I’m suddenly aware of the sun beating down on me and the parched feeling in the back of my throat. I hesitate for a second, because obviously I’m not twenty-one, but there’s a sign posted advertising virgin drinks, and there are a few kids my age sitting on the lime-green bar stools.
I take a seat in one of the middle chairs, and the bartender comes over immediately. He’s a couple of years older than me, and he’s wearing a tight black T-shirt that has Siesta Key Beach Club written in tiny white letters on one side. “Hi,” he says, flashing me a smile. “What can I get you?”
“What do you recommend?” I ask.
“Hmm.” He strokes his chin and pretends to be thinking about it. He looks me up and down, like I’m a puzzle that needs to be solved. “For you? A pineapple mango slush.”
“Yum,” I say, giving him a smile. “Sounds perfect.”
I watch as he cuts up the pineapple and mango, then whirls everything together in a blender. He pours it into a fancy-looking glass, then sticks an orange-and-green umbrella into the drink and puts a slice of pineapple on the rim. He sets it in front of me with a flourish.
“That’s it?” I ask, looking at the glass dubiously.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, I just . . . I mean, it’s supposed to be tropical and special. But you just put some fruit in a blender and then poured it into a glass.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he says, shaking his head sadly, like I’m so naive he feels sorry for me. “Because I’m a nice guy. And after you have a sip of that drink, you’re going to feel really stupid for questioning my methods.”
I shrug and take a sip. The sweet tanginess of the fruit explodes on my tongue, cool and refreshing and perfect. I almost moan in pleasure, that’s how good it is. “Wow,” I say, “you’re right. This is amazing.”
He smiles. “I’m Colin.”
“Aven.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” I take another sip of my drink and the tension starts to flow out of my body. This is nice, sitting here with a delicious fruity drink and making conversation with the cute bartender.
“Are you here on a school trip?” Colin asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Senior trip.”
“College?”
“High school,” I say, before realizing it might make me look ridiculously uncool to be in high school instead of college. Not that it really matters. It’s not like I have to impress this guy—I don’t even know him. In fact, the upside to being in love with Liam for so long is that other guys mean nothing to me. No one has even been on my radar.
Well.
That’s not completely true.
There was this one time when Lyla tried to hook me up with her camp friend’s brother, who went to another school. He looked really cute in his picture, and I got excited. It was during this little period of time where I’d decided to get over Liam and I was doing all these things to work on myself, like trying to get interested in other guys and getting involved in self-esteem-boosting activities. I even started training for a marathon, which was actually great at first, because it got me into crazy good shape and my endorphins were through the roof.
But the camp friend’s brother turned out to be not as cute as his picture and everything I saw on my long weekend runs made me think of Liam, so the whole thing just didn’t really take. Lyla was disappointed, I think. Especially because she had to explain to her friend why it wasn’t going to work out. Well, not explain as much as make up a lie. Obviously she wasn’t going to tell her friend that her brother wasn’t as cute in person as he was in his picture That would have been humiliating and mean. Besides, it wasn’t really about how he looked in real life—he was fine. We just didn’t have a connection.
“That’s cool,” Colin says, seemingly unfazed by the fact that I’m in high school. “I’m a freshman at USF.”
“Cool,” I say. “I’m going to Northeastern.”
“Nice.” He grins at me. “So how long are you here for?”
“Just a few days.” I take another small sip of my drink. It’s so good and I’m so thirsty it’s hard not to drink it down in big gulps, but I don’t want to seem like a pig. “Our school couldn’t afford for us to come for a whole week.”
“You didn’t have to do stupid fund-raisers to try to raise money?”
“Oh, we did,” I say. “But we hardly raised anything.” I grin, and he grins back at me.
“Well, a few days is better than nothing.”
“Definitely.”
My phone buzzes and I look down, hoping for a text from Izzy or Liam, letting me know they’re done playing stupid crab fight and asking me where I am. But it’s just that stupid email again.
Before graduation, I will . . . tell the truth.
La, la, la, not thinking about that.
“So what are you doing sitting here all by yourself?” Colin asks. He pulls a coconut out from behind the bar and starts cutting it, the knife slicing through the skin of the fruit perfectly on the first try.
“What are you doing here by yourself?” I counter. “They really let you use that knife unsupervised?”
“Yup,” he says. “All you need is to be eighteen and take a training class.” He lowers his voice. “Of course, that’s how my friend Frank came to be called Four-Finger Frank.”
“Really?” I ask, horrified. “That’s awful.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m kidding.”
“Oh.” I laugh and take another sip of my slush. I’m feeling very relaxed, just sitting here chatting and drinking this refreshing tropical drink. Who says I have to do something big like tell Liam I’m in love with him? What is love, anyway? I mean, how do I know what it even feels like? Can you even love someone you’ve never had a romantic relationship with? I really doubt it. And when you think about it that way, it’s all settled. I don’t love Liam. I’m just in lust with him.
Of course, four years is a long time to just be in lust with someone. But it could happen. And you can’t just go flying off the rails, telling someone you’re in lust with them. Like, when your fourteen-year-old self sends you a crazy email talking about how you need to tell the truth before graduation, it has nothing to do with telling someone you’re in lust with them. I mean, how stupid.
