“Remember my cheapskate granddad’s birthday present for me?” she asked. “The use of his car? Well, he’s taking it back. Now that he’s dating, he’s using his car more. I need it more too, because I’m getting photography jobs on weekends. I told him he couldn’t take back my birthday present. He gave me a thousand dollars basically to leave him alone.”
“Nice!”
“Yeah. And I have a thousand of my own saved up, so I’m going to buy a car tonight. I have one picked out, and I looked up the blue book value. All I need is you.”
“Why me?”
“Because your mom made you haggle for your own car.”
“But you should haggle for your own car,” I pointed out. “That’s why my mother made me do it, so I’d have that adult experience under my belt and I wouldn’t get taken to the cleaners later.” At least, that’s what she’d said. Actually, she’d made me do it because she’d brought me up in a comfortable suburban environment, and periodically she decided she needed to toughen me up by throwing me to the sharks.
“Why in the world would I do that when I have you?” Harper asked reasonably. “You’re so much better at hanging tough than I am. You’ll get me another two-fifty off.”
“Harper.” I sighed. “You’re basically telling me I’m your bitch friend.”
“Kaye, I would never tell you that.”
I rolled my eyes so hard that Harper could probably hear it through the phone.
“Spin it however you want,” she said, “but come pick me up.”
Truthfully, I was glad to have an excuse to get out of the house. Dad was back from Miami, but he wrote a lot on weekends, so he wasn’t available to save me from homework by inviting me to watch football with him or taking me out for ice cream. My Saturday had been full of nothing but my disapproving mother and research on Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. Mr. Frank had a thing for white male protagonists who whined and waffled.
Which made me angry all over again at Sawyer. Until the past week I would have said he was the least likely guy in the world to seem to want a girl, then back out.
He’d never had a problem like that with girls before. He had a problem only with me.
Fifteen minutes later I cruised into the parking lot behind the B and B. Stepping into my car, Harper flashed me her wad of hundreds, which I told her was very gangsta. We chatted about the football game last night and Brody’s stellar performance. Finally I asked, “Why aren’t you with Brody tonight?”
“He went out with some friends,” she said, seemingly fascinated with the scene out her window, the parking lot of the movie theater.
I glanced where she was looking. “There’s Chelsea’s car. She must be at the movie with DeMarcus.”
“With Tia,” Harper corrected me.
“Really?” I asked. “I wonder why Tia isn’t with Will. It must be another girls’ night out.”
“Must be,” Harper said vaguely, as if she was thinking about something else.
“We’ll probably be done with your car about the time Tia and Chelsea get out of the movie. We should come back by and show them.”
“Okay,” Harper said absentmindedly.
Well, I had a question that would wake her up. “Do you think Tia and Will are doing it yet?”
Harper huffed out an embarrassed laugh. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“Anytime I ask her about sex, she thinks I’m calling her a slut.”
“That’s because you are calling her a slut,” Harper pointed out.
“I am not. I may have intimated in the past that she would get in trouble involving herself in such casual escapades with—” I stopped, realizing what I was about to say.
“Sawyer,” Harper finished for me.
I felt all the blood rushing to my face.
To gloss over the uncomfortable moment, Harper hurried on. “I haven’t asked Tia, but my sense is that she and Will haven’t done it. They’ve done everything but. There’s a lot of other stuff you can do if you’re really into each other.”
“It sounds like you speak from sexperience.”
She laughed self-consciously. Bright pink spots appeared on her cheeks, noticeable on her porcelain skin. “I guess. I never expected dating someone I loved to be so . . .” She held up her hands. “Free. Dating Kennedy, I felt strapped down. Brody makes me feel good, and like there are more possibilities, bigger ones.”
I envied her. But I supposed that’s what she got when she and Brody were dating after a long, vague friendship, unlike the intense baggage that plagued Sawyer and me.
