Forbidden Boy (4 page)

Today, however, as sweat beaded across her forehead and Lily Allen’s voice bounced out of her iPod, Jules felt like she was fighting a losing battle. She just couldn’t focus. Her mind kept floating across the beach. When the breeze came up off the water, she was in heaven. She stuck the end of her paintbrush in her messy bun for safekeeping and walked around the canvas, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. She picked up her easel and shuffled a few feet to the left, then to the right again.

Julianne wiped her paint-covered hands on the front of her Bermuda shorts and sighed. It felt so much more natural to just take a photo—everything was captured instantly, beautifully, looking exactly like what it was, only better. The water looked perfectly crisp and invit-ing, and the surfer guys dotting the waves didn’t look half bad either. Julianne quickly pulled off her shorts and tank top, revealing her new green Betsey Johnson bikini. She tossed her clothes and bandana on top of her Reefs, set her paintbrush down on her easel, and ran for the water.

The second Jules’s toes hit the salt water, she felt her good mood come rushing back to her. She walked in up to her waist, then ducked down, letting the waves rush up to her shoulders, cooling her down instantly. She swam out a few feet and bobbed around, surveying the scene. Some guys from town were tossing a football by the edge of the water, trying not to take out the occasional low-flying seagull. On either side of her, surfers were flexing their strong arms and pushing up onto their boards before gracefully gliding to shore. Mixed in with the boys, Julianne was happy to see some girls represent-ing out on the waves.
Maybe this will be the summer I step
up my own surf skill
s
,
Julianne thought. Chloe had always been more the swimmer and surfer in the family, while Julianne spent most of her time on the beach running or sketching. She was a strong enough swimmer and, more often than not, she was able to push up, stay up, and ride in on her board. But Jules knew she’d never really spent the time it takes to get really good at surfing. Kat, who was an amazing surfer, always said it was a shame Julianne didn’t spend more time on her board; she swore the cutest guys were always surfers. The group laughing and shouting to Jules’s left served as proof. If she could up her skills by the time Kat returned from Madrid, her best friend would be so impressed. Julianne made a mental note to add some surfing time to her summer to-do list.

Beyond the cluster of hot surfers, Julianne noticed a red ponytail whipping behind a girl on a longboard. Jules only knew one person in the Palisades with that fiery hair.

“Lucy!”
She called out to her friend, but the crashing of a wave swallowed her voice. Julianne’s mind flashed back to her search for Lucy and her lost negatives at the party the other night. As much as she’d been hoping to find her friend, Julianne didn’t regret what she’d done instead one bit.
I wonder if Remi surfs,
she thought dreamily.

Julianne laughed at herself, dunking her head underwater. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about Remi? He had been in her head constantly since he’d hurtled into Chloe at high speed. Jules had never felt something click like that so instantly. And the way he’d looked at her right before she ran off … Her stomach twisted into a million pretzels just thinking about it. He had looked at her the way she looked through her camera at a perfect shot—transfixed, amazed, like he could suddenly see everything clearly. Talking to Remi was the most fun she’d had in months—and she liked to think that she had a pretty awesome time, generally speaking. Their banter had been so breezy and electric. And now all she wanted was to pick up where they’d left off.

Well,
Julianne figured,
no point in trying to avoid reality.

She shook her head to herself. Although the realization made her vaguely sick, she couldn’t deny that seeing Remi might have been a one-time deal. Refusing to sulk on such a beautiful day, she paddled back into the crowd of laughing surfers and swimmers, feeling the sun warming her back through the water. Her muscles already loose from her swim, Jules stretched her arms as far as they could go, reaching out for the perfect slicing stroke and shooting through the water. About twenty yards out, she stopped swimming and bobbed up in the cool surf, waiting for the swell of waves behind her. Since she didn’t have a surfboard with her, she figured she would just ride waves toward the shore for a while, then ask to borrow someone’s board once she got the hang of it. As she heard the familiar roll of an approaching wave, Julianne began stroking forward, gaining speed as the wave did. The growing wall of water caught up to her back and pushed her toward the beach. As the white bubbles of the breaking wave crashed over and around her, Julianne shot back up into the sunshine, exhilarated.

