Second Chance Summer (29 page)

I had left all my things back at the pool, but I didn’t care. None of it seemed to matter anymore. I biked home on autopilot, tears blurring my vision. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew I needed to be home. I could figure things out once I got there.

I threw my bike onto the gravel of the driveway and ran toward the house. I had just opened the door when I almost crashed into my father, who was heading out of it, his weekend bag in his hand.

“Taylor?” he asked, looking down at me. “You okay?”

“Are you leaving?” I asked, looking at the bag. Usually my father
was up only for the weekends, but he had planned on taking this whole week off, now that it was August, and things usually quieted down at his office. “Now?” I could hear the disappointment in my voice.

“I know,” my dad said with a grimace. “Work has just gotten crazy, and I have to be there. Sorry, kid.”

I nodded, but my mind was suddenly racing ahead with all kinds of possibilities that I knew I really shouldn’t let myself consider. But once the idea was planted, it was all I could think about. I took a deep breath before asking, “What if I went back with you?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. He put down his bag and frowned at me. “You mean go back to Connecticut?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound casual. Lucy’s face flashed into my mind, but I tried to push it away, not wanting to think about Lucy. Certainly not wanting to think about Henry, and what he must be feeling right now. Instead, I made myself smile at my father, as I said in a voice so confident that I almost believed it myself, “Yeah. I’m kind of tired of it all up here, anyway. When should we leave?”

Ten minutes later, I’d thrown my clothes into a bag and we were heading down the driveway. I’d looked at the stuffed penguin for a long moment, wanting so badly to take it with me, to try to hold on to the feeling I’d had when I’d woken up the morning after the carnival. But instead, I left it on my bed, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to take seeing at it every day in Connecticut.

We had reached the end of the driveway when my dad stopped the car. “Isn’t that your friend Henry?” he asked.

I looked up, alarmed, and saw Henry biking up the street, his hair askew, looking out of breath, heading toward our house. “No,” I said, looking away from where Henry was approaching, and at my dad. “We should just go.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “We can wait a moment if you want to talk to him.”

“I don’t,” I said as firmly as I could. “Seriously, we should go.”

“Okay,” my dad said in an
if-you-say-so
kind of a voice. He turned down the street, and we passed right by Henry as we went. I met his eye for just a moment—and saw how confused and unhappy he looked—before looking away, facing forward, and pretending I hadn’t seen anything at all.

The Beginning of a
Beautiful Friendship

chapter twenty-four

“J
ERKFACE
.” I
THREW DOWN MY CARDS ONTO THE COUNTER
.

“Jerkface.” Lucy followed suit immediately, causing Elliot to look at us over the top of his remaining cards and sigh.

“Seriously?” he asked, as Lucy nodded, fanning her cards for him.

“Read ’em and weep,” she said in triumph.

“I think it’s the name,” Elliot grumbled as he scooped up the cards and started shuffling them. “I can’t get used to it.”

We were technically playing Asshole, but after Elliot had yelled it a little too loudly in triumph, just as a mother was approaching with her toddlers, we had figured that it might be time to institute some precautionary measures. Lucy was sitting cross-legged on the counter, I had pulled up a high stool, and Elliot was standing, so that he could pace while he considered his strategy.

“Another round?” he asked, clearly hoping that we’d forgotten the stakes of the game.

“Not a chance,” Lucy said with a laugh. “Next three customers
are yours.” She hopped off the counter and crossed to the side door, holding it open for me.

“But what if there’s a customer who needs something complicated? Or grilled?” Elliot asked. “What then?”

“Then call for us,” I said, going to join Lucy by the door. “We’ll just be outside.”

Elliot shook his head, grumbling, as he continued to shuffle. Lucy stepped outside into the sunshine and I followed, letting the door bang shut behind me. Though he’d never said anything, I got the feeling that Elliot wasn’t thrilled that Lucy and I were friends again. Not that he was happier when it had been drama-and-tension-filled—he actually told us that he was glad, since before that, working with the two of us had been like being stuck in some terrible reality show in which the main characters, who hate each other, are nonetheless forced to interact. But in the days that followed, it became clear that Lucy and I finding our way back to friendship meant that neither of us was spending as much time hanging out with him.

It wasn’t like it had been a perfectly easy transition. For one thing, we were dealing with a five-year gap, and for both of us, a lot had happened in those five years. So even as we were having fun catching up, there were moments that illustrated just how vast the holes in my knowledge were—like when Lucy was talking about someone named Susannah, and I hadn’t realized that this was the
name of her stepmother. And she would occasionally say something, or make a reference to something that Elliot would immediately get, while I would be utterly in the dark. It was a strange combination of making a new friend while simultaneously getting to know an old one. But something had changed that night after she’d come to the slumber party. We had been able to let go of the past, the reasons why we’d stopped being friends, and I’d been reminded just how good a friend Lucy was. Not to mention how much fun we had when we were together. I’d forgotten that when you were around Lucy, there always seemed to be the possibility of something
happening
. She could somehow make going to the PocoMart to get snacks feel like an adventure. But we could also just gossip and talk for hours, the conversation rarely flagging.

We’d discovered that we both liked the grassy area with the picnic tables. It had a balance of sun and shade, and looked out at the water—but, most importantly, it provided an excellent view of the parking lot, which meant that we would be able to see Fred’s truck if he happened to drop by. He did this occasionally, and it always indicated the fish had refused to bite for him that day—meaning he would already be in a disgruntled mood and would probably not be too happy to see two of his employees lying out in the sun while on the clock.

