The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (15 page)

Bridget looked directly at Molly. She was the only person on the sidelines who wasn't cheering.

“Bee, Bee, Bee!” Diana and her friends were chanting.

After that, Molly took Bridget out of the game. Bridget faintly wondered whether she would be asked back here next year. She sat on the grass and ate chips and salsa, enjoying the burning sensation in her mouth and the last rays of the sun on her shoulders.

L
ena needed to get back to painting. She was just hanging around, day after day, wanting to see Kostos, waiting for him to please return her glance, waiting to discover that he'd told everybody what happened between them—almost wanting him to. Half the time she believed herself that she couldn't find any way to make her stony, impassive grandparents talk about it. Half the time she knew she was lying the other half of the time. She was making excuses for her own discomfort.

She couldn't drink another coffee with Effie at the place with the cute waiter. She couldn't spend another afternoon on the scorching black sand at Kamari beach. She couldn't take yet another fruitless walk past the Dounas place and down to the forge. It was pitiful, was what it was. She needed to get back to painting.

She'd return to her olive trees by the pond. Of all the paintings she'd ever done, the olive tree painting was her favorite. It was a little smeared, but it had mostly survived her temper tantrum. Today she packed a hat and a bathing suit. Just in case. She felt brave going back there. It didn't take much to make her feel brave.

The walk uphill felt even steeper than it had been nine days ago; the transformation from rock to meadow seemed even more dramatic. She felt an extra kick in her blood flow when the picturesque little grove came into sight. She went to the exact spot she'd been before. She could practically see the three holes her easel had made in the ground. Carefully she set up her panel and squeezed fresh blobs of paint onto her palette. She loved the smell of her paints. This was good.

She mixed the precise shade of silver, brown for warmth, green, and blue—those olive tree leaves wanted more blue than you would imagine. Each one seemed to reflect a tiny piece of the sky. The slow hypnosis of deep concentration was passing over her. It was her safest feeling, a state she preferred to stay in far longer than most human beings. She was like one of those strange hibernating frogs whose hearts didn't beat for a whole winter. She liked it that way.

She heard a splash. She looked up, trying to pull her senses back to alertness. She blinked, forcing her eyes to see three dimensions as three dimensions again. There was another splash. Was someone swimming in the pond?

There were few sensations Lena hated more than thinking she had perfect privacy and discovering she didn't.

She took a few steps away from her easel and peered around a tree to give herself a partial glimpse of the pond. She discerned a head. A person's head. From the back. A surge of frustration gripped her jaw. She wanted this to be her place. Why couldn't people just leave it alone?

She probably should have left at that exact moment. Instead she took two steps forward and gave herself a better view. The better view turned its head and suddenly wore the face of Kostos. At that moment he saw her gaping at him in the shallow pond.

This time he was naked and she was clothed, but like last time, she was the one shrinking and blushing and he was the one calmly standing there.

Last time she had been mad at him. This time she was mad at herself. Last time she had thought he was a vain, presumptuous jerk, but this time she knew she was. Last time she had dwelled obsessively on her own exposed body; this time she was thinking about his.

Last time he hadn't been spying on her. Last time he hadn't followed her. He was probably as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

Before now she thought he'd barged into her special place. Now she knew she had barged into his.

Lena,

I have a feeling this is going to be a big night. I don't know what's going to happen, but I have the Pants, which feels a little like having you and Tib and Carmen, so it can't be bad.

I'm missing you all so much now. It's been almost seven weeks. Eat a piece of spanakopita for me, okay?

Bee

Bridget crawled into her sleeping bag in the Pants and a tank top. It was a part of the magic of the Pants that they felt loose and airy in this heat. She suspected they would feel snug and protective in colder air.

She couldn't sleep, of course. She couldn't lie there either. Her legs refused to stay still. If she walked around camp, she knew she might get busted before she'd even gotten to do anything truly bad. Instead she walked out onto the headlands. She sat on a rock, pushed the cuffs of the Pants up to her knees, and dangled her feet in the water. Suddenly she wished she had a fishing rod.

She remembered the place she and her brother used to go on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake when she was little. They went fishing every day. It was the only outdoorsy thing she could remember him doing. Each day, he'd keep his best fish. He learned to clean and gut them. Each day, she'd throw all of hers back. Long after that, with a pang of remorse, she pictured every fish in the Wye River with a hole in its lip.

She couldn't picture her mother there, although she knew she was. Maybe she was in one of her tired periods, staying in bed all day with the shutters closed to protect her eyes.

Bridget yawned. The frantic energy was seeping out of her limbs, leaving a deep physical exhaustion. Maybe she should just go to sleep tonight, leave this adventure for tomorrow.

Or she could go to him right now. Again, the thought was a challenge. She couldn't ignore it.
I think, therefore I do.
The hum of excitement started again in her feet, cramping her overworked calves.

All lights were off. It was late enough now. She looked back at her lone sleeping bag on the beach. She tiptoed back along the slippery rocks.

Was he waiting for her? He would be furious. Or he would succumb. Or some combination of the two.

She was pushing him, she knew. She was pushing herself. It was hard to stop.

Like a ghost, she glided silently past his door. He wasn't asleep. He was sitting up. He saw her and got out of bed. She hopped off the small porch and walked through the palm trees to the wooded edge of the beach. He followed her shirtless, in his boxer shorts. He didn't have to follow her.

Her heart purred. She reached for him. “Did you know I would come?” she asked.

She could barely make out his features in the darkness. “I didn't want you to come,” he said. He paused for a long time. “I hoped you would.”

