Second Chance Summer (36 page)

“You okay?” he asked, as I concentrated on getting a grip on the wooden planks, nailed into the tree trunk, that served as the ladder.

“Fine,” I said, reaching up for the next rung. Henry was already in the treehouse, looking down at me—he’d climbed up with no problem whatsoever. It wasn’t the kind of treehouse that you sometimes saw in catalogs, the ones that came with a kit and instructions and were meant to look like log cabins, or pirate ships, all right angles and smooth wood. It had been built by Henry’s dad, without any fancy blueprints, just to fit in the space between three supporting trees, which made it triangle-shaped. There was a roof, two walls and a floor, but nothing so fancy as a door. Instead, the front was just open, slightly overhanging the trunk that served as the ladder. It seemed fitting that we were there now, as the only times I could really remember being in the treehouse was when it had been raining. I wasn’t sure I’d actually ever seen it from the inside when it was sunny out.

“Need a hand?” Henry asked, and I nodded. I extended one upward, and he grasped it—his hands cool against mine—and gave me a pull, allowing me to throw a leg over onto the wooden planks
of the floor. I let go of Henry’s hand and pushed myself to my feet, starting to stand. “Careful,” he said. He pointed upward. “It’s a little low in here.”

I saw that I had been just about to whack my head on the roof. “Wow,” I murmured as I crouched down. When I’d been here last, I’d been able to stand up to my full height with no problem. The treehouse didn’t appear to have changed much. There was nothing inside it except a plastic pail in the corner that I saw was positioned under a leak; every few seconds there would be a muted
ping
sound as another drop fell in.

Henry was sitting at the front of the treehouse, his legs dangling in the air. He took off his baseball cap and ran his hands through his hair, brushing back that one lock that sometimes fell over his forehead. I crouch-walked over and sat down next to him, hugging my knees to my chest and rubbing my legs with my hands to try and warm them up a bit. If my sweatshirt had been bigger, I would have tucked them inside without a thought to how ridiculous I looked.

Now that we were under a little bit of shelter, I could see how gorgeous the woods were in the storm. Everything seemed greener than normal, and the sound of the rain was muted, making it seem much more peaceful than the deluge we’d been exposed to out on the road. It was still very windy, and I watched the trees around us as they bent and swayed in the wind. Mr. Crosby’s carpentry skills
seemed to be holding up, though, and the treehouse wasn’t moving or even feeling unsteady.

“Better?” Henry asked.

“Much,” I said. I leaned forward and glanced at Maryanne’s house. I could see it through the trees—though it was still dark, it was worryingly close. “Won’t Maryanne mind?”

Henry shook her head. “Nah,” he said. “I come here sometimes to think, and she doesn’t mind it.”

“Got it,” I said. We sat there in silence for a moment. The only sound was the rain falling all around us and the wind whipping through the trees. I glanced behind me to the treehouse again, still marveling at the fact that it looked the same—just a little shrunken. “I can’t remember the last time I was up here,” I said. “But it hasn’t changed much.”

“It would have been that last summer, right?” Henry asked, turning to me. “When we were twelve.”

I nodded, looking straight ahead at the branches that were swaying and dipping. “Probably.” And maybe it was the disorienting effect of being caught in a rainstorm, or the conversation I’d just had with Lucy, but before I could consider what I was saying, I asked, “Do you ever think about that summer? I mean, when we were…” I paused, hesitating over the right word.

“When we were going out,” Henry finished for me. I looked at him and saw that he was still looking at me. “Of course.”

“Me too,” I said. I wasn’t quite brave enough to tell him what I’d realized at Gelsey’s slumber party—how much it had impacted me, our first attempt at something like love. It was the only time, I supposed, when you could go into something totally fresh, with no baggage, no idea of how you could get hurt and hurt others in return.

“I mean,” Henry said, “you were my first girlfriend, after all.”

I felt myself smiling at that. “And there have been lots of others, I take it, in the interim?”

“Scads,” Henry said, straight-faced, making me laugh. “Just dozens and dozens.”

“Same here,” I said, deadpan, hoping he knew that I was joking. Because other than my cheating ex, Evan, and two very short-lived relationships sophomore year, there was nobody of significance to tell him about.

“You know,” Henry added after a moment, “I really liked you back then.”

I took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have done that to you,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left like that. And I’m really, really sorry.”

He nodded. “I just didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know if I’d done something….”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It was all me. I just… tend to run away when things get to be too much.” I shrugged. “I’m working on it.”

“I couldn’t believe it when you showed up on the dock,” he said with a laugh. “I thought I was hallucinating for a minute.”

“Me too,” I confessed. “I thought you’d never speak to me again.”

“I tried,” he reminded me, and I smiled at that. “But seriously,” he said, looking right at me, his tone a little more measured, “you’re a hard habit to break.”

I looked into his eyes and could feel my heart begin to pound a bit faster. The air around us suddenly seemed charged, and it felt like we were standing at a crossroads—that things could go either way from here, but there was a decision that had to be made.