We reached the used car lot and peered into Harper’s clunker of choice. The salesman didn’t bother to come out of his little building to help two teenage girls. We obviously didn’t have the money to buy anything. I understood now why my mother always dressed professionally in public. I should have gussied up tonight and made Harper do the same, but always doing everything the right way was too much hassle. I wanted to be seventeen sometimes, even if that meant doing things the hard way.
I hiked into the office with Harper behind me and told the salesman we wanted to go for a test drive, carefully listing the make and model rather than saying “that red car.” I sat in the back while Harper drove and the salesman rode shotgun. It sounded like a car to me. I couldn’t vouch for the engine, but at least the sale included a warranty. Around closing time Harper and I drove back toward downtown in separate cars.
We both pulled in to the movie theater parking lot just as Tia and Chelsea were walking out. They oohed over Harper’s new ride and over how smart she’d been to ask me along. Despite myself, I beamed with pride. My mother might not think I had much sense, but somebody did.
“We’re glad you came by.” Chelsea grabbed my arm. “Aidan is in the movie,” she said in a stage whisper, “with . . . guess who.”
“Angelica!” I said.
“I have a theory about what old Angelica’s up to,” Tia said conspiratorially. “She dated DeMarcus last summer. Then Xavier. Now Aidan. She’s systematically cycling through all the likely candidates for valedictorian. She even hedged her bet by going out with Will once, just in case he comes from behind and pulls off a long shot. So you know who’s next!” She looked pointedly at me.
I said in my best redneck accent, “Shee-yut, I ain’t wasting no time with that girl. I hear she don’t put out.”
“Is sex all you care about?” Tia shrieked, putting the back of her hand to her forehead and pretending to swoon, at the same time Chelsea said, “You are a shallow, sexist person.” Harper snorted.
“Speaking of putting out,” I said, “why are all of your menfolks missing at one time?”
“They’re with your man,” Chelsea said. “Didn’t you know that?”
“What?” I asked, glancing from Chelsea to Tia, who was giving me shifty-eyes, to Harper, who looked downright alarmed. I prompted them, “DeMarcus and Will and Brody are all with Sawyer?”
“Well, you’re obviously not supposed to find that out,” Chelsea said self-righteously. She slapped the back of Tia’s head. “Thanks for warning me before I blabbed.”
“You already blabbed it to Aidan and Angelica,” Tia said. “Could I have stopped you?”
I raised my brows at Tia, waiting for an explanation.
Exasperated, she said, “Sawyer is so in love with you.”
Harper nodded vigorously at me. “He is.”
Again I looked from one of them to the other. I’d been to this movie theater and stood in this parking lot a hundred times in my life, but suddenly the everyday scene seemed foreign because my heart was pounding and my life was shifting around me. I put one hand up to my face and repeated, “He’s in love with me?”
“That’s why he moved out of his dad’s house in the first place,” Tia said. “His dad said something about you that Sawyer didn’t like.”
I didn’t ask what that something had been. I knew. For a white person insulting a black person, that something was always the same.
The only part of this revelation making no sense to me was the timing. “Sawyer moved out before Aidan even broke up with me.”
Tia and Harper nodded solemnly. And that meant Sawyer had been into me, intensely enough that his mean dad knew about it, before we’d even doubled down on toying with each other.
“Why doesn’t he act like he’s in love with me?” I cried. “I threw myself at him last night, and he dissed me. Again! ”
I must have sounded hysterical. Harper put a hand on my shoulder. Tia said as gently as she could, “He’s terrified, Kaye. He doesn’t want to start something with you. He’s certain it won’t work out.”
“Well, it’s too late. He’s already started it!” I exclaimed. “And why are y’all keeping me in the dark about this?”
“I promised him,” Tia said solemnly.
“I promised him too,” Harper chimed in.
“I had no knowledge of any of this shit,” Chelsea said.
“Where are the boys?” I demanded, turning to Harper. “Are they at your granddad’s beach?”
Harper looked at Tia hopelessly. They were at her granddad’s beach, all right.
I headed around Harper’s car to reach mine.
