Forbidden Boy (15 page)

Remi quickly hopped up another rung on the ladder and leaned over Jules’s shoulder, pretending to admire the detail work on a section of the painting.

Julianne peered down around Remi to see who’d come into the courtyard. Bill Cullen was standing at the bottom of the ladder, looking bemused. “What are you guys up to?” he asked.

“Bill, have you seen the detail work on Julianne’s painting here?” Remi asked thoughtfully. “It’s … very impressive. The client is going to be really thrilled.” He climbed down a few rungs of the ladder before turning his eyes back to Julianne. “Keep up the great work,” he said as neutrally as possible. He hopped off the ladder and turned back to Bill again. “It’s really … just great.”

Bill raised one graying eyebrow. “Jules is great. That’s not news to me,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he turned and headed out of the courtyard, calling over his shoulder, “Lunch break’s at one-thirty today. If you want pizza, it’s three bucks.”

It wasn’t until Bill had left that Julianne felt the heat leave her face and noticed the green paint smeared on Remi’s shirt. They exchanged a quick, panicked look and Remi mouthed, “Do you think he knows?”

Julianne shrugged and whispered, “Maybe?”

The near miss was enough to put them both on edge.

Remi shifted his weight from one foot to the other while Julianne twisted the same piece of hair around her finger over and over again.

“Um, well, okay. ’Bye,” Remi blurted, dashing out of the courtyard.

“Yeah, ’bye,” Julianne replied, but even as he hurried away, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

Julianne couldn’t believe she was finally putting the finishing touches on her mom’s painting. And just in time. After a week of beautiful weather, a patch of clouds was rolling in over the Palisades, bringing an unusual gray with it. Julianne dabbed a few final highlights of gold on the canvas, just to make the beach come that much more alive. Ever since that night she spent out on the beach listening for her mom a few weeks earlier, it was like all the pieces of her painting had suddenly started falling into place. The light was just right, and her colors had become richer, deeper, and more complex, somehow. It was like Hannah Kahn was out there somewhere, telling Jules to take her gifts and run with them, and if Jules just listened closely enough, she’d know what she was supposed to do. Grinning at her finished painting, Julianne practically hugged herself with delight over her accomplishment. She grabbed the painting off its easel and rushed it inside and up to her bedroom, where it could dry without the threat of sudden raindrops.

When Julianne woke up the next morning, the gray skies were still in full effect, and the gloom wouldn’t dis-sipate. That whole weekend—the weekend of the anniversary of Hannah Kahn’s death—it was unusually dark and drizzly for summertime in LA. Julianne, Chloe, and Dad sat around the living room in equally gray moods. They had watched old family videos and played three consecutive games of Trivial Pursuit (at which Chloe had thoroughly schooled Julianne and her father, three consecutive times), but the prevailing mood in the Kahn household was still listing toward melancholy.

“Who starred in the eponymous show about a news-caster in Minneapolis?” Chloe asked, yawning.

“Oh, even I know this one,” muttered Dad. “Mary Tyler Moore.”

“Chloe, do we really have to go through the additional cards?” Julianne whined. “We already played the game.”

“Do you have any better recreational suggestions?”

Chloe countered, probably not meaning to sound quite so snippy. “Shall we do dramatic readings from the latest
Publishers Weekly
?” Chloe drawled, holding up a copy of their dad’s magazine. “Or should we watch another movie that we’ve all seen five times? Now that would be fun.”

Julianne looked at her sister and yawned. She curled her feet under her on the oversize couch and flopped back, peeling a split end in her hair. “I could always make popcorn. Or we could play Pictionary.”

“No Pictionary,” her father pleaded. “I’ve already been humiliated on the board game battlefield by one daughter today. I’m not going back for seconds.”

Unable to reach consensus, they drifted to separate parts of the house. Dad went into his studio and Chloe clomped upstairs, while Julianne stayed put in the living room.

Julianne kept watch out the window for a break in the unseasonably dreary weather. She had wrapped her painting in butcher paper and hidden it under her bed.

She’d been hoping to give it to Dad and Chloe today, but her grand plan required sunshine. So she remained at her post in the window seat, looking out over the beach with a book in her lap.

At the first hint of sun, Jules jumped at her chance.

