“You look so beautiful,” Jeremy said, looking down at her. “I mean, you always do, but even more so here.”
Ella smirked, ready to snap back with a flirtatious, sarcastic comment.
Until she looked up at Jeremy. He gazed back at her
with his deep brown eyes as if he could never stop looking at her. Ella felt her breath catch in her throat.
Every other guy Ella had been with had obsessed over her looks. Ella had loved it, but part of her had always wondered if that was the only reason they were so interested in the first place. But with Jeremy, she actually
believed
that she was beautiful. And she knew that it was all the more special because he actually cared about her.
Slowly and softly, Jeremy tipped up her chin and leaned in to kiss her. She relaxed for what felt like the first time in days. Jeremy smiled at her softly as he pulled her closer and kissed her again and again, sending a zing of electricity through her body. She slid her arms up around Jeremy’s neck, letting her hands run through his messy dark hair, and gave in to the freedom of summer.
No clock, no school, just the two of them and a million stars overhead.
Finally
, Ella thought.
Pebble Beach and Jeremy.
She was home.
Beth looped her hair back into a ponytail, and stretched in the lazy morning sunshine that lit up her room in her family’s cottage. She took in a few deep breaths—filling herself with the scent of cedar from the chest at the end of the bed. The patchwork quilt on her bed was ragged and perfectly familiar, and Chauncey the cork figurine held his customary position on the shelf above her light switch. Outside, wind chimes made soft murmurs in the breeze, and Beth could smell the fresh kick of the sea wrapped in the scents of woods and earth.
She had been in Maine for two weeks so far. She was happy here. She loved it here.
But something was missing.
Beth headed out into the bright June morning, waving
at her younger cousins, who raced around the grassy central area of the Tuttle compound, playing Capture the Flag. They waved back, but then turned their attention back to their game.
“You have to surrender!” Jessi commanded her brothers, making Beth smile at her bossy tone.
Beth had been something of a loner so far this summer. Kelsi and her college friend were inseparable—constantly making little outings to various places in Pebble Beach, or driving to the outlets in Freeport. They’d invited Beth along, but the few times she’d taken them up on it, she’d felt like a third wheel. The two of them had lived together for a whole year in college, and now spoke in a sort of abbreviated code about their common experiences and friends. Which was mostly funny, but sometimes kind of overwhelming, too. Beth didn’t like having to ask for explanations every two minutes.
Jamie, who Beth had imagined would be as interested in finding things to do as Beth was, was instead proving to be hard to pin down this summer. She disappeared for hours at a time, or was always reading. She marked up big books with her pen and copied huge passages in her journal. Beth couldn’t tell if she was up to something, or was just relaxing in anticipation of her freshman year at Amherst. She also didn’t think Jamie’s version of reading looked relaxing—it looked a lot like homework to Beth.
Meanwhile, Ella, who was usually the life of any given party, was completely wrapped up in her lifeguard boyfriend. As far as Beth could tell, Ella spent all day, every day, lounging around the beach, waiting for Jeremy to have time off.
Okay, Beth thought then, heading down the dirt road away from the cottages, that wasn’t entirely fair. Ella had spent entire other summers doing exactly the same thing, just
without
the lifeguard boyfriend. Ella simply liked to lie around on the beach, doing as little as possible.
Beth couldn’t imagine living that way. It was just one of the reasons she and her cousin were so different. Today, for example, Beth decided to walk over to the local high school so she could work on her times on the track there. She usually just ran in the woods and on the walking trails all around town, but she wanted a change of pace.
It took her about twenty minutes to walk inland across town to the high school. Only the summer people built houses so close to the water, Beth knew. Locals had a much healthier respect for the winter sea, and kept their homes and other important buildings at a distance from the water.
Beth made her way through the bleachers to the track, passing what looked like a summer camp set up on the nearby baseball diamond. Kids were performing calisthenics to the barked commands of a very convincing-sounding drill sergeant. But it was obvious by the way the kids were laughing and having a ball that they loved the guy. Beth had
a flashback to some of her favorite times as a kid—at soccer camp with her hard-ass, completely cool, college-age counselors, who were Beth’s idols. She could immediately see how much the drill-sergeant guy fit that same image.
Beth grinned to herself, and then scrolled through her iPod playlists to her collection of Training songs, which were differentiated from her Running songs, which were in turn different from her Weight Room songs. She took a couple of breaths as Franz Ferdinand’s “The Fallen” began, and then set off running as the drums kicked in.
