Shipwrecked Summer (10 page)

Gianna was already there, standing off to the side, holding a red plastic cup and talking to Joey, who grinned back at her as she gestured wildly as only she could.

Pia sat on a ledge on the side of the pool by herself, but I watched as her eyes lit up when Anthony entered the room. Her face fell only slightly when I showed up right behind him.

“Ready to jump in?” Anthony asked me with a wicked grin as I pulled my blue swimsuit cover-up over my head.

He held out his hand to me and I smiled, taking it in mine. It felt warm and smooth and nice against my skin and I couldn’t help but shoot a sly smile in Pia’s direction. She glared at us through eyes as narrow as slits.

“One...two...!”

We didn’t get to three before Anthony jumped, pulling me with him. I shrieked as we flew through the air and hit the cold water with a splash.

Our hands separated underwater and when I came up for air and looked for him, my heart sank as he pulled himself up onto the ledge next to Pia. Her smile returned.

A few more people I didn’t recognize walked onto the patio and Joey left Gianna to greet them. She walked over to me and sat on the side of the pool, dangling her legs in the water.

“You didn’t tell me he was so nice,” she said.

I furrowed my brow. “Who?”

“Who? Girl, get it together. Joey, that’s who!”

I just stared at her. “Well, yeah, he’s nice. He’s my friend.”

Gianna rolled her eyes and sighed, obviously exasperated with me. “Not nice like that!”

“Huh?”

“Lexie!” she hissed. “He’s...you know...cute nice.”

“Cute nice?” I raised an eyebrow. “You mean you like him?”

She nodded excitedly. “I think so! I haven’t met a guy like him, well, ever.”

I didn’t say anything as I thought this over. Gianna and Joey? I liked it. Not only would it give me a leg up on Pia--it wasn’t like Gianna was about to start hanging out with her so I’d likely get more time with Joey--but it made sense. They were both Jersey through and through and they were both great people.

“Well, what are you doing over here? Go get him!”

Gianna sighed again. “This is why you’re hopeless, Lexie. He needs to come to me.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“I didn’t miss you walkin’ in with Anthony, though. What was that about?”

“It was good,” I said. “He just told me that he’s sorry I got the wrong idea about us, but he isn’t looking for anything serious this summer.”

Gianna snorted. “Anything serious with you, he means.”

“What? No. He said that about Pia, too.”

I followed her gaze to where Anthony and Pia were sitting close together against the ledge. His hands disappeared below the water and it was too dark to see where they’d landed. She didn’t look particularly sad, like he’d just told her that he wasn’t interested in anything but friendship with her.

I frowned.

“Doesn’t look that way to me,” she said.

    “He said that!”

    “Oh, I believe he said it,” she replied. “I just don’t believe he meant it.”

    “Then why--”

    “Because he’s a guy, Lexie.”

   “And?”

  “And he didn’t want to tell you that he isn’t into you. So he figures he tells you he just wants to hang out with you and Pia. That lets him spend time with both of you while he’s still tryin’ to get with her.”

    “So he wants her.”

    Gianna shrugged. “Probably. And he probably wants you, too, but you killed that when you told him you wanted more. He’s not going to deal with you if he thinks you’ll turn into a clinger.”

    I glared at her. “I am not a clinger!”

    “He doesn’t know that.”

   I looked at them over my shoulder and saw that Anthony was now standing between her legs in the water and my cheeks reddened as if I’d walked in on something I shouldn’t have. I turned around.

    “Sorry, Lexie,” Gianna said. “I know you want to think he’s a good guy and maybe he is, but he’s not the guy for you.” I didn’t say anything. “What now?”

    “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just...I know he doesn’t want me, fine. But I don’t want him leading Pia on.”

    “What? After what she did to you? Please. Girl’s got it coming.”

    I shook my head. “If I know he’s just using her, I can’t let her make an idiot of herself.”

   “Yes, you can. She won’t listen to you, anyway.”

    “Of course she will! We’re best friends.”

    Gianna rolled her eyes. “Before I list all of the reasons you’re not best friends, I’ll just tell you that there’s no way she believes you over him.”

    “Why not?”

    She shrugged. “I didn’t say I understood it, just that I know how it is. You could be her sister, her very best friend, and she’d still choose to believe his words over yours. We see what we want to see, no matter how cloudy our vision is. She wants him to be into her. And before you get mad about it, just know that you’d do the same thing if you were her.”

    I shook my head. “There’s no way.”

 “Look, Anthony could be over there right now tellin’ her that he told you he isn’t into you anymore, that you won’t be in their way again. Do you really think you’d stand a chance after that?”

    I sighed, but my protests were weaker now. “I guess not.”

    Gianna nodded. “Definitely not. It’s not right, but it’s the way it is.”

   A series of splashes followed by a sprinkling of pool water rained down on Gianna and me.

I spun around and saw that Joey and his three friends had jumped into the pool. Pia shot them a dirty look and reached up to fix her hair.

    Joey glanced over in our direction and smiled. I didn’t think he was looking at me.

   Anthony hoisted himself up out of the pool then and reached down to offer Pia a hand. She took it and despite my convictions that he meant nothing to me, my heart strings pulled slightly at the sight of their touch. Together, they walked to the darkest corner of the patio.

    “Just ignore it,” Gianna said from behind me.

    I sighed and forced myself to look away.

    Anthony didn’t want Pia, I was sure of that, and despite what Gianna said, I couldn’t stand to see sit back and watch her get hurt.

