“If it’s any consolation, you look like you just had excellent sex.”
Our eyes met in the mirror. His cocky grin faded, and we were watching each other, dead serious. I was hyperaware of the warmth of his body behind me. Tingles raced across my chest, and the hair stood up on my arms.
I turned around to face him and caught a flash of his blond lashes as he bent down and his mouth took mine.
A few minutes later he finally broke the kiss to say “I love you.” Hearing himself, he backed a few inches away and looked me in the eye.
“I love you, too.” My voice cracked at the end.
“Will you marry me?”
This time his question wasn’t as ridiculous as it had been every time before, so I wasn’t as quick to say yes. I phrased my answer carefully and truthfully. “Ask me again when it’s time.”
He led me by the hand back to bed. I wanted to snag a T-shirt or a towel along the way to cover myself, but he wasn’t entertaining ideas like that. Even when I tried to draw the sheets back over me, he tossed them away. I grabbed for them. He kicked them off the bed completely. I was exposed. The only cover was his hand smoothing across my skin.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I took a deep breath, terrified to tell him. “If we get serious—”
“If!” he exclaimed, letting his head fall backward to the pillow. “What just happened? Maybe we need to do that again.”
“As we get serious,” I corrected myself, “have you thought about what happens in May? What are you doing after graduation?”
“Oh, you think I’m not good enough to go to college?” After all we’d been through, sarcastic Sawyer was back.
I did assume he wasn’t going to college, honestly, but I didn’t have to admit it. “No, why?”
“Because if you’d thought I was going to college, you would have asked ‘Where are you going to college?’ instead of ‘What are you doing after graduation?’ ”
“Okay. Where are you going to college?”
“You’re nuts. I’m not good enough for college.”
I grabbed my empty Crab Lab cup from the table and held it over him. “I’m going to hit you with this.”
“I’m going to culinary school,” he said quickly.
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“New York.”
“Have you gotten in?” I asked.
“I haven’t applied. I’m waiting to make sure you get in to Columbia.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I’d been worried about this. The idea that he would simply move to New York too lifted a weight from my shoulders. But it couldn’t be that simple. “What if we break up? You’d be stuck there.”
“I’m never stuck anywhere,” he assured me. “If I get into trouble, I haul myself back out. But I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to stay with me if you met somebody smarter at Columbia. You’ll meet guys in college who’ve been to Paris. Hell, guys who are from Paris. I’m just your high school boyfriend from back home. I don’t want to be an albatross around your neck.”
“Pelican.”
“Right. If it makes you feel better, I’ve been incredibly jealous of you ever since I heard you wanted to go to college in New York. I’ve got to get out of here, and there’s nowhere I’d rather go. New York is one of the world’s best food cities.”
He glanced sideways at me, seeming almost nervous. “If this seems stalkerish to you, I won’t do it. I mean, New York is huge and we would never have to see each other. I started thinking about going because of you, but we don’t have to date after high school. I don’t want you to feel trapped.” His words came out faster and faster. He was definitely nervous. Sawyer De Luca was nervous. “Oh God, what have I done? Say something.”
I laughed, trying to put him at ease. “You just surprise me. Are you going to open your own restaurant?”
“I guess I’ll have to, since I don’t like people telling me what to do. This is when it’s going to come in handy to have a finance major for a girlfriend. So I was wrong before. We can’t break up.”
“I don’t know anymore about majoring in finance,” I said slowly. “I’m rethinking everything.” I squinted at him in the darkness. “This really surprises me. You’ve never talked about culinary school before.” Maybe I just hadn’t been listening, I thought guiltily.
“I can’t afford it right now. I’ll get a job in a high-end restaurant and learn all I can. When I’ve lived in New York long enough to qualify for in-state tuition, I’ll find a community college where I can get a business degree. Eventually I’ll open my own restaurant.”
“Vegan?” I guessed.
“Yes. That can’t work just anywhere, but New York has enough weirdos like me to support it.”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
“At least it’s a plan. I don’t know if it’s good. Luckily, one thing that separates me from other people is that I don’t need my life planned out and structured. If this doesn’t work, I’ll do something else.”
“I would believe that, except you sound so defensive.”
He watched me, careful not to reveal anything he didn’t want me to see. His face was devoid of expression, this time not out of anger, but from fear.
“Sawyer,” I whispered. “It’s okay to be scared.” I kissed his cheek.
“You scare me.”
“You scare the hell out of me, but it’s a pleasant kind of scary, right?”
“So far, so good.”
I smiled. “I don’t want to be the one to make you question your culinary school plan. I don’t know anything about that stuff. I just wonder if you’re selling yourself short. Right now, though, you’re not feeling good about yourself. You wouldn’t believe anybody who told you that you’re better than what you’re aiming for. Not even me. You may need a year to figure that out for yourself.”
He shrugged, looking away, but I could tell he was listening.
“I agree you need to get out of here. You’ve been through too much with your family. If you could start over someplace else, I’ll bet you would be a completely different person. And I’d really like to meet that guy.”
He grinned, looking perplexed. “Thanks, I think.”
“How are your grades?” I asked.