“
Daaaad! Chloe!
Come in here!” She knew her dad was getting things together for a meeting with his editor in New York next week, and Chloe was talking on the phone with one of her sorority sisters, but time was of the essence.

Julianne dashed upstairs, skipping every other step, and bounded into Chloe’s room, not caring in the slightest if she was interrupting an important phone call.

“Chloe Elise Kahn, you have five minutes to get your butt downstairs and out onto the back deck!”

Chloe put her hand over the receiver and looked at Julianne, her hazel eyes questioning and mildly annoyed. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.

“Nothing’s wrong, but it’s important.” Julianne wheedled.

“Now?” Chloe mouthed.
“Really?”

“Really! Now go. Go, go, go! And get Dad on your way out.” Julianne pivoted on her heel and burst toward the hallway.

Before Chloe had a chance to argue, Julianne ran into her room and closed the door behind her. She got down on her hands and knees and wedged herself under her bed, reaching for the wrapped canvas. She finally got her hands around it and gently wiggled it out. Then she walked over to her white wicker bookshelves.

Sharing space with dozens of art books and a complete collection of her dad’s children’s books were a half-dozen framed family photos. Julianne took her favorite down from the shelf. It was beginning to yellow and fold up around the edges with age. It was a shot of Julianne and her mother on the beach by their house, when Julianne was two or three. They had matching mother/daughter easels. Hannah had started a beautiful beachscape on hers, and Julianne’s easel was smeared with finger-paint—not to mention the paint all over her face, streaked on her bathing suit, and splashed on her little tod-dler bonnet. Her mother looked stunning—she was wearing a floppy hat and oversize sunglasses, with a paintbrush clenched between her teeth—and she was chasing after little Jules, who was about to make a mad dash for the water.

Julianne spent a minute with the photo, looking at herself, looking at her mom, before placing it gently back on the shelf. She picked up her canvas and headed downstairs.

When Julianne stepped outside, the sun was still shining and her father and sister were looking at her like she’d gone completely bonkers.

“Sweetie, are you all right?” her father said, breaking the ice.

Julianne looked back and forth between her father and Chloe. “I’m sorry for being such a drama queen, but I have something for you guys, and it is really important that I show it to you while the sun is still shining, or it just wouldn’t be right.”

She handed the wrapped canvas to her father, who took a seat next to Chloe on the deck. As Dad and Chloe unwrapped the brown paper together, Julianne watched the corners of her father’s mouth curl up in a sad smile. Chloe was grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh my God! It’s amazing. It’s beyond amazing,” she gushed.

“Mom started this before she got sick and I wanted you guys to have it.” Julianne gestured to the beach beyond the deck. “Now we’ll always have Mom and we’ll always have our beach.”

“Julianne, it’s so different from your other collabora-tions with your mother,” her father observed, sounding pleased that his little girl had grown up to have such artistic range.

Jules nodded. “I guess so. It was really hard for me, actually. But I think it turned out okay.”

“It turned out better than okay,” Chloe gushed. “And like you said, we’ll always have the beach, just as Mom saw it.” Even though an undertone of sadness gripped all three of them, the Kahns shared a warm smile.

Julianne walked over to her father and threw her arms around his shoulders and said, “I’m glad you like it, Dad.”

As the beginnings of tears collected in the corners of Edward Kahn’s eyes, he hugged his daughter back and whispered, “Thank you.”

The music at the Fishtail was pumping at earsplitting volume and Julianne felt her body shaking in time with the bass. She and Remi had been out for hours.

It felt so good to just hang out and be a couple without stressing over who might be watching. Even if they tech-nically were the
only
ones who knew they were out as a couple. After work, they’d headed to happy hour with some of the guys from the crew, at a bar farther down the boardwalk. After happy hour, Mitch and Hunter in tow, they’d stopped by the Mean Bean to pick up Lucy and head over to the Fishtail to meet more friends from school. So many weeks of relative isolation had left Julianne beyond excited to be out on the town with her friends
and
her amazing new (secret) boyfriend. She wished Kat were there—she was sure that Kat and Remi would totally hit it off—but then they’d have some time to hang out together when Kat got back from Madrid in a few weeks.

