Unfortunately, nine p.m. was the exact moment the guests started to arrive at the Langes’. Of course, Noelle had to host the first no-adults-allowed party of the vacation, thereby establishing herself as the female in charge. And I, of course, was so not in the mood.
I heard Kiran squeal her hellos as she joined the revelers in the great room at the center of the house. Knowing that there was no way Noelle was going to let me go without a fight, I pulled on a sweatshirt and slipped down the hallway, waiting until she went into the kitchen to deal with some sort of snack food snafu. Then I slunk along the wall and out the patio doors, quickly racing down the flagstone steps to the beach.
The moment I walked out onto the sand, my phone beeped, indicating I had a text. My heart jumped into my throat, and I fumbled in my pocket for the phone. There was no doubt in my mind that the text was from Josh. It had to be. He had gone radio silent for far too long. Was Ivy okay? Had she been released from the hospital? Did he have something more to say to me about us?
But the moment I saw the message, the anticipation died. It wasn’t from Josh. It was a photo message from Constance Talbot, one of my best friends at Easton. A pic of her and Kiki Rosen taken backstage the night before at this huge pop music fest called Jingle Ball, which Constance’s father had some part in promoting. Their tongues were stuck out at the camera, and Chris Daughtry was in the background, looking at them like they were a couple of drunken groupies.
Which they probably were.
The caption read:
YOU WISH YOU WERE HERE
. I dropped the phone back into my pocket, disappointed. Why hadn’t Josh contacted me yet? Didn’t he want to talk to me?
I kicked off my flip-flops and stood there, digging my toes into the soft, cool sand. Taking a deep breath, I looked out at the vast,
seemingly unending ocean. I listened to the crashing of the waves and waited for all the Zen sensory experiences to calm me. Waited for some kind of divine sign that everything was going to be okay.
“It’s a bit intense in there, isn’t it?”
I jumped at the nearness of the voice. Upton’s voice. He had snuck up behind me without a sound.
“Intense?” I asked, turning around to face him. My breath caught at the sight of his utter perfection in a cable-knit white sweater and jeans. A. Mazing.
“Crazy . . . loud . . . packed out,” he explained with a smile.
“I guess.”
I turned back toward the ocean to prevent myself from drooling on his feet. Also because I had to absorb the fact that he had seen me leave. That he had come after me. That instead of partying with his friends on the first night of vacation, he had chosen to be alone on the beach. With me.
“Anything I can help with?” he asked, stepping up next to me.
“Help? Do I look like I need help?” I asked.
“No. Of course not. Sorry,” he said with a quick laugh. “But you did look like you were having deep thoughts.”
“Are deep thoughts bad where you’re from?” I challenged, arching my eyebrows.
“Never,” he replied. “We’re very deep in England. But in St. Barths, there are no deep thoughts allowed. Did Noelle not inform you of this rule? Because if not, I should admonish her straight away.”
I laughed and looked down at my bare feet. “Actually, she did say something similar.”
“Good,” he said with a nod, looking me up and down. “So, did you girls have fun at the shops?”
“It was okay,” I replied. “I didn’t buy anything.”
“Because nothing could do you justice, I suppose,” he joked.
I laughed so loudly I had to cover my mouth with both hands to hide my embarrassment. “Sorry, but wow. They were right about you.”
Upton raised one eyebrow. “They? Intriguing. Who might
they
be and what have
they
been saying about me?”
“Just that you kind of . . . get around,” I said, drawing a circle in the sand with my toe.
Upton tilted back his head and laughed. I couldn’t help but grin. He had such an uninhibited laugh. The way a laugh should be.
“Well. That was blunt,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling.
“Sorry, but lately I’ve come to believe in absolute transparency,” I told him, lifting one shoulder.
“Have you now?” he asked, crossing his arms over his perfect chest.
“Believe me, if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you would too,” I assured him.
Upton narrowed his eyes, sizing me up. “You have a dark past, don’t you, Reed Brennan?”
I swallowed down a sudden lump in my throat. My eyes wandered back to the ocean. “You could say that.”
“Well, then I consider it my duty to make you forget all about it,” he said. “At least for tonight.”