“They’re good,” he said. “I’m no valedictorian, but I have a three-point-seven right now, and I’m trying to bring it up.”
“My God, Sawyer.”
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, which was Holy shit, that is a high GPA, and all this time I thought you were a slacker. I skipped over that part and asked, “How are your entrance exam scores?”
“High.”
“How high?”
He chuckled. “Higher than yours.”
“Now, wait a minute.” I didn’t want to insult him, but he had to be kidding, because I’d knocked my entrance exams out of the park. “How do you know what I got?”
“I don’t,” he said, “but Ms. Malone told me my scores are the second highest in the school, right behind Tia’s. I actually got higher than Tia on the verbal.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“What?” he asked again.
I tried to make his crazy face with one eyebrow up and the other down. I couldn’t do it, so I lifted and lowered my brows with my fingertips.
“Don’t do that to your face,” he said.
“Sawyer,” I said, exasperated, “you have grades and scores that high and you want to go to culinary school ? And you don’t see anything wrong with this picture?”
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s never wrong to pursue something you love.” He twisted one of my curls around his finger.
“But you don’t love cooking,” I pointed out. “You don’t bum around the Crab Lab kitchen after hours, inventing new recipes, do you? You happen to be a vegan, but just because you have special dietary preferences doesn’t ob
ligate you to open that kind of restaurant. There may not be a huge population of vegans in the Tampa Bay area, but there are plenty in the world, and they’re not all going to culinary school and opening vegan restaurants. I think you’ve only come up with this idea because you work as a waiter, you know restaurants, and you’re scared you’ll fail at something else.”
“Like what?”
“College. Just apply for college. Apply to Columbia.”
He laughed. For once it was an ugly sound. “I would never get in to Columbia.”
“How do you know if you don’t try? It sounds to me like you’d have a good chance. You might get a need-based scholarship. On the essay part of the application, tell them a sob story about your dad and your situation.”
“My situation?” He gave me the raised-eyebrow look.
“Yes. And by ‘sob story,’ I guess I mean you should tell them the truth.”
He shook his head. His hair made the softest sound against the pillow. “I don’t have the money for college applications.”
“If your scores are that high, Ms. Malone will find you some money.”
He stared thoughtfully at my face. His eyes traveled down to my breast. He touched me softly.
I shuddered.
He slid his phone from the table on his side of the bed and peered at it, probably checking the time. “We’d better go before we are discovered,” he said in a voice from a cheesy movie. Then he laid his phone aside and rolled so that I was underneath him again.
“Katherine.” He kissed my lips. “Beale Gordon.”
“Yes?”
“This has been the best night of my life.”
“Mine too,” I said. “Sawyer . . .”
“Salvatore De Luca,” he prompted me.
“Salvatore?”
“No,” he laughed. “I’m kidding. My middle name is Charles.”
“Charles?”
“Yeah. That’s why I don’t tell people my middle name.”
“It’s not as bad as Salvatore. Anyway, this has been—”
His phone vibrated on the table. “Hold on.” He slid over and glanced at it.
The next second he leaped up to standing and was fumbling on the floor for his clothes.
“What’s the matter?” I exclaimed.
“Harper texted me.” His voice bounced as he jerked his shorts on. “Somebody at the party heard where we’d gone and told Angelica. Angelica told Aidan. Aidan called your parents. He’s drunk and he just admitted it to everybody.”
“No, no, no,” I chanted, like that was going to help. “Where are you going?”
“Stay here. I don’t want you to see your dad beat the fuck out of me.”
“Sawyer, wait!” But he was already gone, not bothering to keep his shoes off to avoid waking the rest of the B and B. His flip-flops clattered down the stairs, and the front door slammed.
As I pulled my own clothes on, I tried to picture what was happening, and feared the worst. Dad was mild mannered, but he was huge. Sawyer was not huge, but he had a temper. There was no best-case scenario to this.
It wasn’t either of their voices I heard yelling as I ran out the back door of the B and B to the parking lot, though. It was my mother’s. She was yelling at Sawyer.
A cloud of white dust was still settling over the gravel-and-shell driveway. As it cleared, I saw why. Both my mother’s Mercedes and Dad’s BMW were parked in the lot. Dad leaned against his car with his arms folded. Sawyer leaned against the Mercedes with his arms folded. They were like two captains of pirate ships in Tampa Bay, deciding whether to fire that first shot across the other’s bow.
My mother was the one shooting from the hip, reciting to Sawyer a lot of his poor qualities that she’d listed for me in the past couple of weeks. “Hey,” I said, which only drew some of the fire from him to me. I could see there was no way out of this now, though. I would never be able to go out with him again, if he even wanted to.
Help came from an unexpected place. Harper appeared from a trail through the trees, the same one Sawyer and I had followed to get here from Tia’s house. “Hi, there!” she called as if my mother didn’t sound murderous. “I beg your pardon. I’m so sorry. My mom’s not here right now, but we have a rule at the B and B that we don’t raise our voices because it might disturb the guests if they’re sleeping.” She nodded toward the second story of the Victorian towering over us. “Come on inside.” She stepped away to unlock the front door of her own tiny house.