Julianne surveyed the scene at the Fishtail. It was her favorite kind of boardwalk party, high energy and low key at the same time. Hunter, Mitch, and Remi were standing against the boardwalk railing, talking about colleges, while Lucy and Jules were perched on top of a picnic table, watching the scene unfold. Down on the beach there were a few clusters of night swimmers and kids playing volleyball, but most of the action was contained on the boardwalk. The waves were rolling into shore and they could hear the breeze blowing the palm trees. Seagulls were winging their way across the horizon.

“I love summer.” Jules sighed, taking a sip of the piña colada she was sharing with Lucy.

“I know, right?” Lucy agreed. “I just wish it would last longer. I can’t even start thinking about school—I have too much to do before then.”

As they spoke, Justin Timberlake’s voice came thumping out of the speakers. Jules grabbed her friend’s hand and pulled Lucy down from the table. “Don’t think, then!” she shouted over the music. “Just dance!”

The girls laughed as they jumped up and down, winding their bodies to the beat. “Way to bring sexy back!”

Julianne laughed at Lucy, who was dropping it all the way down to the floor.

“Um, I don’t think sexy ever left …” Lucy joked back, jabbing Julianne with her elbow. “Speaking of which, I’m going to go introduce myself to those guys over there.” She headed off to chat with a group of cute guys Jules vaguely recognized from school, who were shooting pool by the outdoor bar. Looking around the party, Julianne couldn’t help but notice that several other girls were admiring her boyfriend, and she laughed to herself. Then she looked down at her outfit—a Proenza Schouler tank top with a deep V-neck and funky buttons, a swingy skirt, and turquoise open-toed Seychelles slip-ons—and felt pretty hot herself. Her hair was curly, wild, and blowing in the ocean breeze.

Julianne tossed her head back and tried to soak everything in, waiting a long minute before heading down the boardwalk to catch up with Lucy. She glanced behind and caught Remi full-on staring at her. Maybe forced separation could be a little fun.

After a few hours, the party began to wind down, with couples strolling off in pairs and kids riding off on their bikes in every direction. Julianne and Lucy were dancing with some of Lucy’s co-workers from the Mean Bean and a few of the younger guys from the site, when Remi walked over and slid his arm around Jules’s waist.

“Ready to head out?” he whispered into her curls.

She nodded and looked to her friends, who all looked ready to call it a night. Together, still bobbing their heads to the music, they all headed home.

Mitch and Hunter drifted away from the group first, to go meet up with some of the other guys from the cross-country team for a poker game; then Lucy’s co-workers left one by one. As Lucy, Julianne, and Remi made their way down the beach toward Lucy’s grandparents’ house, Lucy leaned over and tipsily stage-whispered in Julianne’s ear, “So, is this
the boyfriend
?”

“Huh?” Julianne was confused.

“The guy you were telling me about at the art store,”

Lucy clarified louder. “The hottie you’ve had your eye on all summer?”

Julianne blushed, even in the darkness. Even perfectly sober, subtlety had never been Lucy’s strong point. “Yup. He’s the one.”

“You’re right, Jules. He’s cute—really cute!” Lucy giggled. “Oh my gosh, I almost missed my house.” Lucy looked up sheepishly before dashing off for home.

“Good night, you guys! Nice to meet you, Remi,” she practically cooed.

Remi finally slipped his hand into Julianne’s, and they walked the rest of the way down the beach together, stopping to sit down in the sand when they reached the stretch of beach between their two houses. Half an hour later, Julianne and Remi were lying on their backs, looking up at the stars. The weather had stayed clear all night, despite a threat of rain, and the sky was absolutely the most intense shade of navy blue that Julianne had ever seen. Normally, she would have been trying to figure out exactly how to mix the color of the sky, how to capture it. Tonight, however, she was too distracted by Remi’s hand resting on her stomach. Her entire body felt like it had been hit by lightning. As soon as Remi touched her skin, there wasn’t a single part of her that wasn’t hypercharged and tingling. It was almost as though she needed to either stay perfectly still or risk her entire body bursting into flames.

Remi rolled over and propped his head up on Julianne’s stomach. “What are you thinking, Jules?” He kissed her belly button, and Julianne felt her skin ignite again.