We headed straight for what had quickly become our favorite spot. Elliot handling the next three customers could mean, in the
late-afternoon lull we were in, that it might be half an hour before we had to return to the snack bar. Lucy kicked off the flip-flops we weren’t technically supposed to be wearing in the kitchen and sank down cross-legged onto the grass. I followed, lying back on my elbows and turning my face up to the sun.

“So,” Lucy said, turning to look at me. “How’s everything going?” Since we’d been working together all day, I knew this wasn’t just an idle inquiry. It was her coded way of asking about my dad, which she did every few days, always careful not to press it if I didn’t want to talk. I hadn’t realized how much I would appreciate someone else knowing about him. It was so nice to just be able to shrug off the question, and to know that she would listen if I wanted to talk—which I hadn’t, really, yet. But the opportunity was there. Mostly, it was just a relief not to have to pretend, as I was still doing with almost everyone else, that things were still just fine.

“About the same,” I said, squinting out at the water. This was pretty much the truth. My father seemed to be doing basically the same. He was working on his case and on his project, which remained a secret despite Warren’s many attempts to crack the mystery. My dad seemed to have calmed down a little bit in terms of the mail order—we were no longer deluged with gourmet packages from around the world—but he was still trying to read as much and see as many movies as possible. Possibly as a result of this, he had started taking a nap every afternoon. He was also thinner than
ever, despite all the Belgian chocolates. We’d been to the diner for breakfast two more times but with each visit, he seemed to eat a little bit less of whatever he ordered. My mother had started trying to counterbalance this at dinner by simply serving him double the portion that the rest of us were eating, and then watching him like a hawk throughout the meal, so that she barely ate anything herself. At dinner two nights ago, my dad had only picked at his food, starting to wince whenever he took a bite, and he’d finally looked up at my mother and sighed.

“I’m sorry, Katie,” he said, as he moved his plate away. “I just don’t have any appetite.”

My mother had sent me for a vanilla milkshake from Jane’s for him, but by the time I’d come back with it, he’d already gone to bed. I’d ended up sitting on the back steps, drinking it myself as I looked out at the moonlight hitting the surface of the lake.

I kicked off my own flip-flops and stretched out my legs in front of me on the grass, hoping Lucy would understand that I wanted to change the subject. “So what’s up with Kevin?”

“Kyle,” Lucy corrected. “Kevin was last week.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, and I shook my head, smiling. Since her breakup with Stephen, Lucy had been dating her way through all of Lake Phoenix’s eligible—and not-so-eligible—guys. She seemed to still be completely unaware that Elliot was pining openly for her and messing up most customers’ orders as a result. And the one time I’d
tried to hint to her that there might be dating prospects with someone she already knew, someone she was friends with, she’d thought I was trying to set her up with Warren, and things had briefly gotten very uncomfortable.

“But you could have Kevin!” Lucy said, her face lighting up. “And then we could double. Perfection.”

“Luce,” I said, shaking my head, and Lucy sighed. Ever since she’d reentered the dating scene with a vengeance, she was always trying to get me to go out with her. But I had resisted every invitation, knowing full well the reason why.

“Is this because of Henry?” she asked, fixing me with her direct gaze.

“No,” I said, much too quickly for it to be the truth. Because it absolutely was. I hadn’t talked to him since we’d been on the dock together, but whenever I’d gone into Borrowed Thyme to pick something up, I’d been disappointed when it wasn’t him behind the counter. I’d seen him a few times at a distance, in his kayak on the lake, silhouetted against the sun.

“You need to do something about that,” Lucy said as she lay back down on the ground and closed her eyes. “Either become friends with him again, or tell him how you feel and get it over with.” Before I could respond, Lucy’s phone beeped with a text, and she grinned as she sat up. “Bet you it’s Kyle,” she said, drawing out the syllables of his name. But her face fell as she read the text. “It’s
just Elliot,” she said, dropping her phone back on the grass again. “He says he needs you to come back.” Since I’d started to have more of a social life, I’d begun carrying my phone again, but Elliot would always call Lucy’s phone, even when the message was for me.

“Fine.” I sighed, but I was already standing up and sliding my feet into my flip-flops. I was actually grateful to have some time to think about what Lucy had said. I wasn’t going to ask Henry out—he had a girlfriend with annoyingly perfect hair—but maybe we could be friends again. Did I really have anything to lose?

“Don’t let him trick you into staying,” Lucy said as I started toward the snack bar. “We still need to talk about the Kyle situation.”

I nodded as I headed to the employee entrance. I had a feeling that Elliot might actually need my help, because if he just wanted one of us to keep him company, he would have asked for Lucy. “What is it?” I asked, as I came in through the side door, going temporarily blind as my eyes adjusted to the darkness after the brightness of the day outside.

Elliot tipped his head toward the front window. “You were requested specifically,” he said. Gelsey and Nora stood in front of the window, my sister smiling, Nora looking impatient.

“Hey, you two,” I said, stepping up to the center of the counter. “What’s up?”

“Where were you?” Nora asked, folding her arms across her
chest. While she’d gotten slightly less grumpy recently, she certainly hadn’t become sunshine and light, by any stretch of the imagination.

“I was just taking a break,” I said, wondering why I was justifying myself to a twelve-year-old. “Do you guys want something?”

“Sprite,” they said in unison. “And barbeque chips,” Gelsey continued, “and frozen M&Ms.”

Nora peered into the darkness of the snack bar. “Is Lucy here?”

“She’s up on the grass,” I said, pointing. The girls’ adoration of Lucy had been cemented when, the day after the slumber party, they’d come to the beach and Lucy had taught them how to do round-offs.

Elliot filled the sodas and grabbed the snacks while I rang them up. I handed Gelsey back the change, and after a moment’s consideration, she magnanimously put a single quarter in the tip jar.