I nodded as I slid off the counter, and Lucy followed suit. She slung her bag over her shoulder and was reaching for the door, when she stopped and looked back at me. “I’ll call you later,” she said. She looked around the deserted snack bar and added, “Think you can handle the crowd without me?”
I smiled at that. “I think I’ll be fine,” I said. “Have fun.” She waved and left, and I tried to fill the rest of the work shift by cleaning the ice machine and attempting to sort through what, exactly, I was feeling about Henry. I didn’t think I’d been imagining that something was going on last night, but in the cold light of day, I couldn’t be sure.
As soon as five rolled around, I locked up the snack bar and zipped a hooded sweatshirt over my cutoffs (I’d leaned my lesson as far as sweatshirts and overcast days went), feeling myself shiver. The wind had just started to pick up, tossing the tree branches violently. It was a truly miserable day, and I just hoped that there would be a fire going when I got home.
I biked to Henson’s to pick up some corn and tomatoes for dinner, per my mother’s request. At the register, I found myself hesitating over the bags of licorice. I’d been getting them for my dad whenever I’d gone in, even though he’d stopped asking for them. And when I’d gone in search of some chips the night before, I’d seen three of the licorice bags in the cabinet, shoved behind a box of saltines. But somehow not bringing a bag for my father seemed like an admission of defeat.
“That too?” Dave Henson asked cheerfully, pointing to the licorice bag I’d picked up, and helping me make my decision.
“Sure,” I said, paying for my items and shoving them into my bag. “Thanks.”
“Get home safe, now,” Dave said, looking outside. “I think we’re about to get some weather.”
I waved good-bye to Dave and headed out as a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. I groaned and flipped the hood of my sweatshirt up just as the first drops of rain splattered on the road. Main Street wasn’t crowded—it seemed like the weather had kept people in, but those that were on the street either ducked under awnings or hustled to their cars. I knew the signs, and I hurried to my bike and dropped my bag in the basket. I was trying to decide if it made more sense to call home for a ride and duck under an awning, or just see how far I could get before the storm really hit. I had a feeling that if I called home for a ride because it was raining, I might never hear the end of it. But on the other hand…
The thunder sounded again, closer this time, and that decided it for me. So I’d get a little wet. I would certainly survive. And it would be better than Warren—not to mention my dad—mocking me for the rest of the summer. I climbed on my bike and headed down Main Street, noticing that puddles were already starting to form on the pavement. As I pedaled through them, water splashed against my feet and bare legs, and I realized that this really had not been the day to wear shorts.
I biked on, getting soaked as I rode. The thunder was getting ever closer, so loud that I found myself jumping slightly whenever it sounded, my hands tightening on the handlebars. As I stopped for a moment to brush some of the rain off my face and fix the bag in the basket, I saw a flash of lightning in the distance.
“Crap,” I muttered, pulling my hood up higher and looking down at my bike for a second, taking in the fact that it was pretty much made of metal. I was fairly sure the rubber of the tires would keep me from getting electrocuted, but it wasn’t something that I was dying to field-test. I was soaked through to the skin, and I could see the droplets rolling off my bare legs. The rain was coming down in sheets now, so hard that I could barely see the road in front of me. But it somehow seemed that I was getting wetter standing still than I had when I was in motion. Wiping my wet hands on my even wetter sweatshirt, I swung my leg back over the bike when someone skidded up next to me.
“Taylor?” I turned and saw Henry on his own bike, looking almost as drenched as I was, though not quite—he was wearing a baseball cap that seemed to be keeping some of the rain off his face.
“Hey,” I said, momentarily grateful that I had my hood up, since I could only imagine how bad my hair looked. But a second later, the reality hit. I had my hood up. I probably looked like a half-drowned elf.
“This is intense,” he said. He was practically yelling to be heard above the sound of the rain and wind.
“I know,” I called back. I felt myself smile, realizing how ridiculous we probably looked—two people, standing still in a rainstorm, having a conversation on the side of the road.
