Kelsi peeked out the window for the eighty-seventh time in three minutes, but the driveway in front of her mother’s Colonial-style house remained empty. The suburban Connecticut street at dusk looked exactly the same as it had always looked throughout the entire course of her childhood: the lawns well-manicured, the houses serene, the yards festooned with oak and linden trees.
And no sight of her boyfriend’s car.
She propped herself up on her knees and turned around so she could see herself in the mirror across the room. She assured herself that she still looked as cute as she had when she’d gotten ready, hours ago. Her short hair was glossy and nut-brown, and she’d outdone herself with lip gloss, thanks to a panic attack and a trip to Sephora earlier in the day.
Kelsi was not normally the lip gloss type, but she thought a reunion with her boyfriend deserved something a little more special than her usual Burt’s Bees lip balm. Paired with her new favorite flowy halter top from Anthropologie and the Chip & Pepper jeans her fashionista sister, Ella, had given her for her birthday, Kelsi thought she looked exactly like the Bohemian princess she aspired to be.
If only Bennett would hurry up and arrive, so he could fully appreciate it.
Kelsi flopped back against the cushions on the couch and let out a rueful sigh. She was
almost
embarrassed for herself. She was glad her mother was away for the weekend, and that her sister had gone to her boyfriend’s place in Philadelphia, so there was absolutely no one around to watch Kelsi run to the window over and over again. She’d completely lost her cool—and all because of a boy.
Nothing about Bennett had been what she’d expected. That was one of the reasons Kelsi had fallen in love with him in the first place. She certainly hadn’t expected it to be so hard, not being with him for the eternity between the end of finals and the middle of June, when the Tuttles headed up to Maine and summer officially began.
But now the wait was over.
Kelsi took a few deep, calming breaths, and thought back to where everything with her and Bennett had started.
She’d had the most amazing first year at Smith College.
A year ago, she’d felt so lost and worried about her future. Now that she knew how it all turned out, she couldn’t believe she’d been so stressed out. Hindsight was definitely 20/20.
For example, Kelsi couldn’t have known that instead of finding herself awash in homesickness and fear like many of her classmates at Smith, she would, by pure coincidence or the grace of the housing gods, find herself living with Taryn Gilmour.
The thought of her irrepressible, pixie-like, irreverent best friend made Kelsi smile as she shifted into a more comfortable position against the soft cushions.
Taryn and Kelsi had fallen into a friendship quickly, but unlike many other friendships they’d watched crash and burn throughout the year, they had only gotten tighter. So tight that Taryn had been thrilled when Kelsi started dating her brother, Bennett, who went to school at nearby Amherst College.
Though not as thrilled as Kelsi had been, of course.
Kelsi couldn’t have predicted that what had seemed like such a great relationship with hot, snarky Tim from Pebble Beach would turn out to be just a summer thing. Back in Maine, Tim had seemed to transcend his frat-boy roots. At school, though, it turned out that Tim really
did
enjoy all those keg stands and drunken toga parties. It wasn’t that he had turned into a different person, necessarily. It just seemed
that he and Kelsi had both emphasized other parts of their personalities when they’d met each other. Maybe Maine had brought out the best in them, Kelsi thought charitably. But dating while Kelsi was at Smith and Tim was at UMass had made their essential differences entirely too clear.
Kelsi had broken up with Tim just before Thanksgiving, in the middle of midterms. When she’d returned to school, it seemed like Taryn was on a mission to help Kelsi discover what she’d been missing while she’d been occupied with Tim.
“There’s a whole world of men out there,” she’d told Kelsi in her knowing drawl. “Not all of them think the pinnacle of life is a packed keg party with half-naked girls. Some of them like art. Books. Music, even.”
Taryn felt that her artistic brother was the perfect person to usher Kelsi through this new, collegiate world of Men Who Liked Other Things. The three of them went to a Pedro the Lion show over at Amherst one weekend. Then the next weekend, they road-tripped around the area to check out local galleries for a paper that Bennett was writing in his art history class. One afternoon, just Kelsi and Bennett had driven into Boston to watch the entire Krzysztof Kiesowski’s
Three Colors
trilogy. As they headed back home, Kelsi’s head was filled with French cinema and Bennett’s delightful raspy voice, as they talked about films and ideas the whole way.