Grinning, she swam out into the deeper water to wait for another run.

Bobbing under the water from time to time as she swam out, Julianne was so immersed in the adrenaline rush that she barely felt her body collide with the board of another surfer waiting for a wave.

“Oops. Sorry about that, I’m a newbie,” Julianne apologized, laughing at her awkward collision and wiping water out of her eyes as she looked up. When she saw the face of the board’s owner, her jaw dropped.

“Oh my God!” It couldn’t be. It was just too surreal.

She’d met this guy for five perfect minutes at a party, and now he was popping up again the next day? These things only happened to Cinderella.

Remi’s eyes were the size of silver dollars and his eyebrows were knitted together in confusion. He was wearing board shorts, and his hair was still damp from his last dunk. He sat astride his surfboard with his bare calves dangling into the water, and his fingers absentmindedly drumming on the board’s surface. Jules realized with a shock of adrenaline that he’d been in the pack of surfers she’d been admiring earlier. He kept opening his mouth mechanically but no sounds came out.

“Um. Wow. Um. Just … um … wow. What are you doing here?” Julianne stammered.

Remi opened and closed his mouth a few more times. He looked like a goldfish reaching for his fishy-flakes. A particularly hot goldfish.

“Are you okay? Are you lost? Are you suffering from sunstroke?” she went on, half-laughing, and fully hoping that she wasn’t hallucinating from the sun herself.

“I’m, uh, fine. Totally fine. Just … surprised.” Remi recovered quickly, running his fingers through his dark hair. Even squinting into the sun, his eyes were huge and liquid.

“Yeah, me too. If I remember correctly, you don’t usually make your big entrances upright.” Jules laughed, trying to play it cool even though her heart and her stomach were tumbling over each other and leapfrogging up into her throat.

Remi blushed, which of course made Julianne blush.

He looked slightly off his game—antsy and utterly unac-customed to the sun after a long, gray, Seattle spring.

Even in the bone-melting heat, Julianne felt a chill run up her spine.

“Were you … ?” Remi’s voice trailed off, but Julianne followed his eyes toward the shore and knew what he was asking.

“Yeah, actually. Do you … ?” She laughed and tipped her head back toward the beach.

“Sure.” Remi beamed, sliding off his board and back into the cool water.

As they swam toward the sand, Julianne was delighted that talking to Remi still came just as easily as it had at the Malibu party.

“The waves were awesome today,” Remi noted happily.

“They’ve been beautiful so far this summer,” Jules agreed. “It’s a good sign.”

“Is there some sort of Palisades folklore about what you can learn from a summer of good waves? Some sort of Southern Californian old wives tale?” Remi teased.

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” Julianne played along. “See how the waves are more rounded today?” Remi stopped paddling and looked to either side of him before nodding. “That means there’s only a fifty percent chance of a shark attack,” Julianne intoned dramatically before making a sudden grab for his arm. Startled, Remi let out a yelp. “Gotcha!” Julianne winked.

Remi laughed and splashed Julianne with an armful of water. “You learn something new every day around here.” He winked back before hefting himself onto his board and beginning to paddle. “Race you to shore!”

As Julianne and Remi walked out of the ocean and onto the beach, seawater trailing from their hair down their backs, Julianne pointed out some of the Palisades beach highlights. “Over there is where the Labor Day carnival used to be held every summer.” She pointed to a pier about a hundred yards down the beach. “Now it’s held on the boardwalk by the Fishtail. Have you been to the Fishtail yet?” Remi shook his head. “Oh, you definitely have to check it out. Everyone hangs out there in the summer. They have awesome live music. Let me know if you want to check out a show or something,”

she finished shyly, casting her eyes toward the sand under her feet. “Oh! And over there …” Julianne started the tour back up again, her enthusiasm for the beach and for her town overwhelming any awkwardness. She pointed up the beach toward a cliff, under which a bunch of younger kids were playing Ultimate Frisbee.

“When we were in elementary school, we would have our ‘girls-only club’ meetings in the rocks under those cliffs. The ‘boys-only club’ was, like, three feet away.”

She grinned and shrugged as they approached her easel.

“So, we’re here.”

“Well, thanks for the tour.” Remi grinned. “Would you mind some company while you do your thing?”