“Ready?” he asked, and I nodded, standing up on my pedals and starting to bike against the wind. The rain was starting to come down sideways, and the wind was blowing so hard that I was having trouble keeping my bike upright. It kept wobbling, and I kept having to put a foot down to steady myself. Because of this, Henry had ridden on ahead of me, though he would always stop and wait for me to catch up. I thought this was what was happening when I reached him and he was stopped, a foot resting on the ground. I biked on ahead, figuring that he would be right beside me, but after a few seconds, I turned and saw that he was still stopped.
“You okay?” I yelled over the rain, thinking that this was really not the day to have mechanical problems.
“Yeah,” he called back. “But this is insane. I think we should just wait out the storm. It’s not going to continue like this.”
“No, but…” I shivered. I didn’t even need a fire any longer; all I wanted was a shower so hot that it would steam up the bathroom mirror in seconds, and I planned to stand under it until our tiny hot-water heater ran out. I looked back to the direction of Main Street, which was the only place any shelter could really be found. But the thought of biking all the way back there, and then having to go home, was not exactly appealing.
“Come on,” Henry called. He looked both ways, then biked across the street. Confused, I watched as he got off his bike and started wheeling it up a driveway.
“Henry!” I called across the street, “what are you doing?” I couldn’t tell if he heard me, but at any rate, he just kept wheeling his bike. I didn’t understand what was going on, but it appeared like he, at least, had some sort of plan, so I checked for oncoming traffic before riding across as well.
As soon as I made it onto the driveway, the tree cover cut down on a little bit of the rain. I looked around for Henry and saw that he was rolling his bike toward a house, I now realized, that was very familiar. I squinted through the rain to see the sign, and sure enough, we were at Maryanne’s Happy Hours—also known as Henry’s old house. The driveway was empty and the house was dark, so at least it seemed like Maryanne wouldn’t be chasing us off her property. I walked my bike past the house, following Henry around to the back. By the time I reached it, Henry had stopped where the woods began, and leaned his bike against a tree. I did as well, noticing that when I stepped into the woods, the denseness of the trees really did begin to provide some shelter from the rain. I just wasn’t sure that it had been worth stopping for. I was about to say this to Henry when I saw that he was walking into the woods. And that’s when I saw what he was heading toward—the treehouse.
“You okay?” he asked, as I concentrated on getting a grip on the wooden planks, nailed into the tree trunk, that served as the ladder.
“Fine,” I said, reaching up for the next rung. Henry was already in the treehouse, looking down at me—he’d climbed up with no problem whatsoever. It wasn’t the kind of treehouse that you sometimes saw in catalogs, the ones that came with a kit and instructions and were meant to look like log cabins, or pirate ships, all right angles and smooth wood. It had been built by Henry’s dad, without any fancy blueprints, just to fit in the space between three supporting trees, which made it triangle-shaped. There was a roof, two walls and a floor, but nothing so fancy as a door. Instead, the front was just open, slightly overhanging the trunk that served as the ladder. It seemed fitting that we were there now, as the only times I could really remember being in the treehouse was when it had been raining. I wasn’t su
re I’d actually ever seen it from the inside when it was sunny out.
“Need a hand?” Henry asked, and I nodded. I extended one upward, and he grasped it—his hands cool against mine—and gave me a pull, allowing me to throw a leg over onto the wooden planks of the floor. I let go of Henry’s hand and pushed myself to my feet, starting to stand. “Careful,” he said. He pointed upward. “It’s a little low in here.”
I saw that I had been just about to whack my head on the roof. “Wow,” I murmured as I crouched down. When I’d been here last, I’d been able to stand up to my full height with no problem. The treehouse didn’t appear to have changed much. There was nothing inside it except a plastic pail in the corner that I saw was positioned under a leak; every few seconds there would be a muted ping sound as another drop fell in.