It was probably right then that she’d fallen in love with him, with winter racing by outside the windows and all that warmth and sexy intellect inside the car.
But it wasn’t until a few weeks later that things really happened between them. Kelsi had found out that the Smith Studio Art department was having a Make Your Own Art night. She’d invited both Taryn and Bennett, but only Bennett was free. They’d laughed and laughed as they’d collaborated on their first sculpture: a metal and wood rendition of Taryn—all edges and motion. Later, they’d walked across the Smith campus in the dark, crunching their way over the frozen ground with their breath coming out in puffs. Kelsi couldn’t remember what they’d talked about that night. She just remembered the big moon overhead, and how soft and perfect Bennett’s lips were when he finally leaned close and kissed her.
Taryn had loved the fact they’d gotten together only slightly more than she’d loved the sculpture, which she’d placed in the center of Kelsi’s and her room for the remainder of the school year. The three of them were like their own little family unit these days.
The best part was that Taryn had agreed to spend the summer in Pebble Beach with Kelsi and the assorted Tuttles. It would be like having another cousin to hang around in Maine with, and Kelsi couldn’t wait. She imagined the two of them sprawled out on the beach, gleaming in the Maine
sunshine, and she just knew that the rest of her family would love Taryn the way that she did.
Kelsi thought that Ella, particularly, would adore Taryn. Especially since Kelsi’s sister would get to spend the summer on the old sunporch that doubled as a guest room. Whenever the sisters shared the bedroom—which was every past summer—they spent half their time fighting. Thanks to Taryn, Ella would finally get what she wanted: her own space. The thought of the inevitable Taryn-Ella bond, and the havoc they would wreak, should have scared Kelsi, but instead it made her laugh.
“Anybody home?”
At the sound of that familiar, beloved voice, Kelsi jack-knifed into a sitting position and let the rush of joy sweep through her body. It was always this way. Every time she opened her eyes and saw Bennett, she felt like she glowed.
“Did I leave the front door unlocked?” she asked, drinking in the sight of him from her spot on the sofa.
“You did,” he said, “and I walked right in. This is not the safety-conscious girlfriend I thought I knew, Kelsi. I’m disappointed.”
He was nothing of the kind, as the mischievous glint in his eyes attested.
“You took a very long time to get here,” she chastised him, still not moving, still wanting to soak in the anticipation of his nearness. She wanted to prolong the separation, so it
would be that much sweeter when she reached out and touched him.
Kelsi studied Bennett as he stood there in the entryway to the family room, looking slightly disheveled from the road. She hadn’t known it was possible to love every single cell of someone else’s body. She loved Bennett’s slightly messy, slightly longish coppery-red hair, and the emo-kid cut he wore it in. She could sink into his warm, intelligent dark eyes behind those adorable Buddy Holly glasses. She loved the stretch of his arms and the way his butt looked in his hipster jeans. She loved the way his smile seemed to light up his whole body, and the way he cocked his head slightly to the left when he aimed that smile at her.
“I had to make a few stops,” Bennett said, and then Kelsi couldn’t take it any longer.
She bounded to her feet and threw herself across the room, connecting with his body in a big bear hug that swept him back a few feet and brought her up on her toes. Finally close to him, Kelsi could smell the warm scent of his skin. She closed her eyes and just inhaled him. He smelled like sun and heat and Bennett. Like love.
“I missed you,” she murmured, her eyes still closed.
“These were some tough weeks,” Bennett agreed. Kelsi opened her eyes as he pulled back slightly and grinned down at her. Then he lowered his head and kissed her, his lips hot
and soft and familiar. The kiss grew in intensity, and they were both a little breathless and giddy when Bennett pulled away again. “But I have a surprise for you.”
“Who needs a surprise?” Kelsi protested when he pulled even farther away, breaking all contact except for his warm hand around hers. “You’re here!”
“You’ll love it,” he assured her, and tugged her along behind him into the hall, where Kelsi saw he’d stashed a picnic basket. “Everyone’s away this weekend, right?” he asked in a low voice. Kelsi nodded. “Excellent,” he said.