“Don’t go to the beach,” Tia pleaded.
“Why not?” I asked, opening my door. “Are they drinking?”
“Will’s not.” She was stalling. Will didn’t drink.
“Is Sawyer drinking?” I clarified. “Because that would be a great way for me to get over him. Problem solved.” I started my engine.
I already knew I wouldn’t be catching him by surprise, though. Before I’d driven out of the parking lot, Tia was on her phone.
As I drove the few short blocks down the main road through town, my mind raced with everything that was happening behind my back. I could hardly comprehend it all. Sawyer was in love with me. He wanted to be with me. But he was afraid I would break his heart. All my best friends knew. He’d gone drinking down at the beach to find solace with his guy friends. And he was content to leave me at home, out of the loop, innocently obsessing over The Red Badge of Courage. Was he even worth the trouble?
I pulled onto the sandy road that led to Harper’s granddad’s property, punched in the combination to open the gate, slowly drove through, and pulled the gate shut behind me. My car crept through the palm grove. No trucks were parked ahead of me. Possibly the boys had left when Tia sounded the alarm. More likely, especially if they were drinking, they’d walked here from their houses downtown.
I swung my car around to park exactly where Aidan and I had parked all three times we’d had sex. My headlights caught Sawyer waiting for me.
He stood on the threshold. The dark palm forest was in front of him, and behind him, the open beach, bright with moonlight. He wore his usual flip-flops and shorts, plus his blue polo shirt that matched his eyes exactly. This shirt didn’t make an appearance as often as his madras one, presumably because it was so old that the collar was turning white at the edges.
His arms were folded across his chest. His blond hair played across his forehead in the ocean breeze. His eyes were on me, and he looked miserable.
Good.
I turned off the engine and the lights, got out, and slammed the door. His expression didn’t change as I stomped toward him as best I could in slick flat sandals on mounds of sand. I stopped right in front of him and poked him on the forearm he was using to protect himself. “Why does everybody in the senior class know about this except me, huh? Am I just a big joke to you?”
He looked over his shoulder. The other guys—I recognized the three I’d known about, Will, Brody, and DeMarcus, plus Noah and Quinn—sat in a circle about halfway down the beach. The sound of the ocean must have muffled my voice, but they still heard me and turned. Will’s dog thumped her tail in welcome.
Sawyer faced me again. “No!” Eyes wide, he sounded almost desperate. “It’s just that I’m going to ruin your life, Kaye.”
“Don’t you think that should be my choice?” I shouted. “Do I get a say at all? In anything?”
He bit his lip, frustrated. “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. He pulled me into motion down the beach.
We passed within a few yards of the other boys and the dog, but I was too mortified by this entire fiasco to say hi. I did notice a beer bottle next to Brody, and across the circle, the tiny orange glow of a cigarette or a joint. I called to Sawyer, “Are you stoned? Getting stoned because of me is not the way to win me over.”
He stopped so suddenly that I smacked into him. He grabbed me by both arms to keep me from sliding down. “I told you, I quit all that,” he said over the roar of the tide. “You don’t believe anything I say.”
“I have believed you,” I snapped. “That’s the whole problem. You’ve acted like you wanted us to get together. I bought it. I tried to follow through, and you decided on your own that you don’t want me anymore.”
“I do want—” He looked over my shoulder at the guys behind us. “Come over the hill.” He took my hand again and led me up and over a rise in the beach, where we were hidden. Now we could see the pier and the pavilion of the public park. It was closed for the night. We were alone.
He pulled me toward the ocean until the water lapped at my toes and made the bottoms of my sandals slimy.
“You’re getting my sandals wet,” I said.
Toeing off his flip-flops and kicking them up the beach, he said, “For once in your life, kick your shoes off.” He made it sound like a challenge.
I rolled my eyes to show him that he didn’t fool me. What I meant was, it was okay with me if he manipulated me, as long as he knew I knew he was doing it. I wiggled one shoe off the end of my toes, then the other, and stepped into the water with him. The warm tide raced around my ankles.