Nobody budged. Everyone glared at everyone else.
“Come on in,” Harper repeated, daring to encircle my mother’s waist with her arm and push her along toward the door. “Everyone’s welcome inside, where you can continue to discipline your daughter and . . .” Harper was not the best at making small talk, which is why it had been a good idea for her to stop working at the B and B in the first place. “. . . castigate Sawyer,” she finished.
Sawyer elbowed her.
“I said castigate,” she told him.
“You see,” my mother said straight to me as I followed Dad through the door, “this is what happens when you date trash. We all start acting like trash.”
Sawyer dropped into one of the side chairs around the coffee table. He’d been ready to defend himself physically against Dad, but he was no match verbally for my mother.
“Gosh,” Harper protested at the same time Dad started, “Sylvia—”
“No,” I told my mother, “this is what happens when I finally stand up for something I want. You say you’re training me to be a strong woman. But really, you want to be a strong woman with a weak daughter you can push around.”
My mother stared at me in stunned silence.
“I refuse to be grounded anymore,” I said. “I won’t let you tell me who I can date. If you want to take away my car, fine. Kick me out of the house and I’ll get a job and a place of my own. I’ll take the bus to Tampa and try out as a professional cheerleader.”
Harper raised her hand. “I don’t think those jobs pay very much—”
“Listen,” Dad said to me. “Your mother came here to give you a piece of her mind. Which she did.” He turned to my mother. “I followed you here to tell this young man that as far as I’m concerned, he can ask Kaye out if he wants. He should consider me an ally, and I will work on you.” He held out his hand to her. “Come on, I’ll take you out for a drink.”
She looked at him. Her expression was somewhere between a glare and a smile.
He wiggled his fingers. “Come on, I’m loaded. I just sold another article.”
She took his hand, but she refused to look at anybody as he led her toward the door.
Dad patted Harper on the head as he passed her. “Sorry, honey.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Gordon,” she said. “Glad to be of service.”
He touched the tip of my nose. “Be home by two. And don’t go looking for an apartment just yet.” He opened the door for my mother and closed it behind them.
I collapsed into Harper’s arms. “I am so sorry!”
“No, don’t be sorry! It’s all worked out!” She called over my shoulder, “Sawyer, it’s all worked out. Are you okay?”
Sawyer was silent.
Frightened, I walked over to stand directly in front of his chair. He glared up at me. He wasn’t expressionless, as when he was furious. He had a look even madder than that. His anger showed in every line on his face. I’d never seen this expression before, but I knew it when I saw it.
“He’s not okay.” I reached down and cupped his cheek in my hand. “Baby, I don’t blame you for feeling that way, but it doesn’t matter now.”
“It doesn’t matter?” he exclaimed.
“Let’s go back over to the party,” Harper suggested brightly, “and forget all this.”
“Let’s do.” I held out my hand to pull Sawyer up.
But I knew from the way he looked at me that it had not, in fact, all worked out.
16
HARPER WENT AHE
AD, AND I held Sawyer’s hand, but the three of us didn’t say much as we followed the path back to Tia’s house. We were passing through several backyards after midnight, and every adult in Florida owned a gun.
When we arrived, though, Brody and Noah were playing a very slow, sore game of hoops in the driveway. Brody took one look at Sawyer and said, “Oh God, what’s wrong? Don’t let him go in there.” But Sawyer had already broken away from me and disappeared inside.
“Why not?” Harper asked Brody.
“Aidan is plastered, and Will is in rare form.”
That made Harper and me speed up. As we hustled inside, I could hear Tia talking with Angelica right beside the door. “Aidan dated Kaye for three years, Angelica. You can’t expect him to forget that overnight— Oh.” She’d seen me, and she stepped into my path. “Sawyer just came in. He looks awful. What happened?”
I just shook my head, but Harper right behind me said, “Everything we thought, and worse.”
From the next room, I heard Will’s voice rising. Along with Harper and several other people, I peered into one of about six living rooms or dens or libraries on the bottom floor of the vast house.
The first thing I saw was Sawyer, with the same scary look on his face, standing in the opposite doorway.
Second I focused on Will, who was standing over Aidan, pointing down at him. Aidan was definitely drunk. There wasn’t any alcohol officially at this party. My class’s usual way around that was to go drink in someone’s parked car, then come back.
I’d known Aidan to imbibe that way. But not like this. His eyelids were heavy, and he seemed to be having a hard time keeping his head high as Will shouted down at him in his Minnesota accent. “How could you do that? So she’s your ex-girlfriend. You broke up with her. You’re trying to ruin her life, along with Sawyer’s, and you don’t care if you take some of the rest of us down too. We’re just collateral damage. What kind of student council president are you?”
“Like Minnesota is the moral center of the universe!” Aidan roared.
Sawyer was gazing at Aidan with pure hatred. And Sawyer had been known to swing a punch in the heat of the moment. Quickly I crossed the room and pushed Sawyer into the next one, which wasn’t as crowded. I whispered, “Do you need to leave? I don’t want you to get in a fight with Aidan.”