeper into the life jacket and doze off.

Rocking waves wake me up, and I stretch and yawn—it feels like I’ve been out for just five minutes, but the sun has moved, so it was probably at least an hour. I should get back. I sit up and make sure the plastic bag is sealed around Mom’s e-reader. Then I look around. I don’t see
The Possibility
.

I realize that I’ve come untied from the boat (note to self: make Olive study Dad’s copy of
The Complete Book of Knots
a little more closely). No big deal—I’m just across the inlet where the marina is, and I have a small engine.

I’m about to start it up when I hear a choked cry behind me. I turn around, and about twenty feet away, floating in his dinghy by an old fallen tree trunk, is Mr. Townsend. His shoulders are hunched, and he’s looking down at the water. He has a fishing pole by his side, but he’s not actively casting.

I’m about to call out to him, but then I see his back begin to shake, almost like he’s … crying? I hear another big gulp from his direction, and it confirms that he’s definitely in the middle of a weep session.

It’s weird—he seems so big and strong, so boisterous and joyful. What is it that makes a guy like Mr. Townsend, a dad, go off to cry?

I bite my lip. Should I start up the engine now? He’ll probably know I’ve seen him. I slink back down to my below-sightlines position in the boat and stay quiet. I stare at my thighs and see that the sun’s been on them—they’re getting warm and red. That reminds me of another night I wish I didn’t remember. I don’t want to let my thoughts spiral into a bad place; I have to get back to the boat.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t want to embarrass Mr. Townsend, so I recreate the whole scene again where I’m just waking up. From my invisible position, I make a big production of stretching and yawning superloudly, rocking the boat and banging up against the side before I raise my head and look around.

When I pop up again, he’s looking my way with a big smile on his face. He’s also holding his rod and getting ready to cast.

“Mr. Townsend!” I say, acting surprised.

“Hiya, Clem,” he shouts. “Looks like you drifted a little bit far from home.”

“I did,” I say, marveling at how quickly he’s turned from tears to this happy grin. “I guess Olive needs a little more knot practice.”

He chuckles. “Send her over to James anytime—he’s the expert.”

“Will do,” I say, saluting him. Something about being on the water makes you say things like “Will do” and make saluting gestures.

I crank up the engine and motor back to
The Possibility
, feeling good about helping Mr. Townsend avoid embarrassment. I know all about hiding things.

chapter eighteen

Dear Amanda,
Nothing ever really happened between me
and Ethan. It wasn’t a big deal. We just–

You always seemed so secure. Remember, you even
told us
to go to the movies together. It was almost easier for me to justify because you acted so nonchalant …

After that day at Razzy’s, I half convinced myself that Ethan and I were safely on the friendship track and not moving in any inappropriate directions. That way, I didn’t have to feel guilty spending hours messaging him or listening to his mix. I know, it made no sense. He sometimes texted me when I knew he was out with Amanda. So even though we didn’t have another “date” where it was just the two of us, we were still aboard the
Titanic
, heading for the iceberg. But it was worse than that—it was like we could see the looming disaster, or at least I could, but I still wouldn’t turn the ship around.

“Corner!” I shouted as I ran downstairs to the big U-shaped couch in Amanda’s basement.

She quickly slid into the other side. We always grabbed the corners because they’re the best spots. We shared a smile as we got our seats, and then our other friends settled in around us. Ethan sat right between me and Amanda. They held hands. I looked straight ahead at the TV.

Henry chose the movie, so it was an old Spike Lee one—his film studies thing means he’s got to see all the classics. I pretended to mind, but really I didn’t, because a lot of them are classics for a reason, and
Do the Right Thing
is no exception.

But I had trouble concentrating.

“Pass the blanket?” I asked.

I’m always getting cold in other people’s houses. Amanda even had a blue-and-white knit blanket on hand that I thought of as “my blanket” because I used it so much.

She let go of Ethan’s hand, reaching over to the side chair where it hung, and tossed it to me.

“Thanks.” I spread it over my legs. It’s a big blanket so some fell across Ethan.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, I get cold too.”