Henry was sitting at the front of the treehouse, his legs dangling in the air. He took off his baseball cap and ran his hands through his hair, brushing back that one lock that sometimes fell over his forehead. I crouch-walked over and sat down next to him, hugging my knees to my chest and rubbing my legs with my hands to try and warm them up a bit. If my sweatshirt had been bigger, I would have tucked them inside without a thought to how ridiculous I looked.
Now that we were under a little bit of shelter, I could see how gorgeous the woods were in the storm. Everything seemed greener than normal, and the sound of the rain was muted, making it seem much more peaceful than the deluge we’d been exposed to out on the road. It was still very windy, and I watched the trees around us as they bent and swayed in the wind. Mr. Crosby’s carpentry skills seemed to be holding up, though, and the treehouse wasn’t moving or even feeling unsteady.
“Better?” Henry asked.
“Much,” I said. I leaned forward and glanced at Maryanne’s house. I could see it through the trees—though it was still dark, it was worryingly close. “Won’t Maryanne mind?”
Henry shook her head. “Nah,” he said. “I come here sometimes to think, and she doesn’t mind it.”
“Got it,” I said. We sat there in silence for a moment. The only sound was the rain falling all around us and the wind whipping through the trees. I glanced behind me to the treehouse again, still marveling at the fact that it looked the same—just a little shrunken. “I can’t remember the last time I was up here,” I said. “But it hasn’t changed much.”
“It would have been that last summer, right?” Henry asked, turning to me. “When we were twelve.”
I nodded, looking straight ahead at the branches that were swaying and dipping. “Probably.” And maybe it was the disorienting effect of being caught in a rainstorm, or the conversation I’d just had with Lucy, but before I could consider what I was saying, I asked, “Do you ever think about that summer? I mean, when we were…” I paused, hesitating over the right word.
“When we were going out,” Henry finished for me. I looked at him and saw that he was still looking at me. “Of course.”
“Me too,” I said. I wasn’t quite brave enough to tell him what I’d realized at Gelsey’s slumber party—how much it had impacted me, our first attempt at something like love. It was the only time, I supposed, when you could go into something totally fresh, with no baggage, no idea of how you could get hurt and hurt others in return.
“I mean,” Henry said, “you were my first girlfriend, after all.”
I felt myself smiling at that. “And there have been lots of others, I take it, in the interim?”
“Scads,” Henry said, straight-faced, making me laugh. “Just dozens and dozens.”
“Same here,” I said, deadpan, hoping he knew that I was joking. Because other than my cheating ex, Evan, and two very short-lived relationships sophomore year, there was nobody of significance to tell him about.
“You know,” Henry added after a moment, “I really liked you back then.”
I took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have done that to you,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left like that. And I’m really, really sorry.”
He nodded. “I just didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know if I’d done something….”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It was all me. I just… tend to run away when things get to be too much.” I shrugged. “I’m working on it.”
“I couldn’t believe it when you showed up on the dock,” he said with a laugh. “I thought I was hallucinating for a minute.”
“Me too,” I confessed. “I thought you’d never speak to me again.”
“I tried,” he reminded me, and I smiled at that. “But seriously,” he said, looking right at me, his tone a little more measured, “you’re a hard habit to break.”
I looked into his eyes and could feel my heart begin to pound a bit faster. The air around us suddenly seemed charged, and it felt like we were standing at a crossroads—that things could go either way from here, but there was a decision that had to be made.
Slowly, inch by inch, Henry moved closer to me. He reached down and touched my hand with his, making me shiver, even though I was no longer cold. He picked up my hand and looked into my eyes, as if making sure this was okay. It more than was, and I hoped he could see that in my expression. He leaned a little closer to me and tipped back my hood and I didn’t even care what my hair looked like. He placed one hand on my cheek, stroking it with his thumb as I shivered again. And then he leaned toward me and I could feel my heart beat hard, and we were so close, just a breath apart. I closed my eyes and, as the rain and wind whipped all around us, he kissed me.
