Authors: Sarah Dessen
“I can’t believe the Beach Bash is happening so soon,” I said to Daisy now, as she hung the garment bag over one arm. “I feel like we just graduated.”
“Thirty-six days to go,” she told me. There was that
exactness again; the girl lived by her calendar, with several backups. She was like NASA she was so organized. “Not that I’m keeping track.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
She gave me a sympathetic look. “Maybe explain to your brother what fashion-forward means.”
“I will,” I told her. “As soon as I figure it out myself.”
She smiled, then stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. “Call me as soon as you get off work. You hear me?”
I hugged her back. “I hear you.”
“Nice to meet you, Benji,” she said, turning to go back inside.
“You, too!” he replied. And then, again, he was running out ahead of me to the car, like a dog on one of those retractable leashes, grabbing all the distance possible before he got pulled back.
In the car, I checked my messages. Besides the text earlier from Margo in response to my inquiry about more towels—No towels. Come back for further instruction—I had two new voice mails.
“Emaline, hello, it’s me.” Pause. “Um, Theo.” Another pause, during which I could think of nothing but that kiss among the toasters. “I just spoke to Ivy and she’d really like us to go ahead and nail Clyde down for an interview as soon as possible. I mean, you know, at his convenience, of course. But today. Preferably soon? So if you could”—here, someone in the background was saying something—“call him and set that up, we’d really appreciate it.” More direction from Ivy. Then, “Just call me back as soon as you can. Thanks!”
I hit Delete, looking at Benji, who was fidgeting in his seat, tapping one foot while drumming two fingers on the open window. The next message began.
“Emaline, it’s me again. Theo.” I sighed, then cranked the engine. “So Ivy thinks it would be best if we could just get Clyde’s direct number? So that we don’t have to bother you with these requests? I explained to her that he preferred to go through you, but”—muffled noises, voices, static—“anyway, if that’s possible, you can just text his info to me and I’ll take it from there. But if not, you know, just call me back”—more muffling—“as soon as you can. Thanks!”
“Oh for God’s sake,” I said out loud. Pushy, driven, whatever they chose to call it: it was still annoying.
Instantly, Benji froze, dropping his drumming fingers, silencing the bouncing leg. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
“No, no.” I waved my phone at him. “Them, not you.”
“Oh.” He brightened visibly. “Okay.”
We pulled out into the traffic, and I looked over at him again. He was such a kid, all impulse and emotion, but he was young; it made sense he was so easy to read. I could only imagine how he’d take the news that his parents were divorcing, whenever they did finally tell him. It broke my heart just thinking about it.
When we got to the office, we found Margo in the conference room, sitting at her laptop. All around her, on the table, chairs, and every other flat surface, were towels. All white, all sizes: bath, washcloth, hand, mats. It was like the linen closet had exploded, albeit very neatly.
“I thought we were out of towels?” I said.
She looked up at me, her expression irritated. “I didn’t say that. I said there were no towels for
you
.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I don’t actually
need
any. The clients do.”
“This morning, at the meeting,” she said, in a way that made it clear a scolding was to follow, “I carefully detailed the new, computerized system I have implemented for inventory of the towels. Ten minutes later, you went back to the storeroom and took a bunch, ignoring everything I said. “
Beside me, Benji was watching this exchange, looking at Margo, then me, then back at her again. I nodded in his direction, saying, “You remember Benji, right?”
She gave him a glance. “Oh, yes. Hello.”
“Hi,” he said. “That’s a lot of towels.”
“Yes, Benji,” she replied, in the same know-it-all tone, “yes, it is. It is, in fact, all the towels we have here at Colby Realty for midweek replenishment for renters. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s necessary to have this many so we can always be sure we can meet the needs of our guests.”
“Margo,” I said, “he’s a kid. He doesn’t care about this.”
“The point is,” she continued, ignoring me, “I developed a system to ensure we always know how many of each kind of towels we have at our disposal. All that is required to
make
the system work is that each employee who checks a towel out logs it in the database. Is that so complicated?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” Benji replied obediently, at the same time.
“We don’t need an exact count, just a general idea,” I said. “It’s towels, not radioactive material.”
