But as I took the corner and headed toward the Thirsty Swan, my heart fluttered with nerves and I found myself wondering if I was overly sweaty, if my face was too red, if—oh god—what if I smelled?
What the hell was I thinking, coming down here?
I upped my pace as I passed by the bar, a round of laughter wafting out to engulf me. A glimpse inside told me nothing. All I saw was a blur of faces, the lights of the jukebox, and someone in shadow keeping bar. I jogged past the alleyway between the bar and a restaurant next door called the Crab Shack and paused, bracing my hands above my knees and trying to catch my breath. I couldn’t believe I’d run all the way down here for nothing. Maybe I should just turn around and walk to the general store right now, where I could promptly nurse my inner humiliation with a nice, big bowl of ice cream.
I stood up straight and was about to put my plan into action, when a door nearby squealed open and I heard Tristan’s voice.
“All I’m saying is you have to back off her a little.”
My heart skipped about two thousand beats. Whoever he was talking to, they were in the alleyway just around the corner from where I was standing. I leaned back against the wall of the Crab Shack and, as carefully as I could, glimpsed around the corner. Krista stood in front of Tristan in the empty, clean-swept alley, still in her general store uniform. She said something in reply that I couldn’t make out.
Tristan sighed heavily. “I understand why you’re so—”
The door to the Crab Shack opened and slammed, drowning out his next few words. I cursed under my breath and tried to look natural as a group of young guys strolled out the door and loped past me.
“…want to get to know her. That’s all,” Krista was saying when I was able to tune in again.
“I get it, but you’re starting to freak her out,” Tristan replied. “I can tell.”
“How do you know you’re not the one freaking her out?” Krista demanded.
“Maybe I am, too. I don’t know,” Tristan said. “She’s different.”
“Well, duh!” Krista exclaimed. “Even I know that!”
The Crab Shack door opened again and a couple of older men walked out, talking loudly about some fishing trip. It seemed to take them forever to move away from the door and walk by. As soon as they’d disappeared around the corner, I held my breath and listened.
“—even sure that she’s a lifer,” Tristan was saying.
“Whatever,” Krista said. “If you want me to back off, fine. I’ll back off. You’ve made it perfectly clear who’s in charge around here.”
She was about to storm away. If she came out of the alley onto the boardwalk I was screwed. Glancing around, I quickly ducked behind a tall potted evergreen shrub outside the Crab Shack and held my breath. After a few seconds, I hazarded a glance around the side of the topiary and saw Krista storming along the wood planks in the direction from which I’d come, headed back toward town.
I stayed there, hidden, and waited for Tristan to go back inside. And waited. And waited. Every second I expected him to pop around the corner and snag me. But then, after what seemed like forever, I finally heard the door squeal open and slam shut again. I let out the breath I’d been holding and walked slowly toward the water. A few empty benches sat facing the bay, hovering over a small beach where two seagulls roosted in the freshly combed sand.
I sat down on the warm sand and watched as a huge fishing boat moved toward the docks to my right, its bell clanging. I sighed and went over Tristan and Krista’s conversation in my mind.
First of all, there was no reason to believe that Tristan and Krista had been talking about me. They could have been talking about anyone. There was that. But then, Krista had been really eager, and after yesterday, Tristan knew I had a lot of questions about him, too. So they could have been talking about me. I supposed I should have felt grateful toward Tristan for trying to help me out with Krista.
But what was a lifer, and why would I be one?
I finished up my stretching and strolled toward home, not even daring to give the Thirsty Swan or its back alley another glance.
“So, wait. You’ve never played a musical instrument? Not even, like, ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano?” Olive asked, her eyes wide.
We were sitting on a brocade couch against one of the light yellow walls in Tristan’s living room as dozens of kids talked and laughed and flirted around us. The air was cool, thanks to the breeze moving through the wide windows, and the steady hum of conversation filled me from the inside out. Olive had been right about the interior of the house being just as impressive as the outside. The whole place smelled of wood polish and coconut sunscreen, like some kind of upscale beach resort. All the furniture was antique and perfectly maintained, with colorful cushions and whimsically mismatched pillows. Across the room stood a massive fireplace with a single, mosaic tile vase at the center of its mantel. There were no other knickknacks, no stacks of magazines, no family pictures. Clearly Tristan’s parents kept it simple.
I hadn’t see Tristan or Krista yet. Darcy stood near the sliding doors to the patio, flirting with Joaquin, which was good. Tonight was important to her. Thank god Joaquin wasn’t screwing it up.
“Well, back in grade school we had required music class, so I guess I’ve used a tambourine and some bongo drums, but not since I was eight or nine.” I shifted in my seat, moving my bag to my side. “I’ve never really been into it.”
“Wow.” Olive sat back, looking out at the party in shock. “Do you want to learn? I could teach you how to play guitar.”
I hesitated. I liked Olive and I didn’t want to let her down, but learning to play an instrument had never crossed my mind in my life.
“Come on!” she wheedled, pinching my arm. “I went running with you! Who knows, maybe you’ll like it.”
Be unpredictable, Rory, I told myself. Life is short.
“You know what? Sure. I’d love to learn,” I said.