“Oh, really? And how, exactly, do you intend to do that?” I asked.
“Like this.”
In one swift motion, Upton managed to sweep my legs out from under me and send me sprawling into the sand. I let out a surprised shout as my butt hit the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, laughing as I sat up.
“Getting you to relax,” he replied.
He sat down next to me, so close our knees brushed. A warm rush of excitement crashed through me. This was it. This was when the player made his move. Part of me knew I should storm off, offended that he’d think I was this easy, but I couldn’t make myself move. Then, he lay down and looked up at the sky.
“Come on. Down you go,” he said, tugging on my arm.
“If you wanted me to lay down, you could have just asked,” I said, moving my head around on the lumpy sand until I found a comfortable position. “You didn’t have to sweep the legs.”
“Right. If I had said ‘lay down,’ do you really think you would have?” he asked dubiously, turning his head to face me.
I blinked. “You have a point.”
So when the hell was he going to try to kiss me already?
“All right then, look up,” Upton said.
Okay. I guessed he wasn’t. Feeling embarrassed, I did as I was told. The sky was completely jammed with so many stars that there was actually more light than darkness.
“Wow,” I said breathlessly.
He smiled. “Try to think dark thoughts while looking at that.”
We lay there in silence for a moment, and I started to feel calm in a way I hadn’t felt in days. I let the feeling wash over me and sink
in. The sounds of the party behind us—the shouting, the laughter, the music—slowly faded into a soft hum.
“When I was a boy, my mum and I used to camp out in the yard under the stars. She made up loads of stories about all the other planets and the goings-on in their unique alien societies.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said.
“It was. She’s got a bloody fantastic imagination. Should have been a writer.”
A boy who loves his mother. Cute.
“Tell me one,” I demanded.
Upton laughed. “It’s been ages. I’m not sure I could remember.”
“Yes, you can. You wouldn’t have brought it up otherwise,” I teased.
Upton considered this for a moment, then he frowned. “All right, you’ve caught me out,” he said. “I’ll tell you my favorite one. It’s about these tiny little creatures called Puffnicks. They live on the planet Puff.”
I laughed, shimmying from side to side to get more comfortable. “Puffnicks. They sound cute.”
“Oh, but they’re not cute. They’re actually fierce little buggers. With fangs,” Upton replied. “And this story is about the year they went to war with the Bangrots.”
“Oooh, I love a good Puffnick-Bangrot war story,” I said, folding my hands over my stomach. “Let’s hear it.”
“Our story begins on one dark, stormy night in the village of Jangle, when the sole Bangrot lookout spied the mast of a vast ship on the horizon. . . .”
I sighed and settled in to listen to Upton’s strange childhood story. His melodic voice was lulling, soothing, and I soon found myself drifting into the dream world he created all around us. He didn’t try anything, which was intriguing. Upton was not only the hottest guy on the planet, but he was also smart. Funny. Creative. Uninhibited. And he made me forget all about Easton and Billings and Sabine and Ivy and Josh. We spent the entire night out there on the beach, telling stories and laughing, and I didn’t think about my “dark past” once. By the time he walked me back up to Noelle’s house, the party was winding down, and I was no longer encased in cement. Instead, I felt as though I’d been wrapped in cashmere for the past few hours.
As I made my way up to the Langes’ guest room and shut the door behind me, I realized that if I had been looking for an island fling, Upton would have been perfection. But, staring out the window at the stars sparkling in the Caribbean sky, I reminded myself that I was not. No romance for me. Not for a while. Not even for Fun Island Reed. I was simply not ready.
Right?
“You guys, seriously, you don’t have to buy me anything,” I protested as Kiran gathered up a few flowing garments in her arms. The shop they had brought me to that day was small and sunlit with floor-to-ceiling open-air windows and racks of designer clothes arranged in the center of the creaky but clean wooden floor. On the walls were displays of sunglasses, hats, and bags—all straw and thatch and woven with leather details. Upscale resort wear all the way.
After yesterday’s unsuccessful shopping excursion—unsuccessful because I had refused to let them spend their money on me—Noelle, Kiran, and Taylor had insisted we go out again. And this time they were not taking no for an answer. It was consumer warfare.