She was nearing the end of her ninety-minute mix when a baseball bounced onto the track in front of her, then rolled. Beth slowed her run, and pulled her earbuds out of her ears. Any closer and it might have hit her.
She bent over to pick up the baseball, and had a sudden, perfect memory of the years she’d spent playing Little League way back when, in Martin. She wound up, and then threw the ball as far as she could, back in the direction of the baseball diamond—
And directly over the drill sergeant’s head.
Not that he was really a drill sergeant. As he walked closer, Beth could see that he was actually a cute auburn-haired guy maybe a year or so older than she was, who happened to be wearing the same uniform as all those kids.
Beth couldn’t help but notice his tight T-shirt that emphasized the long, captivating muscles of his torso, and
shorts that rode low on his narrow hips. He was grinning at her.
And to her surprise, Beth found herself grinning back.
“You have a great arm,” he said, still smiling. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have walked all the way over here.”
“Thanks,” Beth said. Then the strangest thing happened. It was like the spirit of Ella rose within her, and Beth found herself saying almost the same thing her cousin had two weeks ago: “I have
many
talents.”
What? Had she really just said that? To this total stranger who might think she was flirting?
Was
she flirting?
“I bet you do,” the guy said with another smile. “Unfortunately, I have campers.” He looked back over his shoulder, where at least fifteen ten-year-old boys stood at the edge of the baseball diamond, singsonging high-pitched teasing rhymes. He turned back to Beth. “But maybe I’ll see you around.”
“You never know,” Beth said, again as if she were someone else—someone who flirted, someone who enjoyed being flirted with—and he laughed at that, and then jogged back toward his campers.
Beth stuck her earbuds back in her ears and started to run, but she couldn’t pretend that her mind was really in it any longer. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even
noticed
a cute guy. It was as if she’d put that part of her life
in storage after she and George had broken up last fall. She’d been a boy-free zone for a long time now.
And she’d kind of thought that might be a permanent condition.
But look at her now! Beth felt a little bit giddy, and also impressed with her own boldness. She hadn’t had any idea what was going to come out of her mouth.
And the truth was, it felt great.
Because if she was honest with herself, Beth realized as she rounded the track once more, she’d spent a long time getting over George. She didn’t regret breaking up with him. But breaking up with him wasn’t the same thing as being over him.
Maybe today signaled a new phase in her life, when she’d least expected it.
Maybe she was finally moving on.
Naturally, Beth ran into George exactly four days later.
It was a gorgeous Maine afternoon, with not a cloud in the deep blue sky, and Jamie had actually put her books aside for a change. She and Beth had walked into town together and had lunch down on the beach. They’d gotten hot dogs and waffle fries from their favorite greasy snack vendor, taken their flip-flops off, and walked down to put their toes in the wet sand near the water’s edge.
“Wow,” Jamie said, swallowing reverently. “I can feel the grease, like,
congealing
inside my body.”
“And it’s delicious,” Beth replied around a mouthful of crispy fries.
“A
mazing
,” Jamie agreed happily.
When they were finished stuffing themselves, they washed their hands off in the bay, and then decided to wander around town.
They darted in and out of the cute little shops that dotted the main street of Pebble Beach. Jamie became entranced by some crystals in the New Age store, which, Beth knew from experience, could keep her occupied for hours.
Beth looked out the back door of the shop, to one of the many courtyards that made the town so cute. You could access them from small gates along the main road or from the back doors of the shops, and it was like a whole other layer of Pebble Beach goodness. Across this particular courtyard was one of the village’s ice-cream stores, and there was a big commotion outside at the plastic tables.
Intrigued, Beth walked over, and eased her way into the middle of the crowd so she could see what was happening.
Two guys sat at the table, bent over two huge platters of ice cream. Beth knew exactly what they were doing. Every summer, Benny’s Ice Cream offered a deal: If you could sit down and eat the entire platter of ice cream—which was
like Emack & Bolio’s Mack Attack and featured a scoop of every single flavor of ice cream in stock—it was free. But if you didn’t finish, you had to pay for the whole thing.
Beth knew all about the contest because George had attempted—and failed—to get his free thirty-seven scoops of ice cream on several occasions.
