Or so I’d thought. Call when you get a chance, the message had said. I could understand my mother’s first instinct, to toss it away. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I was just a fool. This was the girl I was, this was where I was from, and East U was where I was going. What could he possibly say that would change any of that now? Nothing.
And yet, I hated to leave anything open and unfinished, so I wondered. All through dinner, as I sat with Luke’s arm loosely around my shoulders, trying not to track Morris’s work—or lack of it—from a distance. As it grew dark, and the tiki torches took on a mild, warm glow, bugs circling them. For the entire drive home that I knew by heart, four turns, two stop signs, one flashing yellow light. It was like a voice barely in earshot, whispering just loud enough to make you want to lean closer so you could make it out. When I finally got to my house, I cut the engine, then slid my feet out of my shoes. We were blocks from the beach, just like the office was, but no matter. The first thing I felt on my bare feet, like always, was sand.
* * *
The next day was Sunday, which meant another round of checkouts and arrivals. So much for a day of rest. For me, the last day of the week always meant follow-up duty.
Colby Realty didn’t employ their own housekeeping staff. Instead, we subcontracted out to several cleaning companies, each of which handled certain houses each week. It was hard work, and you had to do it quickly: checkout was at ten, check-in at four. Which left six hours to make houses fully used by folks on vacation appear pristine and untouched. Not everyone could pull it off, which was why Grandmother insisted that we check behind every crew for quality control before the keys went back out. The Sunday shift of this was the least desirable job at the agency. Which was why it was usually part of mine.
The first place on my list that day was Summer Daydream, a peach-colored house on the second row back from the oceanfront. I parked, then climbed the stairs to the front door and followed the sound of a vacuum through the entryway and into the TV room. There I saw one of our longtime cleaners, Lolly, chasing dust bunnies with her canister and hose.
“Emaline,” Lolly called out to me as I passed by the living room. When I doubled back, she cut off the vaccuum, picking up a Windex bottle.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
She sighed, spritzing a big glass coffee table covered in smudges and cup rings. Here we go. “Well, you know how I put out my back last month. Went to the doctor finally and they sent me for an MRI. You ever have one of those?”
I shook my head. Lolly was a talker, and I’d learned that the less I responded, the better chance I had of actually extracting myself at some point.
“Awful,” she said, spritzing the table again. “You have to lay in this metal tube and be totally still. I thought I was going to have a panic attack. And then they tell me that my L4 and L5 are totally shot. Gonna need surgery. Like I have time for that.”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She waved her paper towel at me, shrugging. “First Ron’s prostate thing, now this. And you know our insurance won’t cover it all. Plus Tracy’s moved back in with the kids since her divorce, so we don’t get a moment’s peace.”
I nodded, then shot a look at my car, wondering how I could get out there.
Lolly sighed again, then started back on the table. “Tell your mom the towel rack in the master bathroom finally fell off. It won’t take another bolt, they’re going to have to replace the whole thing.”
“Okay.”
“And there’s a big scratch on the game room wall, a black one. Magic Eraser won’t take it out.”
“Got it.”
She started dragging the vacuum and canister towards me. Behind her, the room now looked perfect: couch cushions fluffed, table with not a streak or mark, clean lines on the carpet. Ready for vacation. Again.
“Janice,” she hollered into the kitchen. “I’m packing up. You about done?”
“Yep,” another voice replied. “Meet you outside in ten.”
I did my quick pass through the house, checking that all beds were made, bathrooms were clean, and towels had been distributed, as well as everything else on the checklist I knew by heart. By the time I was done, Lolly and her friend were wrapping up as well, their stuff piled up on the front steps.
“Catch you later at Tidal Wave?” she called out.
I nodded, then went to get into my car. I was just pulling the door open when I heard footsteps on the road behind me. I turned. It was a tall guy with glasses, jogging, wearing an iPod. He looked familiar, somehow, but no name came to mind, so I went back to what I was doing.
