I look at them, stunned. Do they really expect me to order them pizza and then sit here, wasting my senior trip in this room watching Golden Girls reruns until Celia feels better?
I stand up. “I have plans today,” I announce.
Paige turns and looks at me incredulously, and Celia props herself back onto her elbow before sliding her eye mask up again. “What kind of plans?” Celia asks.
“With Abram,” I say, liking the way it sounds. With Abram. Like having plans with him is natural, like we’re a set. Quinn and Abram. Hanging out together. Making plans.
“The guy from last night?” Paige asks. She and Celia exchange a glance.
“Yes, the guy from last night,” I say.
“Quinn, honey, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Celia asks. “I mean, I know he’s cute and all, but where could it really go?”
“It doesn’t have to go anywhere,” I say. “I’m just having fun.”
Paige and Celia exchange another look, like I couldn’t possibly hook up with a guy just for fun.
Is that what they think of me? That I’m so lame that even when I say I’m having fun, there’s no way I could possibly really be having fun?
“I am perfectly capable of having fun,” I tell them.
“Oh, Quinn, honey, of course you are,” Celia says. “And I’m glad you had fun last night.” She takes a deep breath. “I just really need my friends right now. Both of you. Paige, you’ll order the pizza, right? For all of us?”
“Sure,” Paige says, suddenly sounding nervous. “What kind do you want, Quinn?” Now that I’m sticking up for myself, she’s afraid I really am going to leave. And if that happens, she’s going to have to take care of Celia by herself.
“I’m going to meet Abram,” I say.
“But I’m sick!” Celia cries. She sounds just as panicked as Paige, and I realize it’s for the same reason—with me gone, she’s going to be stuck having to rely on Paige to take care of her. And Paige isn’t as good at that as I am.
“You’re not sick,” I tell her. “You’re just hungover. You’ll feel better as soon as you drink some more water and get some carbs in you.” I push the water bottle closer to her so she can drink.
She just stares at me.
Paige just stares at me, too.
“Okay, then,” I say. “So I guess I’ll see you guys a little later?”
“You’re not seriously leaving?” Celia says. She sounds very strong for someone who’s supposedly so sick.
“Yes, I am,” I say. “I told you, I have plans.”
“You’re ditching us,” she says, “for some local guy with a bad surfer haircut?”
“He doesn’t have a bad surfer haircut,” I say, wondering why she would even say such a thing. Abram doesn’t have a bad haircut. Everything about him is sexy and cool and just . . . I shiver.
“You can’t go,” Celia says. “You need to stay here and help us. We’re friends. Friends don’t leave each other for some random guy.”
“He’s not random,” I say.
“He is random!” Celia says, pulling off her eye mask and tossing it onto the bed. “You just met him last night, and now suddenly you’re taking off with him!”
“Oh, like how you took off with Bronx at his birthday party a few weeks ago?” I shoot back. “And just left me there like an idiot and I had to call my brother to come and pick me up?”
“That was different!” Celia says. “You knew I’d been wanting to hook up with Bronx for months!”
“Oh, okay,” I say. “So if we’ve been wanting to hook up with a guy for a while, then it’s okay to just ditch each other? But if we haven’t, then it’s not okay? I’m just trying to figure out the rules of our friendship, because you seem to keep changing them.”
“Okay, guys,” Paige says. She reaches over and clicks off the TV and then moves so she’s perched on the edge of the bed, her knees folded underneath her. “That’s enough. Let’s just take a time-out.”
“I don’t want to take a time-out,” I say.
“You’re being really selfish,” Celia says, shaking her head. “And someday you’re going to realize what you’re doing. That you’re blowing us off for some random guy you don’t even know.”
“Stop calling him random!” I practically scream.
“But he is random!” Celia yells.
“I think what Celia means is—,” Paige tries, but it’s too late. We’ve started fighting, and we’re not going back.
“You just met him last night!” Celia says. “You can’t choose some guy you just met over your best friends. You probably won’t even remember him in two months. Guys come and go, Quinn, but friendship is forever.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Yes, I will,” I say. “I will remember him because we slept together.”
Paige gasps.
Celia gasps.
“You did not!” Celia says.
“We did too!” I say, enjoying the shocked look on their faces. “And so I would really appreciate it if you stopped calling the boy I lost my virginity to a random.”
And then I turn and walk out of the room without saying good-bye.
ELEVEN
I’M ACTUALLY QUITE CALM ABOUT THE WHOLE thing. Like, I don’t even care that I’m fighting with Celia and Paige. I don’t even care that I just blurted out the fact that I lost my virginity without building up to it or discussing it or telling them how it went. I don’t care that they’re probably both really mad at me.
In fact, instead of feeling worried or anxious, I feel free. It doesn’t matter that Celia’s back in her room all hungover and wanting a pizza, because for the first time in a while, it’s not my problem. I don’t have to deal with her.
All I have to do is walk down this beautiful beach toward this beautiful ocean to where I said I’d meet Abram. I don’t have to worry about anything—not Stanford, not my internship, not Celia . . . nothing. Just this moment. The thought is so freeing that it takes everything inside of me to stop myself from twirling around on the sand like some kind of lunatic.