So really, she shouldn’t have been at all surprised when one of the guys lifted his head and she saw that it was her ex-boyfriend-ex-best-friend-ex-everything. She would have recognized George earlier if he hadn’t been wearing an out-of-character baseball cap that covered his unmistakably wild hair.
“I am the man!” George shouted to the crowd all around, but mostly to the other guy, who Beth assumed was his friend Dean.
“Ohhh,” Dean moaned. “I think I might hurl.”
George had done it. He had actually cleared his plate. He had smears of chocolate and strawberry all over his shirt, but his platter was clean. Dean hadn’t fared nearly so well: At least ten scoops of ice cream remained, melting sullenly on the platter in front of him.
“I told you not to eat that waffle for breakfast,” George told his friend. He whooped. “It’s all about pacing.”
Beth felt a rush of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she knew better than anyone how excited George
probably was, because he’d been trying to achieve this goal for years. On the other hand, she sort of felt like she was spying on his life. A life she wasn’t a part of anymore.
Beth tried to blend back into the little ring of observers, then started for the New Age shop’s back door—until she heard her name.
She couldn’t exactly make a break for it without looking like an idiot, so she turned around instead.
“Hey!” George looked thrilled. “Did you see what I did? I ate an entire Benny’s Big One! Finally!”
“I know,” Beth said quietly. “Congratulations.” She felt like they were at graduation again.
George rocked back on his heels, and tipped the brim of his cap up, so he could look Beth in the eye.
“You weren’t running away in my moment of ice-cream glory, were you?” he asked. “Without even saying hello?” His tone was light, but Beth knew him too well. She could hear the hurt beneath.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” she said, shrugging.
George shook his head, but his eyes had that glint in them. “Come on,” he said. “You alone understand the torturous history of George and Benny’s Big One.”
“That’s true,” Beth conceded, and found herself smiling a little bit. “I was there the first time you made the attempt, and bailed after a mere seven scoops.”
“I was just a boy, Beth,” George said wistfully. “Just a
boy who today became a man.” He nodded wisely, and rubbed a hand down along his belly, which had to be killing him. Beth couldn’t help laughing.
“Manhood is thirty-seven scoops?” she asked. “Because
I
would have called that insanity.”
“Manhood is knowing that thirty-seven scoops are insanity, and figuring out the best strategy for consuming them, anyway,” George told her, his eyes dancing with merriment.
“My mistake,” Beth said with a sigh, which made him laugh.
“Hey,” he said, suddenly serious. “We should hang out some time.”
Beth felt her smile slip.
“George…”
“In a totally platonic way!” he shook his head at her. His eyes were clear and warm, but nothing more. “Not everybody is as much fun as you, that’s all. I drove by the mini golf place the other day, and remembered our hard-core tournaments.”
“I haven’t played mini golf in a long time,” Beth mused, mulling it over. Of course, she should tell George no. There was no point dredging up all that old stuff again. Hadn’t she
just started
to feel like she could move on?
But then again, she told herself as George launched into an impassioned description of how he was, in fact, the Tiger
Woods of mini golf, it was
just
mini golf. And maybe the fact that she was starting to move on was why it would be okay to hang out with George. After all, he was still the funniest guy she knew. The funniest
person
, in fact. She missed laughing the way they’d always laughed together.
“Please stop talking,” she said, interrupting George’s treatise on how his swinging style had developed over the years.
George paused, and bit his lip. “Sorry.”
“I think mini golf might be fun,” she said, eyeing him with one part hope and another part apprehension. His expression looked the way she imagined hers must: wary, but kind of pleased, too. Because if it wasn’t awful, it really would be fun to hang out with George again.
“Yeah?” He nodded. “Um, okay. Cool.”
“I guess you should call me,” Beth said, feeling awkward. And then she realized that she didn’t want to sound like she thought it was a date or anything. “Or I can call you, whatever.”
“Sure,” George said quickly. He looked at her and smiled that fully George smile. “But we’ll definitely do it. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun,” Beth echoed. “I’m looking forward to it.”
They smiled at each other, and it was nice, but kind of tentative, too.
“Okay, well, I should go find Jamie,” Beth said, beginning to feel awkward.
“Yeah,” George agreed. “I think Dean might be in an ice-cream coma.”
“See you later.” Beth knew she sounded stilted and strange, but didn’t know how to change that.
It had never really occurred to her that trying to be friends would be so hard.