Besides, telling the truth is so ambiguous. And honestly, I don’t even really remember what I meant exactly when I wrote that email. Yeah, I always thought it was about Liam, but how can I really know? Your brain can play tricks on you, especially after four years. It’s like how eyewitnesses remember things that didn’t even happen. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s just that their brains get all confused. So even though I remember standing on that beach with Lyla and Quinn that day and thinking about Liam and making a promise to myself that I would tell him how I felt, that doesn’t mean that’s what really happened. I could have been talking about a million different things.
Ahhh. I feel a lot better now that I’ve finally made the decision that the stupid email means nothing.
“So what are you doing while you’re here?” Colin asks. “Any big plans?”
“Oh,” I say. “Um . . .” Somehow I was going to tell my best friend I’m in love with him even though he has a girlfriend, but I just convinced myself not to a second ago doesn’t seem like it would be all that impressive.
“Bartender!” a girl calls from across the bar. She holds up her empty glass and clinks the ice.
“Be right back,” Colin says, and then he winks at me.
He winked at me! A guy has never winked at me before. It seems kind of . . . flirty. Unless he winks at everyone. Or maybe it’s a nervous tic. Although he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who has nervous tics. He’s too good-looking, and besides, he was handling that coconut with a lot of confidence.
Was he . . . was he going to ask me out? Is that why he was asking what my plans were while I’m here? No. That doesn’t make any sense. That k
ind of thing doesn’t happen to me. I mean, he must meet tons of girls. He’s a bartender in the middle of the beach. A hot one. Of all the girls he meets on a daily basis, why would he want to go out with me?
Unless he’s—
My phone buzzes again, and I look down, ready to send that email right to the trash for what feels like the millionth time.
But it’s not the stupid email.
It’s Izzy.
Calling me.
She never calls me. She doesn’t like talking on the phone. She’s a text-only kind of girl. I hit answer. “Izzy?”
“Aven!” Her voice sounds panicked, and my heart slides up into my throat. Why does she sound so panicked? Has something happened? She was fine just a few minutes ago, splashing around in the ocean, happy as a clam. Or crab. Ha-ha. Has she found out about me and Liam, my plan to tell him how I feel?
“Izzy, what’s wrong?”
“Aven,” she says again. “I did something really bad.”
“Oh.” I let out a sigh of relief. If she did something really bad, then it can’t have anything to do with me and Liam. That’s one of the hazards of being friends with the girlfriend of the boy you’re in love with—you’re always afraid she’s going to find out how you really feel. Wait. Did I say love? I meant lust. The boy you’re in lust with.
“What did you do?” I ask, dragging my straw through my almost-empty glass.
“I did it,” she says ominously. “I said I wasn’t going to, I promised myself I wasn’t going to, but I did. I did it! I couldn’t stop myself!” Her voice is getting louder as she talks, until she’s almost shrieking. She sounds a bit hysterical, honestly.
“Okay,” I say. “Um, well, what was it?”
“Where are you?” she demands.
“I’m just sitting at this bar, having a drink,” I say, the words sounding very grown-up and exciting. Just sitting at the bar having a drink and possibly flirting with the hot bartender, la, la, la.
“Which bar?” Izzy wants to know. “I’m coming there.”
“It’s on the beach,” I say, “a little farther down from where we just were. Aren’t you in the water with Liam?” I swivel around in my seat and shade my eyes from the sun, trying to see if I can spot her. You’d think it would be impossible, what with all the people, but after a second I actually see her, walking crookedly down the shore.
“No, I left,” she says.
“I see you,” I tell her. I stand up and wave my arms up in the air like a crazy person.
“See you in a second.” The line goes dead.
A minute or two later, Izzy slides into the seat next to me. She looks slightly disheveled—her hair is sort of messed up, and the strap on the top of her bandeau top is askew.
She looks at my drink. “What is that?” she asks.
“Oh, a mango pineapple something,” I say, taking another sip and hoping she doesn’t ask me to share. “It’s really good. You should get one.”
“Is there any alcohol in it?”
I shake my head, and she looks vaguely disappointed.
“So what happened?” I ask.
She opens her mouth to answer me, but then her face crumples and she bursts into tears.
“Oh my God,” I say. “Izzy! What happened?” I reach out and put my arms around her, pulling her toward me. But she’s crying too hard to answer. “Tell me what happened,” I soothe. “I’m sure whatever it is, it isn’t that bad.”
She pulls back and wipes her eyes with one of the tiny square napkins that’s sitting on the bar. She whispers something so quietly that I can’t understand what she’s saying.
“What?” I prompt. “I can’t hear you.”
“I looked in his phone,” she says. “Liam’s. I looked in it.”
“Oh, Izzy,” I breathe. “Why did you do that?”
“I feel horrible!” she says. “I know! But I couldn’t help it! He was in the water and we were playing that dumb game, you know, with the sword fighting or whatever, and then I knocked Skye off Miles, and Miles got really mad and went off to find a new partner, because he said Skye was the weak link—”
“Wow, what an asshole,” I say, but Izzy just keeps going.