In most of Bridget's romantic fantasies, her imagination toyed elaborately with the setup, fast-forwarding and rewinding, rewinding, rewinding. In her imagination, Bridget had gotten herself to that wrenching first kiss again and again, in ever more perfect ways. But she hadn't gotten beyond that.

Long after she'd left Eric, she lay in her sleeping bag. She shivered. Her eyes were full. They dripped. From sadness, or strangeness, or love. They were the kind of tears that came when she was just too full. She needed to make a little room. She stared at the sky. It was bigger tonight. Tonight her thoughts roamed out into it, and like Diana had said, they didn't find anything to bounce off. They just went and went until nothing felt real. Not even the thoughts. Not even thinking itself.

She had clung to him, wanting him, unsure, brazen, and afraid. There was a storm in her body, and when the storm got too strong, she got out. She floated up to the palm fronds. She'd done it before. She'd let the ship go down without its captain.

The intimacy between them had been unfathomable. It now stayed there with her, wobbly, waiting to be taken care of. She didn't know how to do that.

Bridget pulled her thoughts back in, coiling them like a kite string.

Carefully she rolled her sleeping bag under her arm and crept back into the cabin. She lay down, her back flat on the bed. Tonight she would let her thoughts stray no farther than the weathered planks.

Tibby,

I feel like such an idiot. I was vain enough to think Kostos was so in love with me he couldn't resist following me and spying on me at the pond. Then I went back to the same place and saw him swimming there. Yes, naked. He probably swims there every summer afternoon, and here I thought he was following me.

One other thing, which was easy to miss what with him being naked (Oh. My. God.) and all the screaming (me) and acting like an idiot (also me). But guess what? Kostos looked right into my eyes. Finally, after all these days, he looked at me.

If you were here, you would make me laugh about this. I wish you were.

Love,
Lena

P.S. Have you heard from Bee recently?

The phone rang. Carmen checked the caller ID panel, knowing it wasn't for her. Who was going to call her? Tibby? Lydia? Krista maybe? It was her mom's boss. It was always her mom's boss. Carmen's mother was a legal secretary, and her boss seemed to think Carmen's mom was his baby-sitter.

“Is Christina there?” Mr. Brattle asked in his usual hurried way.

Carmen checked the wall clock over the refrigerator. It was ten fourteen. Why should he be calling at ten fourteen? Once again he'd lost a memo, or hit the wrong button on his computer or forgotten how to tie his shoes. “She's visiting Grandma in the hospital. She's very ill,” Carmen said pitifully, even though her mother was upstairs watching television and her grandma would probably outlive her grandchildren. Carmen liked to make Mr. Brattle feel either embarrassed or guilty for calling. “She should be back by midnight. I'll ask her to call you then.”

“No, no,” Mr. Brattle blustered. “I'll speak with her tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Carmen went back to her food. The only good thing about Mr. Brattle was that he paid her mother a ton of money and never dared refuse her a raise. It was fear, not generosity, Carmen suspected, but who was she to question it?

She'd laid out four possible snacks on the kitchen table. A tangerine, a bag of Goldfish crackers, a hunk of cheddar cheese, a bag of dried apricots. The theme tonight was orange.

Not one thing she'd put in her mouth had tasted good in the almost two weeks since she'd been home from South Carolina. She had hardly eaten a bite of dinner, and now she was hungry. Hmm. She went for the dried apricots and chose one from the bag. The skin was soft, but the apricot was tough when she put it in her mouth. Suddenly she had the acute sensation that she was chewing on somebody's ear. She spit it into the garbage and put everything else away.

She went upstairs and peered into her mother's room. An old
Friends
episode was on the TV. “Hi, sweet. You want to watch with me? Ross fooled around on Rachel.”

Carmen slouched down the hall. Mothers were not supposed to care about Ross or Rachel. Carmen had liked the show before her mom started watching it in reruns. She flopped onto her bed. She had to cover her head with a pillow when her mother's loud laugh tore a hole in the wall.

Carmen had sworn to herself she was not going to be bothered by her mom. She was not going to be irritable and complaining. No sighing, no eye-rolling. She had to be loved by at least one of her parents. It was an easy promise to make when Carmen was alone. But when she was faced with her actual mother, it became impossible to keep. Her mom was always doing something unforgivable like laughing too loud at
Friends
or calling her computer her “Vaio.”

Carmen sat up in bed and eyed the wall calendar. Even though she hadn't marked the day of her father's wedding, it seemed to jump out at her. Only three more weeks. Did her dad even care that she wouldn't be there?

Her dad had called her mother briefly the day Carmen left South Carolina to confirm that she was safely home. He'd called again a week ago to talk to Christina about some money thing having to do with Carmen's dental insurance. She couldn't believe how many things the two of them found to say about “deductibles.” He hadn't asked to talk to Carmen.

Carmen could have called him, of course. She could have apologized or at least offered some explanation. She hadn't.

Guilt, like the cat she'd never had, wove around her legs and hopped up onto the bed to insinuate itself at close range. “Go away,” she said to the guilt. She imagined it brushing alongside her, swiping its tail against her cheek. Guilt wanted her most when she least wanted it. Cats always loved people who were allergic to them.

She wouldn't hold it. No way. She'd put it outside and let it screech all it wanted.

Unbidden, the picture of her father's face through the broken window barged into her mind. He was more than surprised. He simply couldn't process what he saw. He thought Carmen was better than that.

“All right, come on up.” The guilt made muffins on her stomach and curled in for a long stay.