“Yes, we do,” Kiran said seriously. “Especially that dress.”
I turned around and looked at myself in the slim mirror on the dressing room wall. The dress was lovely. Just under the bandeau top, it was tapered at the sides to show off the curve of my midriff, and
then it flowed out into a floaty ankle-length skirt. It was made out of a beautiful green-and-blue silk print that perfectly evoked the ocean outside the shop’s windows. I couldn’t help but wonder what Upton would think of it.
Not that I was going there.
“She’s right. It’s perfect. Sexy, but not slutty,” Noelle said as she shoved aside hanger after hanger on the round rack in the center of the store.
“Kind of like you!” Taylor added, earning a laugh from Noelle and Kiran. She handed me a little black dress with brown beading along the hem.
I glanced at the price tag on the garment and grimaced. “Honestly. I’m really not comfortable with this.”
“Well, I’m not comfortable being seen with you in Old Navy all week, so just do it for me,” Kiran replied.
“Ouch,” I said, not really offended.
“I say these things with love,” she told me. Then she took a look at my face and rolled her eyes. “Would it help if I told you I was charging it all to my agency?”
“How are you doing that?” I asked.
“I got an expense account when I landed the cosmetics gig,” she said with a one-shouldered shrug. “I could be photographed at any moment, so I always have to look runway-worthy. How are they going to know these clothes are for you and not for me?”
I hesitated for a second, fingering the smooth fabric of the black dress. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said. Then she forcibly turned me around and shoved me back into the dressing room with an armful of clothes. “Try the red. You look good in red.” She snatched the colorful curtain closed in front of my face.
I took a deep breath and looked at my own eyes in the mirror. Sometimes when Noelle and the others insisted on buying me things, I felt like such a charity case. And I wasn’t. I didn’t
need
these things to survive. But I did need them to hang out with these girls. At least, that was how I felt sometimes. Like when Kiran said as much to my face, part of me wanted to walk out and just hand over all this stuff and say no. But then again, if Kiran wanted to use her expense account on me, who was I to stop her?
“Reed! Are you having a wardrobe malfunction?” Kiran called. “We want to see the next dress.”
“I’ll be right out,” I replied. I changed into the red dress and stepped out of the dressing room.
Kiran’s eyes widened, and she whistled. “Damn. Okay, not that one. You look hotter than me in that.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Which is why she’s definitely getting it!” Noelle put in, shoving me back inside to change again.
Fifteen minutes later, we had decided on three dresses and one top-and-skirt combo. Kiran took it all up to the register without even checking the price tags. I wondered if she had ever thought about the cost of anything in her life. Or if any of these girls had. Most likely not.
I joined Noelle and Taylor on the other side of the small boutique, where they were trying on wide-brimmed straw hats and checking themselves out in the countertop mirrors. I came up behind them and slung a gaudy pink-and-yellow scarf around my neck for fun.
“You should wear the green-and-blue to the party tonight,” Taylor said, donning a pair of rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses.
“Didn’t we just have a party last night?” I asked.
Noelle and Taylor exchanged a look in the mirror and laughed. “Yes, but this is the first party at the Simon Hotel,” Noelle said, shedding a white hat and reaching for a black one. “Tonight, we party the way we were meant to party.”
“Like rock stars?” I joked.
“Well, of course,” Taylor replied, pursing her lips and tipping back her head. Then her eyes lit up. “Oh, and you’ll finally get to meet Poppy!”
“Taylor
loves
Poppy,” Noelle said, laying aside the hat and running her fingers through her hair.
“What’s not to love? Poppy is the coolest,” Taylor said enthusiastically. “We all love her.”
I glanced at Noelle, who shrugged. “She’s right. We do.”
“Okay. That’s done,” Kiran said, joining us and handing me a big paper shopping bag. “Now all we need to do is find you a dress for Casino Night.”
“Yeah, but there’s nothing formal enough here,” Noelle said, glancing around.
“More shopping?” I asked.
Kiran put her arm around my shoulders. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing. If there’s one thing I can teach you in this life, Reed, it’s this: You can never have too much shopping.”