“Hey,” he called out. I turned again to see he was slowing to a walk, taking out his headphones. “You’re from the realty place. Right?”
I squinted at his face, trying to remember him. Before I could, though, he said, “You told us about the table place. When you brought the wine and cheese.”
The vips, I thought. Of course. He was the one with the obnoxious woman at Sand Dollars. “Oh, yeah. Right. That was me.”
“Theo,” he said, pointing to himself. Then he stuck out his hand. “I forgot your name.”
I was pretty sure we hadn’t gotten to this level of familiarity during our previous meeting, but I shook anyway. “Emaline.”
He nodded, then looked behind me. “So this is where you live?”
I glanced at Summer Daydream, which was an eight-bedroom, ten-bath, four-story monstrosity sporting a pool and triple garage. “Uh, no,” I said. “Just working.”
“On Sunday morning?”
“The rental industry never sleeps.” I wasn’t even sure why he was talking to me, especially since it meant cutting his run short. Who does that? “Half our houses turn over on Sunday.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “So, look. About yesterday. My boss … she’s kind of intense. She doesn’t mean to be rude.”
“No?”
He smiled, barely. “Okay, maybe she does. But it’s kind of a New York reflex. Not entirely her fault.”
“It’s fine,” I told him. “I’m used to it.”
“She’s just really stressed about the time crunch we’re under with this thing, doing the editing and filming …” He trailed off, as if suddenly realizing that I was just standing there, waiting to leave. “She’s really talented.”
“She makes movies?”
“Documentaries.” He ran a hand through his hair. He was a bit on the skinny side, not really my type, but I could see that for some girls he’d be cute. “We’re finishing up this project about a local artist that she’s been working on for three years now.”
“Artist?” I said. “Who’s that?”
“Clyde Conaway.”
“The guy that owns the bike shop?”
“Among other things,” he said. “You know him?”
“As much as anybody here does,” I replied. “Since when is he an artist?”
“You don’t know his story?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, man, it’s extraordinary. Colby kid becomes hot modern artist, then abandons all to move back to small coastal town and become local eccentric, even as his work is still in serious demand? There’s a real mystery there. Everyone wants to know why.”
“Because he’s Clyde,” I told him. “Nothing he does makes any sense.”
He pointed at me. “We should interview you. I’m going to talk to Ivy about it.”
I smiled, shaking my head as I slid into my seat. “Believe me, I’d be no help. I don’t know anything about him. Thanks anyway, though.”
When I cranked the engine, though, he didn’t move. He just stood there, so I had to go right past him. When I did he smiled, putting his earbuds back in. “Nice talking to you, Emaline.”
“You too. Enjoy your stay.”
He nodded, and I headed down the street. At the next stop sign, though, I looked back. He was still standing there in front of Summer Daydream, looking up at it. What kind of pers
on would think a girl like me would live in a house like that? The same kind who thought there’d be interest in a movie about Clyde Conaway. In other words: Not From Around Here.
4
“HOLD ON. DID you hear that?”
Luke groaned right into my ear, then rolled off me. “Emaline.”
“I’m serious. Listen.”
We lay there, side by side, completely quiet. In the distance, like always, there was the ocean. Nothing else.
“You know,” he said after a moment, “it’s getting hard not to take this personally.”
“Do you want a repeat of what happened in April?”
“No,” he replied. “But I also don’t want to waste the only time alone we’ve had in months being paranoid.”
“It has not been months,” I pointed out, but he wasn’t listening, already too busy migrating back to my pillow, one hand smoothing over my stomach, then hip bone.
“Feels like it,” he mumbled into my neck.
I rolled my eyes. Luke and I didn’t differ on much, but when it came to this one issue, we were often at odds. If you asked him, I was a dull prude. As far as I was concerned, he was a sex addict who could never get enough. Somewhere in the middle was the truth, not that we’d ever gotten close enough to see it.
