Boys of Summer (28 page)

“Oh!” he says with an air of relief. “You found my phone. Thank you! I've been looking for it everywhere!”

That's the part of this he's choosing to respond to? His lost phone?

“It was at the Cove,” I reply tightly. “
Our
Cove. Mine and Harper's.”

Grayson narrows his eyes at me, like he's trying to keep up. “Cove?” he repeats. “What cove?”

I'm starting to lose patience. If he thinks this little game is going to deter me from the real issue here, he's sorely mistaken.

“The little alcove near the beach club. I've been going there for years.”

He slaps his leg and then winces slightly, like the action caused him physical pain. “Really?” he exclaims. “I just stumbled upon it yesterday while I was walking the beach. I thought I was like Columbus, discovering some new world. Although, technically he didn't really discover it, since the Native Americans were already here and all of that. So I guess that makes us the same. Me and Columbus.”

What the fuck is he talking about?

“Well,” he says, easing the phone out of my grasp, “thanks for returning it.”

He starts to close the door, but I stop it with my hand. “The text messages,” I remind him sternly. “What are they doing on your phone? Why is Harper texting you at eleven at night.”

Once again Grayson looks baffled, like he can't figure out why I'm taking this tone with him. “Because we're friends,” he says, as though it's obvious.

“No, you're not.”

“Uh, yes, we are. We've been friends since we were kids. Did you forget she also hung out with me and Ian all those years?”

“Is she texting with Ian too, then?” I challenge.

Grayson shrugs. “How should I know? We're not
that
good of friends.”

“Why did she say she was ‘freaking out' in one of her messages last night?”

He blinks rapidly, like he's trying to keep up. Then he lets out a heavy sigh. “Okay, I didn't want to tell you about it. But the truth is she's upset about the breakup and needed someone to talk to. We've been meeting up and just chatting. About relationships and life and all that girly shit. I thought if I told you, it would just upset you and make it harder for you to move on, so I didn't.”

Grayson presses his lips together and moves them around, like a woman blotting lipstick. I immediately narrow my eyes in suspicion.

That's his tell.

That's what he does when he's lying. I've known him for years, and I've seen him do it a hundred times. Just never to me.

But what does it mean?

Is he lying to me?

Or are his lips just chapped?

I admit, within this new context, the text messages themselves are fairly benign. Maybe he's telling the truth. Maybe he and Harper are just friends who meet up to talk.

I just never thought Grayson and Harper had anything to talk
about.

What could they possibly have in common?

“So that's all this is?” I confirm, staring him down. “You two have been
talking
.”

“Yeah,” Grayson says in the most convincingly nonchalant tone I've ever heard. “Of course that's all it is.”

He gestures into the empty house. “Do you wanna come in and hang out? We can play some video games or something.”

I shake my head, trying to make sense of this strange conversation. It didn't exactly go the way I thought it would. In fact, it went nothing like I thought it would.

“No,” I say absentmindedly. “I actually have to work at the club in a few.”

Grayson nods. “Okay. I'll see you later, then?”

“Sure,” I say, and he gives me a wide smile before closing the door.

A week later I've almost managed to convince myself that Grayson was telling the truth and that I've simply turned into the kind of crazy, paranoid person I've always despised.

Of course nothing's going on with Grayson and Harper. It was a ridiculous conclusion to jump to in the first place.

Harper is my ex and Grayson is my best friend, and there's a code. A code that Grayson knows all too well. After all, he has a sister, and the same rules pretty much apply.

The guy might be known to hook up with just about anything that walks, but he wouldn't do
that
. Not with Harper. Not to me.

Julie and I are just finishing a two-hour bike tour of the island on what has to be the hottest day of the entire summer, maybe even the entire decade. When we get back to the rental shop downtown, Julie hops off her bike and wheels it up to the rack outside the shop. She unclasps her helmet and pulls it off her head, shaking out her short brown hair and rubbing sweat from the back of her neck.

“That was so much fun!” she squeals.

I squeeze the brakes and come to a stop beside her. I use the front of my shirt to wipe a layer of perspiration from my face, which must be beet red by now despite the fact that it's already after five o'clock. I can't believe Julie talked me into renting bikes. This has to be
the
most touristy thing you can do on the Locks. Every time I used to see a family pass by on the street riding those matching blue bicycles, I swore I would never do that in a million years.

Actually, I swore I would never do a lot of things on this island. But over the course of the summer, Julie has convinced me to do almost all of them.

“Wasn't that fun?” she asks, skipping over to me.

“Superfun,” I say, trying to sound convincing. It's not that I didn't enjoy myself. Surprisingly, I did. It's just that my mind has been preoccupied over the past week and I'm trying not to let it show.

Julie laughs. “You know you're a terrible liar?”

I chuckle as I walk my bike up to the rack and slide it into the slot next to Julie's. I take a look around Ocean Avenue, watching the tourists come and go from shops and restaurants.

Julie stands on her tiptoes to tap my forehead. “What's going on up here?”