“Cool.” Olive’s face completely lit up. “Why don’t we meet up for breakfast tomorrow at the general store? Then we can go back to my room at the boardinghouse, and I’ll show you the basics.”
“Sounds good.”
She dug around in her bag and came out with a small pad and a pencil. “I’ll write down the address and room number for you,” she said. “It’s Mrs. Chen’s boardinghouse on Freesia. The landlady’s totally nosy, but her place has killer acoustics.”
She tore off the scrap of paper, and I tucked it into my pocket. “How long have you played guitar?”
“Ever since I was little,” she replied, reaching for her cup of water. The sleeve of her sweater started to ride up, and she tugged it back down again. She tucked her free hand under her arm like she was cold.
“Then you probably noticed that guy in the park,” I said. “The one who was playing for money every day?”
Olive’s eyes narrowed over the edge of her red cup as she considered. “No. When was this?”
At that moment, Tristan and Krista appeared at the bottom of the wide stairway. He wore a white T-shirt under an open, blue plaid button-down and cargo shorts. She had on a flowy, light pink dress that swished around her knees when she moved. They really did make a stunning pair, and for the first time I saw what Olive meant about how they were treated like the prince and princess of Juniper Landing. As they moved through the living room, everyone stopped what they were doing to greet them. I could almost imagine some of them wanting to dip into curtsies and bows.
Just as I had the thought, Tristan looked over at us, and our eyes locked. I felt warm all over, like he somehow knew what I was thinking. Then Kevin and Fisher commandeered him by the keg, and the moment passed. I half expected Krista to come over and demand a hair makeover, but instead she found Lauren and Bea by the fireplace and started to chat. Maybe she and Tristan had been talking about me this afternoon. It definitely looked as if she was heeding his warning to back off.
My heart raced at the thought, but I returned my
attention to Olive and cleared my throat. “What were we talking about?”
“Some guitar player in the park?” Olive reminded me.
“Right! He was there for a few mornings and then today he just…wasn’t.”
“Maybe he made enough money and hopped a plane to New York,” Olive joked.
“Maybe, but the really weird thing is, Darcy didn’t remember him,” I said, toying with the zipper pull on my sweatshirt as I watched Krista. She hadn’t looked over at me once.
“What do you mean?” Olive asked.
“She was the first one to point him out the day we got here,” I explained, keeping one eye on Krista and her friends. “And then a couple days later, we watched him play for a few minutes together and she said he was growing on her. But when I pointed out he was gone, she had no idea who I was talking about.”
“That is weird,” Olive said, fully alert. She put her cup down and sat forward, like a talk-show host with a particularly interesting guest. The possibility of minstrel boy disappearing hadn’t bothered her, but clearly the idea of Darcy spacing on his existence did. “She just didn’t remember him?”
“No,” I said, glad someone thought this whole thing was as odd as I did. “It was like he was erased from her memory.”
“That used to happen to one of my friends back home,” Olive told me, lowering her voice. “Every once in a while, he would black out whole hours of his life. Sometimes even days.”
“Really?” I asked, intrigued. “Did he see a doctor?”
Olive laughed sarcastically. “I kind of think a doctor would have just told him to lay off the heroin.”
My jaw dropped, and I felt my neck grow warm. “You think my sister’s a drug addict?” I whispered, surprised and kind of offended. “Darcy’s never done drugs in her life.”
Olive looked at me like she’d just been slapped.
“What? Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” Olive said. “I just—something just flew into my eye.” She got up and grabbed her purse, holding her fingers over her right eyelid. “I’m just going to run to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“Olive, wait.” As she ducked around a corner, I got up as well, but when I picked up my bag, it overturned and everything spilled out—my wallet, my hair bands, my lip balm. I quickly shoved it all back in the bag and followed Olive, but as I rounded the corner, I found myself at the end of a long hallway with at least half a dozen closed doors.
Sighing, I knocked on the first one. “Olive?”
Nothing. I moved on to the second. “Olive? Are you in there?”
No answer. Moving slowly down the hallway, the noise from the party started to fade. I knocked on the third door and heard a muffled response. Slowly, I tried the ancient, brass door handle and the door creaked open, but it wasn’t a bathroom. It was a massive bedroom and it was filled from floor to ceiling, with junk.
“Whoa,” I said under my breath.
My curiosity getting the better of me, I took a step inside. Shelves lined every wall, each one overflowing with all kinds of stuff, and even more items were piled up into teetering towers in the center of the floor. There were books and magazines, tangled masses of jewelry, purses and backpacks and suitcases in all shapes and sizes, some of them stuffed to the gills. There were laptop computers piled up on the floor, wires curling everywhere, and a wide shelf nailed to the wall jammed with iPads and other tablets. As I moved farther inside, my hip bumped a huge cardboard box that was filled to the brim with cell phones.
“What the hell…?”
Maybe this was why Tristan’s house was so decluttered. His family was made up of closet hoarders who kept their belongings behind closed doors. Slowly I turned around to leave, and I froze. Along the wall next to the door was a rack of hanging clothes stuffed to bursting, and next to that was a hat rack full of cabbies and baseball caps, sun hats and visors. Slung over the uppermost hook was a well-worn guitar strap in yellow and green and red.