Spike Lee was arriving at work at the pizza place, and suddenly I felt Ethan’s hand resting on the side of my leg. It wasn’t like that was insanely weird—I had jeans on!—but it was definitely not a friendly resting-my-hand-by-your-leg situation. It was a
romantic
resting-my-hand-by-your-leg situation.

Plus, there was the blanket, so it was also a no-one-else-can-see situation. I sat very still for the next half hour. So did he.

His light touch started to feel really comfortable, almost soothing. I relaxed. This was okay. Maybe he didn’t even know where his hand was. Maybe he thought he was touching a couch cushion.

But then his hand slid up to my thigh. Like,
on top of
my thigh.

I was so surprised, I wasn’t sure what to do. I just stared straight ahead; I could see peripherally that he was doing that, too, pretending like nothing was happening, while I felt this tingling run through me as his hand started to caress my thigh, and it felt like
everything
was happening. But invisibly.

These really loud New York characters were talking. And Henry was laughing. And Amanda was offering people drinks and snacks. And Renee was getting up to go to the bathroom. And Aaron was talking about how Rosie Perez used to be hot. And all this time, Ethan was touching my thigh.

Everyone settled down again and focused on the movie, so I tried to move Ethan’s hand away with my hand—I wasn’t so delusional that I didn’t know what we were doing was totally weird and wrong. But when I gently pushed his hand off my thigh, he held fast to mine, and we ended up holding hands under the blanket.

We sat that way for the rest of the movie, and every once in a while he would move his fingers a little and stroke my palm.

I know I should have snatched it away; I know his girlfriend—my best friend—was three feet to my left. She even turned to him to smile and laugh at the funny parts with the old guys on the street, and he looked right back at her, grinning. My mind was screaming,
We are holding hands!

I gave up on trying to reach over and eat popcorn from the big bowl on the center of the coffee table, because then I would have had to let go of Ethan.

“Did I put too much salt on the popcorn, Clem?” asked Amanda.

“No, I’m just not hungry.”

She gave me a weird look. Normally I can barrel through, like, three large bowls of popcorn by myself. It’s one of those snacks magazines always tell you that you can eat a lot of and it’s still kind of healthy, so I take full advantage.

But that night I hardly ate any at all. I barely moved.

I wrote a journal entry later when I got home:

What am I doing? What is
he
doing? It’s not
even like we were alone—everyone was
right
there
. I know I’m a bad friend. I know I’m doing something terrible. I just don’t know how to stop.

I’m sitting in my cabin, paging through my diary. Looking back at that entry, I can see that it’s a cop-out. People know how to stop—they just
stop
. They stop holding their friends’ boyfriends’ hands under the blanket. It didn’t
have
to happen, even if Ethan wanted it to. I could have taken my hand and moved myself around in a way that he couldn’t really get to me, and he would have had to stare straight ahead at the movie even if he was upset or angry, because he shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing! He shouldn’t have been trying to touch my leg and hold my hand!

What the eff was Ethan thinking?
I may have gone along with everything, but he’s the one who started it. He grabbed my hand at the movies, he made me a playlist, he rubbed my leg under his girlfriend’s freaking blanket!

I slam my journal shut and lie back on my bed in a huff, staring at the ceiling. This isn’t my fault, at least not completely. Does that even matter to Amanda? Does she even care about Ethan’s part in this?

chapter nineteen

“Olive, seriously, stop.” My voice has a hard edge, and my sister hears me this time. She’s been sitting in the cockpit with me while I read, but she has this habit of always moving her feet and it’s driving me insane, especially because her feet keep touching my leg.

“It’s involuntary,” she says.

“I know, I know,” I say.

“Restless Leg Syndrome,” we say in unison. She’s been using this excuse for her frantic, always-moving feet forever. I don’t think she has an official diagnosis, though.

Dad comes up from the cabin with a tray of Saltines and sliced cheddar. It used to be my favorite boat snack, and it’s still Olive’s.

“Yay!” she says, like he just offered her the perfect meal.

“Thanks,” I say, ignoring the tray and turning back to my book, hoping Dad isn’t here to chat. Everywhere I move on this boat, someone follows, and since the day the dinghy got untied, my parents are less inclined to let me use it as a refuge. My little room is the only place where people don’t bother me, but even I’m not such a glutton for punishment that I’m going to miss every sunny day this summer.