When I get to the place I’m supposed to meet Abram, he’s not there yet. So I sit down on the sand and shade my eyes from the sun and take in deep breaths of ocean air, letting the breeze blow a mist of salt water onto my face. But after a couple of minutes, I’m starting to get worried. Is it possible he’s not coming? He wouldn’t stand me up, would he? My stomach churns, but before I can morph into full-blown panic mode, I see him down the beach, walking toward me. He smiles as soon as our eyes meet, and my heart speeds up.
I like him. I like him a lot.
The thought surprises me. That’s not the way this was supposed to go. I was supposed to hook up with him and then just forget about him. I can’t actually like him. That’s ridiculous. And silly. He lives in Florida. And I hardly know him.
“Hey!” he says. “I’m so glad you’re still here. I was getting worried, thinking you might give up on me.”
“Nope,” I say dumbly, because now that’s he’s back in close proximity, I’m remembering just how hot he is. He’s wearing a navy-blue T-shirt, and his arms are cut and defined. His green-and-blue board shorts hang low on his hips, and I remember his six-pack and how perfect his chest was, and . . . suddenly, I’m all keyed up.
“Sorry I was late,” he says. “I was having trouble finding a parking spot, and then I had to wrestle this off the top of my car.” I realize he’s been dragging something behind him, and I look to see what he’s talking about. It’s a box. Or . . . not a box. More like a square-shaped container? It’s about four feet by two feet, and it looks kind of heavy.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s a boat.”
“Like, to go out on the water with?” I peer at it closely. “And it’s in there? But how does it fit?”
“It’s not in there,” Abram says, laughing. He kneels down in the sand and motions me to do the same. “This is the boat. It’s folded up.”
I frown. “A fo
lded-up boat? But it’s made out of cardboard!”
“It’s not made out of cardboard. It’s high-quality fiberglass.” He knocks on it.
“Fiberglass?” I reach out and touch it. He’s right. It is fiberglass. Weird.
“Well, yeah. Fiberglass and a little wood. It’s lighter than a regular boat, and it folds up for easy storage.” I watch as he unfolds the boat and puts it together, using string ties and folding flaps into each other. The whole process takes only a couple of minutes, and when he’s done, sure enough, there’s a small canoe-like boat sitting on the sand.
“That is so cool,” I say, running my finger along the side of it. “Where did you get this?”
“I made it.”
“You made it?”
“Yup.” He stands up and brushes his hands together until the sand is gone.
“But you’re going to be rich!” I say, standing up next to him. “You need to bring this to someone, like a . . . I don’t know, a boating company.”
He laughs. “I’m still perfecting it. It’s way too heavy right now to be practical. One of the things I need to work on is making it more portable. But thanks for the vote of confidence.” He pushes the boat down the sand toward the water, until the front part slides into the ocean. A couple of people walking by turn to look at it. It does look a little bit strange, like it shouldn’t be floating. But it is floating, its nose or whatever it’s called (the bow? the stern?) bobbing merrily in the water.
“Come on,” Abram says, wading into the water.
I take a deep breath and then follow him. “I’m scared,” I say after a few steps. “What if we capsize?”
“Quinn, I’m offended,” he says, teasing. “Are you trying to imply that not only would I build a boat that’s not seaworthy but that I would dare to take you out on it?”
I look into the boat. “How do you drive it?” I ask.
He laughs again. “You don’t drive it, you paddle it.”
“Oh. Um, are you going to be paddling it?”
“Me and you,” he says. “Both of us.”
“Oh.” I have a vision of me holding a paddle and then dropping it in the water right before the whole boat turns over and we end up lost at sea. For years.
“Don’t worry,” Abram says, like he’s reading my mind. “You’ll be fine.”
“That sounds like something someone says at the beginning of a horror movie,” I say. “Right before they end up with sharks circling them, having to make hard decisions about who’s going to be eaten first.”
“I’d let them eat me first,” he says. “Because I’m a gentleman.”
“That’s so nice of you,” I say. The farther I walk into the water, the colder it seems to get. I really hope we don’t capsize. I don’t think I could take it, being submerged in water this cold.
“Okay,” Abram says. “Now listen. This is the important part of what we’re doing.”
“That makes me nervous,” I say.
“We haven’t done anything yet.”
“No, just you saying that this is the important part. It feels like pressure. Like if I don’t do it right, I’m going to end up as shark food.”
“You’re not going to end up as shark food,” he says.
“Because there aren’t any sharks around here?”
“No, because I would never let that happen.”
“How are you going to save me from sharks?”
“You think I can’t fight off a shark?”
“I’m not saying you couldn’t, I’m just saying it’s not a definite.”
He holds the boat steady and looks at me. “Okay,” he says. “Now, listen. We both have to get in at exactly the same time.”
“How are we going to do that?” I have a vision of trying to vault myself into the boat and the whole thing just tipping over, with both of us falling into the water, flailing about. Actually, it would probably just be me flailing—Abram definitely doesn’t seem like the flailing type.