“It was last week,” I pointed out, as he unbuttoned my jeans, picking up where he’d left off. “Wednesday or Thursday.”
“It was the week before,” he said, shifting his weight so I could slide them down over my legs.
“Do you realize you are picking the wrong moment to split hairs?”
“Do you realize we can’t have a moment at all as long as you’re talking?”
I loved my boyfriend. I really, really did. But ever since my mom had come home unexpectedly this spring while we were spending our lunch hour doing pretty much this same thing, I’d been skittish. One minute we were happily occupied, secure in the knowledge that we had the whole house to ourselves, and the next she was pushing open my bedroom door to get a full-on view of something none of us ever wanted her to see. I still got red-faced thinking about it, while my mom was so traumatized she couldn’t look at me in the eye for over a week. I would have pointed out that this was yet another reason she should stay out of my room, if either of us could talk about it without the risk of exploding from shared embarrassment. In fact, we’d never discussed it at all beyond a curt conversation (lacking eye contact) during which she confirmed that 1) I was on birth control and 2) I knew I was never, ever to do it under this roof again.
And we didn’t. At least for a while. But when you’re in a committed relationship with someone you love, fooling around in a parked car or in the dunes at the beach just feels … dirty. Not to mention uncomfortable. Add in the fact that Luke’s mom was always home—this was not an exaggeration, she worked from home and had no hobbies other than her family—and it wasn’t too long before we ended up playing with this particular fire again. Now, though, even when we were alone, something was different.
If I was honest, though, there was probably more to this than just what happened in April. Like the fact that while, for the first year or so we were together, Luke and I were all about falling in love—the stuff that happens pre-walking into the sunset—we’d now crossed over, right to the little irritations that crop up in relationships after that. Like the other person drives too fast (or slow), watches too much football (or not enough), or wants to fool around all the time (or never). He was such a great guy, I knew that any other girl would be able to overlook any of his not-so-great aspects. But I was me. Unfortunately.
Plus there were the various stresses of the last year, with both of us applying for school. We hadn’t ever talked about it, but I could tell all the college stuff I’d done with my father—applying to Ivy League schools far away from Colby and, by extension, Luke himself—he’d taken a little personally. I mean, why wouldn’t I go to East U, where I’d get a free ride and we’d be together? For him, that was perfect. And even though he never said as much, I knew he wondered, more than once, why it wasn’t for me.
“Wait.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I swear, I think I just heard a car door.”
“There is nobody here.”
“Just listen for a second.”
This time, he didn’t move, just stopped. As he humored me, I looked up at his face, familiar and gorgeous. I could not imagine my life without him, and I thought I’d kill any girl who tried to come between us. And yet, I knew he was right: it was the week before last.
He looked at me. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
For a moment, we stayed right where we were, him above, me below, our eyes locked. I love you, I thought, but instead of saying this, I slid my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. He whispered my name and then his lips were on mine, erasing the space between us and everything it encompasses and doesn’t. At least for now.
* * *
“You just take a shower?”
I blinked, startled. I didn’t know what it was about Mrs. Ye, my best girlfriend Daisy’s mom, but she had this way of totally disarming me. Even about something so simple as having damp hair at twelve thirty on a weekday.
“Um, yeah,” I said, as she went back to applying hot pink polish to a woman wearing a terry-cloth beach cover-up. “I got hot cleaning up the storeroom at work. Plus it’s filthy in there.”
“Hmmh,” she replied, the meaning of which even without the language barrier—which was sizeable—was impossible to decipher. Then she said something to Daisy in their native Vietnamese, the undecipherable words flowing off her tongue as quickly as the polish off the brush.
“Okay,” Daisy replied. “Do you want mayonnaise?”