But I don't respond. Because my attention has been snagged by something else. Harper has just walked out of Coconut's Market and has paused on the curb to glance down at something on her phone. She's alone, which is unusual. She's almost always accompanied by a friend or a hopeful young tourist looking to score. Harper doesn't like being alone, which is ironic, given the fact that half the times she's put a pin in our relationship it has been because she said she wanted to be alone. And then the very next day I'd see her attached at the hip to Bree or Riley.

“Are you okay?” Julie says after I've been silent for I don't even know how long.

I blink and look down at her, mentally berating myself for being so distracted. Julie is amazing. She's cute and fun and laid-back, and she invited me to hang out with her today. And yet I can't help but be somewhere else.

“Sorry,” I say hastily. “What did you want to do next? Go to the beach?”

Julie doesn't answer. Instead she follows my gaze across the street. “Is that her?”

I turn back and notice that Harper is still there. She's still totally absorbed in her phone, except now she's smiling and biting her lip.

My body tenses. I know that look. Sometimes she would bite her lip before she would kiss me, or when she was about to tell me something dirty. Or right before she'd slide her shirt over her head and we'd—

“Is that Harper?” Julie asks again.

I shake myself out of my funk. “Yeah,” I mumble.

Julie touches my arm. “Do you want to get out of here?”

I glance back at Harper once more. She's stuffing her phone into her purse and striding purposefully down the street.

I suddenly have this insane, all-consuming need to know where she's going. To find out once and for all what's really going on here.

“Actually, I just have to do one thing,” I say to Julie. “Can I meet you at the beach?”

Julie may be the bubbliest girl I've ever met, but I don't miss the flash of disappointment on her face. A flash she quickly covers up. “Oh. Okay. No problem. You do what you gotta do. I'll see you down there.”

“It'll only take a second,” I assure her.

Julie smiles, but there's something lacking in it. The sparkle is significantly less sparkly. “No problem.”

I tell myself that I'm only doing this to put my mind at rest, so I can hang out with Julie without all these distracting thoughts spinning around in my head.

I just need to know.

“Thanks.” I give her arm a squeeze, and then I take off after Harper, maintaining a safe distance behind so she won't know that I'm following her, like the stalker that I've apparently become.

IAN

W
hitney knocks on my door while I'm sitting in my room reading the last few chapters of
Sense and Sensibility
. She drapes herself over the foot of the bed with a dramatic sigh. “I'm bored. Let's go do something.”

“I am
not
Mr. Willoughby,” I say defensively.

She props herself up on her elbows and squints at me. “Huh?”

“Last month, by the pool, you told me you were learning to stay away from Willoughbys like me.”

She laughs. “Last month you also wrote an entire song about how obnoxious I was.”

I twist my lips and go back to reading. “Touché.”

Whitney groans. “Seriously. Let's go do something. You've been holed up in this house for the past week.”

I shrug. “I like it here.”

“And I like it out there.” She points to the window.

I shrug and flip the page. I can't bring myself to tell her the real reason I've barely left the house. After what happened last week in the woods, I've come to realize that the entire island is chock-full of land mines and I don't want to risk stepping on another one.

I thought as long as I didn't go back to my grandparents' house, I'd be safe. Little did I know, my father's ghost isn't just confined to the house. He can travel everywhere, which means nothing is safe.

Except this bedroom. And this house.

But even here my mind is my enemy. For the past week, despite my efforts, my thoughts keep drifting back to that bridge that Whitney and I stumbled upon in the woods. Cherry Tree Bridge.

It's kind of chilling to know that it's still there. Still standing. A landmark of my past that never changes, even as grenades fall around me, tearing the rest of my world apart.

It wasn't Whitney's fault. She didn't know. She couldn't possibly have realized that when my eyes fell upon that bridge, all I could see was him.

My father.

Casting a fishing line over the edge.

Lifting me up so I could stand on the second-highest rail and watch my lure float in the water so far below.

Helping me reel in my first catch.

A thousand perfect moments captured in a single location.

Moments that will never happen again.

Whitney starts to crawl toward me, her body slinky and catlike. She's doing that seductive thing that she does so damn well. She starts to kiss my stomach, pushing up my shirt to brush her beautiful lips against my bare skin.

A tingle shoots up my spine.

“What about Grayson?” I ask as she slowly moves her way up to my chest.

“Gone,” she murmurs against me.

I tip my head back and let out a soft moan. God, those lips are magic. By the time she reaches my mouth, I'm completely turned on. She straddles me and kisses me hard.
I wrap my hands around her hips. Whitney grinds slowly against me, driving me absolutely crazy.

Then my cell phone rings, shattering the moment and bringing me back down to earth. I reach for it to silence it but inadvertently catch sight of the screen.

It's my mom.

If the mood wasn't completely spoiled a second ago, it certainly is now.

I jab my finger against the ignore button and toss the phone onto the carpet. Whitney winces at my brusqueness and quickly moves off me. “Who was that? Ex-girlfriend?”