“I don’t know,” Julianne teased. “The element of surprise has really become the hallmark of hanging out with you. I don’t know if I could do without it.”

As she was finishing her sentence, Remi turned and started walking away. “Hey! Where are you going?”

Julianne called to his back. Just as suddenly as he’d walked away, Remi turned around and strolled over to Julianne’s easel.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Remi started again, feigning shock. “Do you come here often?” He arched his eyebrows, clearly amused with himself.

Julianne met his line and raised him a cliché. “Sure, I come here all the time, just hoping to run into someone tall, dark, and clumsy.”

“Run into, eh? Didn’t your sister say the same thing the other night?” Remi cocked his head toward her and squinted, as if hoping she wouldn’t vanish into thin air if he blinked. Julianne knew that look—she was wearing the same one.

“Probably. It’s the Kahn sense of humor. Gives us away every time. I think it’s the by-product of seventeen years spent in a very small space together—eventually we’ll turn into the same person. Me, my dad, and Chloe will all morph into one huge Mega-Kahn.” She absentmindedly picked at the stickers covering her water bottle, peeling the edges away so that the Nalgene logo was visible for the first time in several summers.

“Sort of like Transformers?” Remi grinned, his big eyes fixed right on her.

“Oh, totally,” Julianne continued. “But none of that turning-into-a-big-robot crap. We’d have really practical powers. Like the ability to obliterate an entire gallon of ice cream in a single sitting. Or to steal the arts section out of the Sunday paper with lightning speed. Additional arms for the pottery wheel so we could make multiple vases at once. You know, the basics.” She giggled. She’d almost peeled a border all the way around her Decem-berists sticker.

“I won’t lie, that’s pretty sweet. If my family had crazy powers we’d probably just sort our laundry into whites and darks telekinetically. Or teleport ourselves back to work from the dinner table to get a few more hours in.”

“Nothing like really utilitarian powers, I guess.” Jules unscrewed the cap of her Nalgene and took a huge gulp before offering it to Remi.

He shook his head, but his eyes lingered on the spot on the rim of the water bottle where Jules’s lips had just been. “I mean, it’s not as boring as it sounds,” Remi continued. “My family’s actually really great. We’re just not that, um, original. We’re more
Leave It to Beaver
, I guess.

You know?”

Julianne didn’t really know what he meant, and said so. “Not really, now that you mention it. My family’s always had a sort of free-form, go-with-the-flow way of approaching everything.” Even Chloe’s compulsive volunteering and studying were organic; they were things she did because they made her feel alive. Jules tilted her head toward Remi thoughtfully. “I can’t really imagine a family being structured any other way. My family’s a little bit ‘follow your bliss,’ if you know what I mean. As long as Chloe and I are doing the best we can and doing it for the right reasons, our dad is pretty much happy with whatever.”

“What does your mom think about that?” Remi looked at her as if she were describing a totally different world.

Julianne paused, setting her water bottle down at the base of her easel. “Not much. She’s actually dead.”

Remi’s jaw dropped like someone had released a little lever inside of his face. “I’m … I’m … sorry,” he stammered.

Jules wiped a bead of sweat from in between her blue eyes and shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Sorry to be so blunt, but you didn’t say anything wrong.”

Remi reached out and touched her wrist, then sheepishly shoved his hands into his back pockets.

“So, what are you doing on this beach?” Julianne asked, feeling a familiar blush starting to creep up her neck. “I mean, other than looking for more innocent vic-tims to terrorize with your demolition derby moves?”

“I think you’re safe for now—there isn’t a keg in sight.”

Remi laughed a deep, rich laugh. “I was surfing with some guys I met down at the boardwalk earlier, and then I was just exploring the beach, really. You saw my brief attempt at a second run in the water. I haven’t been in town long; I don’t know where anything is, but I really love this beach. What are you doing down here?” He laughed again, gesturing at Julianne’s easel. “I mean, obviously I know what you’re doing right now. But what’s your usual beach routine?”

“I live down there.” Julianne gestured vaguely over her shoulder, toward her family’s small cottage. “But I come here to paint. I’m starting my summer job next week, so I won’t have access to afternoon painting light much longer.”