Her mom added something else, again so quickly I couldn’t have caught it even if it was in a language I spoke. This time, Daisy said nothing, only giving a quick nod of her head. I followed her out into the parking lot of Coastal Plaza, where her parents’ salon, Wave Nails, was located right between a liquor store and AZ Grocery. Booze, food, and pampering. What else did you need on vacation?
“Hot,” Daisy said, putting on her huge sunglasses as we started down to the other end of the mall to Da Vinci’s Pizza and Subs. “Too hot.”
“Well,” I pointed out, “you’re not exactly dressed for summer.”
She turned, leveling her eyes at me. Daisy had been my closest girlfriend since her family had moved here in seventh grade, but her beauty could still totally disarm me at random moments. My style was slapdash at best, but she was always photo ready, cribbing styles from the fashion magazines she read nonstop. She was small, with delicate features she made even more stunning with the makeup she got up early to apply carefully every morning. Nobody dressed like her, mostly because she produced most of her looks at her mom’s sewing machine, which she’d taught herself how to use when she was twelve. Colby was not exactly New York or Paris when it came to fashion, but you wouldn’t know this by looking at Daisy. She was dressing for the life she wanted, not the one she had.
Which was why, while I was sporting my basic summer uniform of cutoff shorts, tank top, and flip-flops, she had on a black sleeveless dress and platform wedges, her hair pulled back in a neat chignon. Like Audrey Hepburn, if she passed Tiffany’s and headed south. Very south.
“What you don’t understand,” she said now, smoothing her small hands over her dress, “is that this is the perfect dress.”
“It’s black and long and it’s ninety degrees out.”
She sighed. After Daisy spent much of the first year we knew each other trying to get me to be even slightly fashionable, we decided for the sake of our friendship to agree to disagree. Which we did pretty much constantly.
“Black and long,” she repeated, her voice flat. “That’s really how you describe this?”
“Am I wrong?”
“It’s a vintage A-line, Emaline. It’s classic. Knows no season.”
“It’s a dress,” I
replied. “It doesn’t know anything.”
This she didn’t even dignify with a response. Despite our sartorial differences, the reason we’d bonded, at least initially, was our shared perfectionism when it came to school. Before she arrived, I’d regularly been near the top or the best student in just about every class I took. Then, suddenly, there was this new girl, whip smart, better read, and bilingual. If we hadn’t hit it off I was pretty sure we would have hated each other.
Now she adjusted her sunglasses as a guy on a moped passed us, engine whining like a gnat. I hated mopeds, but for whatever reason they were ubiquitous here, like saltwater taffy and hermit crabs being sold as pets.
Daisy wrinkled her nose. “God, I hate mopeds.”
I smiled. “You better talk to Morris, then. He’s still making noises about getting one.”
“That boy needs a car, not a toy,” she said, sighing. “But first he needs a job. Did you hear he got let go from that catering gig?”
“No,” I said, not that I was surprised. Since Daisy and Morris started dating—around the same time hell froze over, pigs flew, and bears began relieving themselves in other places than wooded areas—I’d learned that I couldn’t talk about him the way I once had. Used to be, he was My Friend Morris and I was free to complain about his slackness as much as I wanted. Now he was Her Boyfriend and different rules applied. We were still working out what they were, however.
The truth is, anyone would be lucky to date Daisy. First, she was gorgeous and smart, clearly headed for what she and I referred to as GTBC: Great Things Beyond Colby. This was in comparison to the other category we created, AGN: Ain’t Going Nowhere. Which, if we’re honest, is where Morris would fall instantly if he wasn’t someone we cared about. This shorthand began as a kind of game, a way of passing the time while pouring over our slim yearbook. But in the last year, as college loomed and then overtook us, it got real, and now two categories weren’t even really enough. A lot of people were going Beyond Colby, but not necessarily headed for Great Things. Like myself, actually. Columbia would have gotten me to Great Things, for sure, just like the Savannah College of Art and Design, where Daisy would enroll at the end of the summer, earned her a spot. East U, however, was a more lateral move. But at least I was moving.