It was soft at first; his lips touching mine lightly. Then he pulled back and cupped my cheek under his hand and kissed me again.
This time it wasn’t so tentative, and I kissed him back, and it was a kiss that was both familiar and brand-new, making me remember a kiss from five years ago, and making me feel like I’d never been kissed before in my life. And I realized that maybe Lucy was wrong—maybe sometimes there was such a thing as a perfect moment. His arms were around my back, pulling me closer, and I looped my arms around his neck and ran my hands over his jawline, suddenly not able to stop touching him. And while we kissed, up there among the trees, the rain tapered off until, at long last, the sun came out.
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
chapter thirty
“TAYLOR!” I OPENED MY EYES AND SAW LUCY, LYING ON MY DOCK IN her bikini, waving at me. “Hello?”
“Sorry,” I said, sitting up and trying to remember what Lucy had been talking about. I had not been paying attention in the least. “What was that?”
“Let me guess,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You didn’t hear what I was saying.”
I smiled involuntarily, causing Lucy to groan. “Oh, my God,” she said. “It’s so hard to have a conversation with you when you keep slipping into makeout flashbacks.”
I thought about denying it, but I had a feeling it would be pretty useless. I pulled my sunglasses down to cover my eyes and lay back down on my striped towel, stretching out in the late-afternoon sun.
It was almost July, a little over a week after Henry and I had kissed in the treehouse. And Lucy wasn’t entirely wrong to complain. In fact, she’d been right on the money—while she’d been talking, my mind had been drifting to the night before, when Henry and I, once we had been sure our respective families were asleep, had made out on this very dock, stretching out on a blanket under the stars. At one point, we’d paused to catch our breath, and I’d looked up at the sky as I rested my head on his chest, feeling his breath rise and fall. “Do you know any constellations?” I asked, and I’d felt his laugh rumbling in his chest before I heard it.
“No,” he’d said, and even without looking, I could hear the smile in his voice. “Want me to learn some?”
“No,” I said, my eyes still on the stars above us. “I was just wondering.” He’d smoothed his hand over my hair, and I’d closed my eyes for just a moment, still a little amazed that this had happened, that we’d somehow ended up here.
In
the short time we’d been together, I knew that this was like none of my other relationships. And it was also not like we’d been before, when we were so young and inexperienced. It was like all the obstacles that had made my other relationships so complicated—gossip, drama at school—were just removed. He lived next door, my parents liked him, and we had no schedules or responsibilities beyond our not-very-taxing jobs. And unlike Warren’s fledgling relationship with Wendy, being with Henry wasn’t causing me a lot of stress.
Not that Warren wasn’t happy—in fact, he had developed an annoying humming habit, and he did it constantly, even in the shower—but he was still spending far too much time before every date picking out which shirt to wear, and then afterward, wanting to go over everything she’d said, as though looking for hidden clues or meanings. Warren and I would often end up returning home around the same time, and so we would sit outside, usually on the porch steps, and I listened as he dissected and analyzed his evening for me. But unlike Warren’s relationship, I was finding that being with Henry again was surprisingly relaxing. It was like I could just be myself when I was with him. After all, he already knew my flaws, especially the biggest one of all. And this meant that in quiet moments, lying with my head on his chest, I could close my eyes and just breathe, reveling in the peace.
But it wasn’t all quiet and peaceful. There was a spark between us that I’d never felt with any of the other (four) guys that I’d kissed. When we were making out, it was almost impossible for me to keep my hands off of him, and kissing him could stop time and cause me to forget where I was. Just thinking about kissing him made my stomach flip over, and I had burned several batches of fries at work as I stared into space, going over in my head the events of the night before—his fingers, tracing a line down my neck, the spot he’d found just underneath my earlobe that I hadn’t ever considered before, but that now could make my knees weak. The way I would run my hands through his hair, always pushing back that one errant lock as we kissed, the softness of his cheek against mine, the warmth of the back of his neck where he was always faintly sunburned.