Bennett led Kelsi down the hallway, out the back door, and into the warm Connecticut night. In the center of the backyard, he let go of her hand, and set about creating a ridiculously romantic nighttime picnic right there in the grass near her mother’s rhododendrons.
Kelsi could only stare and then laugh in amazement as he shook out a blanket, and set out tea candles in adorable little lanterns all around it, bathing the blanket in a soft, romantic light. When he was finished, Bennett held his hands out to Kelsi, and pulled her inside the ring of light he’d created.
“First, dinner,” he said as they sat down together on the soft blanket. “Then I want to talk to you about something.”
The picnic hamper was filled with all of Kelsi’s favorites—roasted eggplant sandwiches and vegan potato salad, olives and cherry tomatoes, with brownies for dessert. Kelsi
was sure it was the best meal she’d ever eaten. As they ate, Bennett told her stories about his recent art projects and his father’s well-meaning, if bumbling, attempts to understand things, such as finding his only son half naked in the basement at two
A.M.
, covered in purple paint.
“I think he’d have been a lot happier if I’d been covered in beer,” Bennett told her, laughing. “You know,
beer
he could comprehend. He was the president of his fraternity back in the day. Me—all wild-eyed and clutching my paintbrush? Not so much.”
“What did he do?” Kelsi asked. She put the remains of her brownie aside (dairy- and gluten-free, because Bennett was good at details, she thought happily), and stretched out on her back, her feet across Bennett’s lap so she could see the stars. It was only the stars above and this little ring of light, with the two of them in the center. And Bennett’s sweet, deep voice, which she felt she could listen to forever.
“He hemmed and hawed and left me to it,” Bennett said. “Which is the most you could ask for, I think. Right?”
“Definitely,” Kelsi agreed. She’d met Bennett and Taryn’s parents several times, and was always struck by how normal they seemed in comparison to their madcap children. How the four of them handled one another so well was one of life’s great mysteries.
“So that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about,”
Bennett said gently, moving her feet aside and stretching out next to her.
“Purple paint at two
A.M.
?” Kelsi laughed at him. “I don’t think I need any further details to enjoy
that
visual!”
“Very funny.” Bennett propped his head up with one hand, and Kelsi stopped laughing as his gaze went serious behind his glasses. “Do you remember me talking about Carlos Delgado?”
“Carlos Delgado,” Kelsi echoed, as if she had to think about it. She wrinkled her nose. “I think I might have heard you mention him five or six thousand times. Since he’s only your favorite contemporary artist in the entire world…”
“So, you remember,” Bennett said drily.
“I’m still not sure,” Kelsi teased him. “I remember going to Manhattan for the weekend and visiting his gallery show no less than seven times. But besides that, I don’t think I remember.”
“So there was this internship,” Bennett said quickly. Kelsi got the sense that his excitement was too unwieldy for him to even respond to her teasing. “And one of the seven times we went to the gallery, I picked up the application, and don’t be mad, Kels, but I decided to apply.” He let out a breath.
“Why would I be mad?” she asked, shaking her head at him.
“Because I hid it from you.” Bennett reached over and traced a pattern slowly along her arm, up her neck and to her cheek, as if she were his canvas and his finger were a paintbrush. “I thought that if I pretended it wasn’t real, it would hurt less when I got rejected. Is that crazy?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Kelsi told him, turning her head to kiss his palm.
“But the most amazing thing happened,” he whispered. “And now I’m afraid that it isn’t real, but I’m going to tell you, anyway.”
“You got it.” She knew from the sparkling wonder in his dark eyes, and the joy in his voice.
“I got it.” Bennett stared at her, shaking his head. “I’m going to be Carlos Delgado’s personal assistant for the whole summer.”
Kelsi let out a little whoop of joy, and grabbed him into a hug.
“This is terrific!” she cried. “I’m so proud of you!”
“I’ll visit you every weekend, or maybe you’ll come down,” Bennett added hurriedly, hugging her back. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m blowing off our summer together—”
“We’ll work it out,” Kelsi assured him, cutting him off with kisses. “This is going to be the best summer ever. You’re going to learn so much!”
“I can’t believe it,” Bennett confessed. “I mean, that’s
actually true, I’m not just saying that. I’m
incapable of comprehending
that I’m going to be spending day after day with my idol. I can’t get my head around it!”