He walked forward into the ocean, tugging me after him. I thought we were just going for a wade. But he kept going until the warm water reached the middle of my calves and crept toward my knees.
“Sawyer,” I called, digging my heels into the sand and pulling against his grip. “My skirt’s getting wet.”
He turned to me with an evil grin. “Take your skirt off for once.”
Oh, as if he thought I was innocent, and Aidan and I had never done it? “I’ve taken my skirt off before,” I said archly, before I gained complete understanding of how stupid that sounded.
“That’s what I heard about you,” he said.
I gaped at him. What had he heard? I was furious with Aidan now, and sorry I’d gone as far as I had with him. But I’d never suspected he’d given a third party the play-by-play—especially a third party who wouldn’t keep that information in confidence, with the description eventually getting back to Sawyer.
“I’m joking,” Sawyer said. “Take your skirt off anyway.”
I might have if he’d given me any assurance that he wasn’t setting me up again. I put my hands on my hips. “I thought you were afraid to get too close to me, and we were mad at each other. You wanted to talk it out.”
“I do want to talk it out, but knowing us, we’d be mad at each other again in an hour. Maybe it would help if you took your skirt off.”
“If you take your shorts off.”
I made a mental note never to use Sawyer taking his clothes off as a countermeasure. Instantly he was wading closer to shore, where he could take off his shorts without getting them soaked. He unbuckled his belt and shoved his shorts down his hips, exposing his plaid boxers. Most girls would stare at him, straining to gauge the shape and size of him in the darkness. I got stuck on the fact that he was wearing a belt. He often wore a belt, in fact. It showed whenever his shirt rode up or he tucked it in. Knowing his personality, I would have thought he’d dress like a slob, but his casual clothes were neatly pressed. I felt like I was having another epiphany about the puzzle that was Sawyer, but really I was standing in the ocean, avoiding thinking about what was about to happen.
He snapped me out of it when he held out his hand for my
skirt. “Hop to it, Gordon. We ain’t getting any younger.”
I waded after him, shimmied my skirt down my hips, and stepped out of it. Shining drops of ocean dashed dark stains across the fabric.
He bundled it with his shorts and tossed both to the shore, which was sandy and wet. So much for keeping my skirt dry.
He turned back to me. He looked me up and down, and his lips parted. “The bottom of your shirt’s going to get wet. Why don’t you take that off too, while we’re at it.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to be offended that he was using such a thin excuse to get my clothes off. But I loved that he wanted this. And I did feel a little silly standing in the ocean in my shirt and panties. A bra and panties were more like a bikini, at least.
Before I reached for my first button, I said, “You first.”
Gamely he pulled his shirt off over his head, exposing his flat stomach, then his strong pecs, and finally his arms made of muscle. He balled up his shirt and nodded, prompting me.
I fumbled with the first button of my blouse, fingers shaking. Sawyer had seen me with less on than this. When I got undressed, I’d still be exposing exactly as much in my bra and panties as I did in a bikini. There was no reason for me to feel so nervous as I moved my fingers down to the next button, except for the way Sawyer watched me, jaw hard, eyes serious. The breeze off the ocean toyed with the top sections of his hair, bright blond in the moonlight, and moved one lock back and forth across his forehead. He didn’t brush it away.
He stared at my fingers until they reached the last button. As I pulled the shirt backward off my shoulders, his eyes rose to my face. Still looking at me, he held out his hand for my shirt. He wrapped his own shirt around it and tossed the bundle toward the shore, not looking to see where it went. Neither did I.
“Now we’re seaworthy,” he said, reaching out again, this time for my hand. Facing me, he backed deeper into the water, pulling me with him. I began to wonder if this was one of his practical jokes.
He stopped backing up but kept pulling me toward him until our bodies pressed against each other in the water. His lips found my neck, making me gasp and sending chills rushing across my skin. I felt my nipples tighten, straining against the lace of my bra.