“And you are not in charge here,” she shot back. “I say we are using this system, so we are. End of conversation. Now come in here and get a refresher course so I can get back to work.”
For a moment, I just stared at her, and she held my gaze, just as fiercely. Under other circumstances, I would have held my ground like I usually did. But beside me, Benji was fidgeting again.
“Fine.” I stepped into the conference room. “Refresh me.”
“Gladly.” She pushed out the chair beside her, and I slid in, gesturing for Benji to sit as well. “Now, we’ve put a computer in the storage room for inventory use. What you’ll do, when you need towels, is open up this Excel file labeled ‘Linens,’ and then …”
Fifteen minutes later—which was about fourteen more than was necessary—she was done. I stifled one last yawn. “Got it. Anything else I need to know right now?”
Margo glanced around her. “No, I don’t think so. Just put all these towels back in the storage room, separated by type, and we should be good to go.”
“Me?” I said. “Why do I have to put them back?”
“Because it’s your fault I had to do this exercise in the first place. If you’d been paying attention this morning, none of this would have been necessary.”
Not for the first time that day, I was sorely tempted to pull her hair or frog-punch her, like when we were kids. Instead, I just reminded myself that, soon enough, I’d be gone from here, with towels—and Margo—no longer my
daily cross to bear. Then I picked up a stack of washcloths.
“I can help,” Benji said, grabbing another pile from the table. “Where do they go?”
“Thanks,” I said. “Follow me.”
I was on my second trip to the storeroom when my phone rang. I shifted the tall stack of mats I was carrying to the other hand, then fished it out of my back pocket. “Hello?”
“Hey, Emaline, it’s me.” A pause. “Theo.”
“Hi,” I said, navigating the hallway. “Sorry I haven’t been able to get back to you. Things are sort of—”
“So look, Ivy really feels,” he broke in over me, “that it would be best if you just gave us Clyde’s contact information. She’s concerned that having you as a go-between will, um, complicate things.”
Of course she was. “No,” I said, “what will complicate things is if he won’t talk to you because you’ve deliberately chosen to ignore the parameters he set up.”
I waited for a crack about this word being an SAT basic. Instead, there was just silence. Then, “True. But as a filmmaker and documentarian, her relationship with her subject is crucial. Anything that diffuses or distorts it can endanger the project.”
“Say whatever you want, but I’m not going against his wishes,” I said. “And neither should you.”
There was that muffled noise again, and then suddenly his voice was lower, closer to the receiver. “Look, I’m not trying to hassle you, okay? She’s just angling, it’s what she does. I’m sorry. I’m so grateful to you for everything this morning.”
“Theo.”
“Not the kiss,” he said quickly. “I mean, that was great, too, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Even though I know we’re, um, not talking about it. Until tomorrow.” Now I was blushing, right there in the hallway. “But introducing me to Clyde, finessing that connection … that was amazing. I can’t thank you enough.”
“You don’t have to,” I replied. “Just don’t let her ruin it. Okay?”
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “So, um … I am still going to see you, though, tomorrow, right? In a non-work-related way?”
I looked at Benji, scooting past me in the narrow hallway, toting a bunch of washcloths. He’d already cleared half the table, making twice as many trips as I had. Clearly, all that pre-teen energy, properly channeled, could be a serious resource.
“Yeah,” I said to Theo. “I’ll be in touch, on both counts, soon. All right?”
“Sounds good,” he replied. “Bye, Emaline.”
I smiled, then hung up, pushing my phone back into my pocket. Then I turned around, to the storeroom, only to find Luke standing there, his eyes level with mine over the towering pile in my arms. I jumped, startled, and the towels collapsed between us in a blur of white.
“Oh my God,” I said, putting a hand to my chest as one last washcloth fluttered past in my side vision. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry.”
I dropped down to collect the towels and he joined me on the floor, grabbing a few that were closer to him.
“What’s going on here? Some kind of spa day or something?”
“Margo’s got a new system,” I told him. “What are you doing here?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Well, actually, I was hoping to—”
“Luke!” I heard Benji yelp, and then he was running towards us, footsteps thumping across the carpet. “I didn’t know you were here!”