“Carefully.” Abram holds on to the boat and smiles at me, then counts off. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
I hoist myself into the boat. It wobbles for a few seconds, including one second where I’m almost positive it’s going to turn over, but then it rights itself.
“You okay?” Abram asks from the other side of the boat.
“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “No sweat.”
We paddle farther out into the ocean, close enough so we can still see the kids splashing around on the shore, but far enough away that we have privacy. We pull the paddles back onto the boat and just sit there, floating lazily on the crystal clear water. The sun warms my face, and I close my eyes and take in a deep breath of ocean air, then let it out slowly.
When I open my eyes, Abram’s staring at me.
“Sorry,” I say, embarrassed. “I’m just not used to being out on the water.”
“Don’t apologize,” he says, inching forward in the boat. He reaches out and puts his hand on my leg. “You look cute when you’re trying to be peaceful.”
“Trying?”
“Yeah.” He moves even closer to me. “Isn’t that what you were trying to do?”
“Be peaceful?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, or relax, whatever.”
“I guess.”
He brushes my hair back from my face, over my shoulders, then traces his finger over my jawline. “I can help you.”
“Help me what?”
“Relax.” He bends down and kisses my collarbone softly. His lips are warm and I shiver, remembering last night, his hands on my body, his weight on top of me as he moved into me slowly, stopping to whisper into my ear and ask if I was okay. He kisses me again now, this time moving up my neck. “Is it helping?”
I let my head fall back, enjoying the feel of his lips on my skin. “Yes,” I say honestly. But as relaxed as I am, it’s not the same as last night. I’m relaxed, yes, but not reckless. So even though it takes all my self-control, I pull away from him and scoot to the other side of the boat.
Abram groans. “Why are you moving all the way over there?”
“Because,” I say, trying to sound flippant, “I want to talk.”
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s talk.” He moves a little closer.
“Nuh-uh,” I say. “Stay where you are.”
“For how long?”
“At least fifteen minutes of talking.”
He laughs. “Fair enough.”
I slide my hand down over the side of the boat and trail it along the water. “So do you like living here?” I ask.
“I love it,” he says.
“And the club . . . you like working there?”
He nods. “Yeah. It’s not a bad gig. I get to be out on the beach all day.”
“Meeting girls.”
He tilts his head. “You’re even cuter when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous!”
“You are.”
“I’m not!”
“It’s okay,” he says, pretending to be serious. “I get it. I’m very in demand around here.”
“I’ll bet.” I roll my eyes, but I’m not really joking. I know he said he doesn’t usually do what he did with me last night, but how am I supposed to believe that? That he just met me and somehow found me so irresistible that he just had to take me home with him? It seems a little unlikely.
“No, but seriously,” he says. “I like working there. My boss is cool and the money is good.”
“Really?” I say. “You make a lot of money working there?”
“Well, it’s relative,” he says. “I make a lot of money for what it is. They give me a percentage of the door, which means I get a certain amount of money based on how many people I bring in. That alone is going to pay for my school next year.”
“School?”
“Yeah.” He nods. “I got into the University of South Florida, but I had to defer for a year because I couldn’t afford it. But when I start next year, I’ll be able to commute and kee
p my job at the club, too, which is great.”
I nod. I feel my face turn red as I think about how I was complaining about not getting into Stanford, when I could pretty much go to any other school I wanted, and my parents would be able to pay for it.
“What are you going to major in?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I have no idea.”
I smile. I love that he has no idea; I love that he’s going to school close to home because he likes his life here and doesn’t feel the need to search for anything else.
“You?” he asks.
“Me?”
“Yeah, what are you going to major in?”
“Something to do with science,” I say. “At least, that was the plan. But now I really don’t know.”
He nods and dips a paddle back into the water, taking a second to straighten the boat out. “You know,” he says. “Sometimes it’s okay to not know what’s going to happen. At least, in my humble opinion.” He slides back across the boat toward me, and I have no choice but to meet him in the middle—I don’t want to tip over. “You’ll figure it out, Quinn,” he says. “I know you will.”
As he says the words, I believe him. He’s comforting and exciting and wonderful all at the same time.
“Has it been fifteen minutes yet?” Abram asks.
“Probably not,” I say.
But I let him kiss me anyway.
We spend the next hour paddling the boat around on the ocean, talking about everything and nothing.
Finally, just when I’m getting sunburned and hungry and we’re about to head back to shore, Abram points. “Look,” he says.
I turn to catch the tail end of a dolphin jumping out of the water before diving back in. “Oh!” I say, half-delighted, half-disappointed that I missed most of it. “Is he going to jump again?”
“He should,” Abram says. “Keep watching.”
I keep watching, hoping, and then a moment later, the dolphin appears again, followed immediately by another one. “Oh!” I say. “It’s a family!”
“Yup,” Abram says. “You see them a lot out here.” But he sounds happy, and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s seeing the dolphins, or because he’s happy that I’m seeing them.