“Rory.”
I blinked. Tristan was standing in front of me, framed by the doorway, his posture ramrod straight.
“What’re you doing in here?” he asked flatly.
“I—I’m sorry, I just—” I cleared my throat, heat creeping up my neck. My eyes darted back to the guitar strap. It was there. It was definitely there. This was no flash. “I was looking for Olive.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to be in here, so…”
He held the door open for me. I took the hint and slid by him. He closed the door firmly behind me and pushed his hands into the front pockets of his shorts. “Sorry. My mom just doesn’t like anyone coming in here.”
He turned and led me back down the hallway, toward the party.
“Oh. Sorry. Olive said she was going to the bathroom, so—”
“That’s on the other side of the kitchen,” he said, tipping his face down so his hair fell across his cheekbone. “If you need it.”
“Oh, well…thanks,” I said.
We had come to the end of the hallway. To my right, Darcy and Joaquin chatted with Bea and Kevin. To my left was the living room and the brocade couch I’d vacated. Olive wasn’t back yet. I turned to Tristan, dying to ask him about that room, about the guitar strap. It belonged to the missing minstrel boy. I was certain of it. But how had it ended up here? Did Tristan know the guy? Had he given it to him? Or had someone in Tristan’s family taken it from him?
“So,” Tristan said. “You came.”
A blush swirled up on my cheeks. “Darcy wanted to come, so…”
“Do you always do stuff you don’t want to do for your sister?” he asked.
He crossed over to the brocade couch and sat. Still trying to figure out how to broach my questions, I sat next to him. The skin on my legs tingled just from the proximity of his knee to mine. I turned in my seat slightly, angling myself away from him.
“No,” I said. “This was really important to her.”
“Why?” he asked, looking across the room, where Darcy was laughing with her hand on Joaquin’s arm.
Because she’s massively crushing on your annoying friend was the first answer that came to mind.
“She likes parties,” I said simply.
“And you don’t?” he asked, turning back to me again.
He was gazing at me, like he was staring into my soul. No guy ever looked at me that way. Maybe not even Christopher. They were always too busy fidgeting, or looking past me for something better. They had the attention span of flies. But not Tristan. Tristan knew how to focus. I just didn’t know how to be the object of that focus.
“Why do you care?” I asked, my body temperature off the charts under his scrutiny.
“I just do,” he stated simply. “I imagine you avoid stuff like this because it’s beneath you.”
“Wow. So you think I’m stuck-up,” I challenged.
“Not at all,” he said matter-of-factly. “I think you know who you are and don’t give in to peer pressure. But with your sister it’s different, so here you are. That doesn’t make you stuck-up. It makes you special.”
I swallowed hard, feeling flattered, but also thrown.
“Do you like to people-watch?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes when I’m at a party, I just sit back and observe,” he said, glancing around the room. “Like that guy over there.” He nodded at an adorable but nerdy redheaded boy leaning against the far wall. “He’s clearly nervous as hell.”
The boy was wrapping the string on his sweatshirt around his finger so tightly the tip was turning white. Meanwhile, the girl he was talking to lifted her arm to smooth her hair and surreptitiously checked her watch.
“And that girl couldn’t care less,” I pointed out.
“Exactly,” Tristan said, smiling back at me over his shoulder. “So I was right. You are a natural observer.”
I shifted under his gaze, finding it slightly unsettling that he kept acting like he knew so mu
ch about me.
“Maybe,” I shot back. “But at least I’ve never openly spied on anyone.”
Tristan blinked, then finally looked away. He rested his forearms across his knees and laced his fingers together. The braided leather bracelet clung tight to his wrist. It looked like it was melded to his skin. Like it had been there forever. He started to absently toy with the weave.
“Is there something you want to ask me, Rory?” he said finally, looking across the room at Krista, who was still standing by the fireplace.
“Yeah, there is,” I said, sitting up straight and facing him completely. Somehow, his direct question made me brave. “What happened to the kid in the park?”
He looked me in the eye. “The kid in the park.”
“The guitar player. The one with the dreads. I saw you watching him play the other day with Fisher, so I know you know who I’m talking about,” I said, warming to my inquiry. “Where is he, and why doesn’t my sister remember him? Oh, and why is his guitar strap hanging in your storage room back there?”
“Rory…” he began, his voice low.
The way he said my name, like he really knew me—like he’d always known me—sent a warm rush through my chest. I looked up at him, right in the eye, and found I couldn’t look away.
“Rory!” a familiar voice called out.
“Oh, hey, Aaron!” I said, standing up to give him a hug and trying not to groan at his timing. Tristan had just been about to tell me something about the minstrel. I could feel it. “Have you met Tristan? This is his house.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Aaron offered his hand, and Tristan pushed himself up to shake with him. “Killer party, man.”
“Thanks.” Then he glanced over at his sister, who was giving him some kind of eye. Unspoken words between siblings, I guessed. “I’ve gotta go…do a thing.” Tristan said. He looked from me to Aaron and back to me again. I could tell there was something he wanted to say, but he thought better of it. “You two have fun.”