    “Thereyouarethereyouare!” Pia dropped down next to me, spraying my outstretched body with hot flecks of sand. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

    I propped myself up on my elbows and gave her an odd look. We’d barely talked in the last few days. I’d guessed she’d come to me when Anthony finally told her the truth, but she sure didn’t look miserable.

    “Did he...tell you?” I asked after a few seconds.

    “Anthony, you mean?” Her eyes sparkled. “Yeah! Can you believe it? I finally have a boyfriend to replace Steve!”

    You know how you always hear people say that time freezes when they receive certain news and you never really believe them--until it happens to you?

    “You...I--boyfriend?”

    Pia nodded eagerly. “Yeah! He asked me last night. It was so cute and perfect and I can’t believe it!”

    “Who asked you?” I couldn’t shake the spinning confusion out of my head.

    “Anthony,” she said, growing exasperated with me. “Who else? I’m so happy he moved into the duplex next to yours or else I never would’ve met him! And he’s amazing, Lexie, really amazing.”

    “Boyfriend? I mean...didn’t he...didn’t he tell you?”

    “That he really likes me? Yeah, he couldn’t stop saying it.”

    “No...”

    Pia apparently came back down to Earth for a few seconds. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

    “I just...I talked to Anthony yesterday,” I said, unable to stop the words before they came pouring out. Gianna’s warning nagged at me from the back of my mind but it couldn’t fight its way forward in time to save me. “He said he doesn’t want anything serious.”

    The smile on her face flickered but didn’t fall. “Yeah, that makes sense. He was talking to you.”

    “No, but...we were talking about you, too. We were talking in general.”

    Pia shrugged. “Well, if it was just general, then it wasn’t about me.”

 “It was!” I insisted. “He said he’s not looking for anything serious. He just wants to have fun this summer.”

    “And he wants to have fun with me as his girlfriend. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

    “Not when he said he doesn’t want a girlfriend!”

    “Then why would he ask me to be his?”

    Her question stopped me dead in my tracks. Truth be told, I had no idea why Anthony had apparently asked Pia to be his girlfriend, but I didn’t doubt that she was telling me the truth.

    “I--I don’t know.”

    “Exactly,” she replied with a triumphant smile. “There’s no reason. So why don’t you stop being jealous and be happy for me?”

    “Pia,” I said. “He really...he really said all of those things. I’m just trying to help!”

   But she’d already tuned me out, made up her mind that I was trying to ruin her happiness. “I know you liked him and it sucks that he didn’t pick you, Lexie, but that doesn’t mean--”

   “Wait!” I said, eyes flashing, hardly able to believe what I’d just heard. “You knew that I liked him and you went after him anyway?”

I’d suspected it, but couldn’t believe it was really true.

  Pia opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything, realizing her mistake.

 “And,” I went on. “You have the nerve to tell me that this is my fault? I don’t care that Anthony likes you because I know he doesn’t want anything serious from you. And I thought I cared that you’re only going to get stomped on by him, but you know what? I don’t care. Do whatever you want. Date him, love him, whatever. But when you’re crying at the end of the summer and I’m happy, do us both a favor and come to me so I can tell you that I told you so.”

    Her self-assured grin wavered. “I don’t need you, Lexie. I have Anthony now.”

   I shook my head. “I can’t believe you’d pick him over me. But it’s your choice. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

   “I do.” She looked me straight in the eye. “And I’m making the right decision.”

    I nodded, meeting her gaze. “I hope so.”

    Without another word, Pia stood, brushed the sand off the back of her shorts, and walked quickly towards the bridge, no doubt on her way to find her new true love to tell him how terrible I was.

***

    After my blow-up with Pia, I didn’t feel like sitting on the beach much longer so I decided to go for a long, much-overdue and very necessary walk around Ship’s Wreck.

   As I made my way down Central Avenue, I looped past the ice cream shop where Anthony and I had gone the first day we hung out, walked by the only-open-in-summer Christmas store, and found myself standing on the outskirts of a park just behind the island’s lone elementary school.

The basketball and tennis courts were deserted, but a group of guys stretched out across the baseball diamond, playing a pick-up game of softball.

I wandered closer towards the game, not totally sure why I was drawn to it, but knowing that I didn’t want to be anywhere near Gull Boulevard and if that meant an afternoon of watching some boys play sports, I’d somehow find a way to suffer through it.

I climbed to the third row of the small set of metal bleachers set up just beyond the chain-link fence and dropped into a seat, scanning the guys playing ball.

A tall boy with well-muscled calves stood ready to hit the ball, his face obscured by his batting helmet. He crouched into a batter’s stance, eyes trained on the pitcher who delivered a perfectly placed fastball right down the middle.

The batter swung and missed, the ball landing in the catcher’s open mitt with a thud. The batter grunted and drove the tip of his bat face down into the dirt in frustration.

    “Stay with it, Blanco!” One of the guys sitting on a long metal bench meant to serve as a dugout called out his encouragement for the batter.

    Blanco’s shoulders heaved as if he was taking a deep, steadying breath before he got back into position for the next pitch. The pitcher went through what seemed like a ridiculous and unnecessarily long wind up before tossing the ball.

    Blanco swung at it, this time making contact, but the ball sailed harmlessly into the netting behind home plate. I could hear a few grumbles rising from his team’s bench, while the makeshift dugout on the other side of the field shifted with anticipation.

    I guessed this was a pretty important at-bat.

    Blanco stared down the pitcher now, who looked in at the catcher’s signals. When they settled on a pitch they both liked, the pitcher nodded and began his wind-up.

For some reason, I really, really wanted Blanco to get the hit he seemed to need. I was on his side.