“So then Liam said he was going to run to the bathroom, and I was lying on the beach, and I was thinking about how happy I was, and how perfect everything was, you know, to just be here in this amazing place on this amazing trip with this amazing boy. And I told myself there was no way he was cheating on me, that Liam doesn’t do things like that.” She’s out of breath from talking so fast, and she stops for a second.
I take the last sip of my drink and wait for her to finish.
“So then I saw his phone sitting there in the sand where he left it. And I could see him walking down the beach, toward the pavilion, and I thought, if I can just look in his phone and see for myself, if I can just look and make sure that he’s not talking to anyone else, then the moment really will be perfect, you know?”
I want to tell her that if she felt the need to make the moment perfect, then it probably wasn’t all that perfect to begin with, but I know it’s definitely not the right time for reality. She doesn’t need to hear reason. She needs support.
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“So I looked in his phone. I did it. I picked his phone right up and just started going through it, like it was nothing. And there were calls. A few of them. Missed ones. From someone named Annabelle.”
Annabelle. I don’t know anyone named Annabelle in our class. Maybe she’s a junior? Or a sophomore? But if Liam is cheating on Izzy with some girl named Annabelle, wouldn’t I have heard him at least mention it? And since when is Liam making tons of phone calls anyway? He’s a guy. He texts, and even then it’s sporadic.
“Were there any texts?” I ask nonchalantly. I swirl the paper umbrella around in my empty glass and hope Izzy thinks I’m asking because I’m worried about her and not for my own curiosity.
Annabelle, Annabelle, Annabelle. Her name sounds cute, like the kind of girl who wears quirky outfits and has a quirky hairstyle to match. The kind of girl who has pigtails and cute freckles and lives a somewhat sheltered life. Liam probably has to teach her things. Like how to eat a lobster and change a tire. And sexual things. Maybe he’s so busy teaching her sexual things that he hasn’t had any time or energy left over to have sex with Izzy.
“There was just one,” she says. “From Annabelle to Liam. All it said was ‘call me tonight at eight.’” She narrows her eyes, then reaches over and grabs my drink, taking a long, slurpy sip, apparently not even noticing the glass is empty. “Obviously he deleted the rest of them. Just in case.” She starts chewing on the straw, her teeth working furiously.
“Well, let’s not jump to conclusions,” I say. “Maybe it was something totally innocent.” But even as I’m saying it, I know it’s not true. Come on. Something totally innocent with a girl named Annabelle who Izzy and I know nothing about? Liam wouldn’t hide it from us if it was aboveboard.
Annabelle. Annabelle. Annabelle. Her name starts reverberating in my head, like when you start saying a word over and over until it starts sounding weird. She’s very murky and threatening, this Annabelle. With Izzy, I know exactly what I’m getting. Annabelle’s a total blank. She could look like anything, be like anything, sound like anything.
“Ha!” Izzy says. “There’s no way it’s something innocent.” She’s lost the controlled look she had on her face before, and she’s back to looking a little wild. She picks up my glass and pounds it on the bar. “Can we get some more drinks over here?” she yells to Colin.
He turns from where he’s serving a couple of piña coladas to a twentysomething couple.
“You have a friend,” he says when he’s back over on our side of the bar.
“Yeah,” I say. “This is Izzy. Izzy, this is Colin.”
“You two know each other?” she asks.
“Oh, yeah, we go way back,” Colin says, flashing me a smile.
“He’s kidding,” I say. “We just met.”
“Oh.” Izzy looks interested. “Well, we need a couple more drinks.”
“Sure,” he says. “You want the same as before?”
“Yes, please,” I say, not being able to comprehend the fact that something could be better than the drink I just had. “Two this time.”
“You got it.” He turns around and gets to work cutting fruit.
“He was totally flirting with you,” Izzy whispers once he’s out of earshot.
“No, he wasn’t,” I say. But I can feel my face get hot. “He’s just a bartender. He talks to everyone like that. He has to work for his tips.”
Izzy shakes her head. “He was looking at you in a certain way,” she says. “He wasn’t just being friendly.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know things.” She shrugs. It’s true. Izzy is one of those people who somehow kind of just know things. “You should flirt back,” Izzy says. “You need to have some fun. You haven’t dated anyone in a while.”
“I just haven’t met anyone I like,” I say quickly.
“Well, you should like him,” Izzy says. “He’s seriously sexy.”
“He also lives in Florida.”
“Well, that’s perfect,” Izzy says. “You can have a passionate vacation fling with him.” She sighs. “Relationships aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, Aven. Take it from me.”
“Oh, Iz,” I say. “I’m sure it’s going to be fine. I think you should just ask him about it.”
“I can’t!” she says. “He’ll know I looked in his phone.”
“Well, would that be the worst thing in the world? You could just say you were feeling weird and you’re really sorry, but you looked in his phone and you saw something that made you concerned.”
Izzy’s blue eyes widen into saucers, and she looks at me like I’m crazy. “Are you mad?” she asks. “I can’t just go and tell Liam that I looked in his phone. I’ll seem crazy.”