“Just walked in, bud.” Luke held up his hand for a high five, which Benji delivered with a loud slap. “She’s got you working, huh?”
“Inventory,” Benji explained. “It’s a lot of towels.”
“I can see that.” Luke looked at me, grinning. I almost smiled back at him out of habit, until I remembered what had happened only a matter of hours ago. “Hey, give me a quick sec to talk to Emaline, okay?”
“Sure,” Benji said. “I still have a lot of stuff to move. See ya!”
And with that, he was gone, back into the conference room. Luke looked at me. “Can we—”
“I’m actually really busy,” I told him.
“Ten minutes.” He lowered his voice. “It’s important.”
I glanced across the office where, sure enough, both Margo and my mother were watching us. “Five. And not here.”
He nodded, then followed me as I dropped my pile back in the conference room and walked out to the front porch of the office. Once the door swung shut behind us, I hopped up on a newspaper box. “All right,” I said, crossing my arms. “Talk.”
Luke glanced away, at the traffic passing, then back at me.
“Look, so, this morning … it didn’t go the way I planned. None of this has. I made a mistake.”
“When?” I said. “Meeting that girl at Tallyho? Or dumping me this morning?”
Instead of answering, he ran a hand over his face again, something he always did when he was stressed out. I knew this, like so many of his tells, as well as I did my own. “I didn’t dump you,” he said. “I said we might need a break.”
“So why are you here?” I asked.
“Because,” he replied, “because ever since I walked out of the diner away from you, I’ve felt sick. Like something’s really wrong and I need to fix it.”
I bit my lip, not saying anything.
“I’m not saying things have been perfect between us for the last few months,” he continued. “But I want to be with you.”
“You didn’t feel that way when you decided to go to Tallyho.”
“Are you ever going to stop with the Tallyho thing? I was trying to be honest with you!” he replied, his voice rising. “I told you the truth. That I was tempted, and acted on it, but not in a way you thought. Now I’m telling you I regret everything. You’ve got to give me something for that.”
“Like what?”
Instead of answering, he stepped forward to stand between my open knees, sliding his hands up my neck in that way that was familiar and thrilling, all at once. As he put his lips on mine, I turned my face up and just a bit to the right, so we fit perfectly, a skill honed from a million kisses over the
years. When he finally drew back, he moved his mouth to my ear. “I love you, Emaline.”
My head was swimming. All I wanted, all I ever wanted in moments like this, was to keep kissing him. But somehow, I managed to put my hands on his chest and pushed him back. “I … I can’t.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Things have changed,” I said.
“I told you I was sorry, I made a mistake.” He moved in closer, again. “I’ll fix it. And the other problems we’ve had, we’ll work on them, too.”
I shook my head, looking down at my hands. “It’s not just about all that.”
“Then what?”
I didn’t say anything. All I could think about was toasters.
“Something you did?” he asked. Long, awkward pause. Where was that waitress to interrupt when I really needed her? “Emaline, I just saw you, like, four hours ago. What could possibly have happened since then?”
It’s always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters. I sat there and watched Luke’s face change, right before me. “Oh my God,” he said, stepping back. “It’s that guy, isn’t it? Theo. Did you—”
“Luke,” I said quietly.
“What the hell? You went running to him the minute you left the diner?”
“Hey.” I pointed a finger at him. “You walked out on
me
, remember? As far as I knew, you were gone for good.”
“Which must have been so convenient,” he shot back. “You could finally jump into bed with Girl Jeans without even having to feel bad about it.”
“I didn’t jump into bed with anyone,” I replied. “God. What are you even saying?”
“What are
you
saying?” he replied. “The minute our three-year relationship hit a rough patch, you hooked up with someone else?”
“At least I waited until it was over.”
The look on his face as he heard this—hurt, surprised, vulnerable—made
me
feel sick. I tried to reach out for him, to blunt it somehow, but he stepped farther away, leaving me flailing.
For a moment, we just stood there, this huge space between us. “You said it yourself,” I said finally. “Things haven’t been great in a while. If they had been, neither one of us would have done anything. It means something was wrong.”