Slowly, inch by inch, Henry moved closer to me. He reached down and touched my hand with his, making me shiver, even though I was no longer cold. He picked up my hand and looked into my eyes, as if making sure this was okay. It more than was, and I hoped he could see that in my expression. He leaned a little closer to me and tipped back my hood and I didn’t even care what my hair looked like. He placed one hand on my cheek, stroking it with his thumb as I shivered again. And then he leaned toward me and I could feel my heart beat hard, and we were so close, just a breath apart. I closed my eyes and, as the rain and wind whipped all around us, he kissed me.

It was soft at first; his lips touching mine lightly. Then he pulled back and cupped my cheek under his hand and kissed me again.

This time it wasn’t so tentative, and I kissed him back, and it was a kiss that was both familiar and brand-new, making me remember a kiss from five years ago, and making me feel like I’d never been kissed before in my life. And I realized that maybe Lucy
was wrong—maybe sometimes there was such a thing as a perfect moment. His arms were around my back, pulling me closer, and I looped my arms around his neck and ran my hands over his jawline, suddenly not able to stop touching him. And while we kissed, up there among the trees, the rain tapered off until, at long last, the sun came out.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

chapter thirty

“T
AYLOR
!” I
OPENED MY EYES AND SAW
L
UCY, LYING ON MY DOCK IN
her bikini, waving at me. “Hello?”

“Sorry,” I said, sitting up and trying to remember what Lucy had been talking about. I had not been paying attention in the least. “What was that?”

“Let me guess,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You didn’t hear what I was saying.”

I smiled involuntarily, causing Lucy to groan. “Oh, my God,” she said. “It’s so hard to have a conversation with you when you keep slipping into makeout flashbacks.”

I thought about denying it, but I had a feeling it would be pretty useless. I pulled my sunglasses down to cover my eyes and lay back down on my striped towel, stretching out in the late-afternoon sun.

It was almost July, a little over a week after Henry and I had kissed in the treehouse. And Lucy wasn’t entirely wrong to complain. In fact, she’d been right on the money—while she’d been talking, my mind had been drifting to the night before, when Henry
and I, once we had been sure our respective families were asleep, had made out on this very dock, stretching out on a blanket under the stars. At one point, we’d paused to catch our breath, and I’d looked up at the sky as I rested my head on his chest, feeling his breath rise and fall. “Do you know any constellations?” I asked, and I’d felt his laugh rumbling in his chest before I heard it.

“No,” he’d said, and even without looking, I could hear the smile in his voice. “Want me to learn some?”

“No,” I said, my eyes still on the stars above us. “I was just wondering.” He’d smoothed his hand over my hair, and I’d closed my eyes for just a moment, still a little amazed that this had happened, that we’d somehow ended up here.

In the short time we’d been together, I knew that this was like none of my other relationships. And it was also not like we’d been before, when we were so young and inexperienced. It was like all the obstacles that had made my other relationships so complicated—gossip, drama at school—were just removed. He lived next door, my parents liked him, and we had no schedules or responsibilities beyond our not-very-taxing jobs. And unlike Warren’s fledgling relationship with Wendy, being with Henry wasn’t causing me a lot of stress.

Not that Warren wasn’t happy—in fact, he had developed an annoying humming habit, and he did it constantly, even in the shower—but he was still spending far too much time before every
date picking out which shirt to wear, and then afterward, wanting to go over everything she’d said, as though looking for hidden clues or meanings. Warren and I would often end up returning home around the same time, and so we would sit outside, usually on the porch steps, and I listened as he dissected and analyzed his evening for me. But unlike Warren’s relationship, I was finding that being with Henry again was surprisingly relaxing. It was like I could just be myself when I was with him. After all, he already knew my flaws, especially the biggest one of all. And this meant that in quiet moments, lying with my head on his chest, I could close my eyes and just breathe, reveling in the peace.

But it wasn’t
all
quiet and peaceful. There was a spark between us that I’d never felt with any of the other (four) guys that I’d kissed. When we were making out, it was almost impossible for me to keep my hands off of him, and kissing him could stop time and cause me to forget where I was. Just thinking about kissing him made my stomach flip over, and I had burned several batches of fries at work as I stared into space, going over in my head the events of the night before—his fingers, tracing a line down my neck, the spot he’d found just underneath my earlobe that I hadn’t ever considered before, but that now could make my knees weak. The way I would run my hands through his hair, always pushing back that one errant lock as we kissed, the softness of his cheek against mine, the warmth of the back of his neck where he was always faintly sunburned.

But now, I attempted to pull myself away from all such thoughts and focus on Lucy. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Really. What’s up?”

She frowned at me for a moment before pulling out her phone. “Okay,” she said. “For the second time.” She raised an eyebrow at me and I tried to look properly contrite. “It’s Brett. He keeps texting me, saying he wants to keep in touch, maybe do the long-distance thing, which is crazy, because we went on, like, three dates.”

“Well,” I said slowly. “Maybe you should just keep your options open for now. It’s not like Brett’s even here. And maybe there’s someone around here you haven’t even thought of.”

“If there was someone around here, I’d have noticed,” Lucy grumbled. I opened my mouth to say something—maybe plead Elliot’s case once again—when she glanced back to the house and smiled, shaking her head. “Look who’s here.”

I turned and saw Henry walking down from his house, wearing his Borrowed Thyme T-shirt, raising a hand in a wave. I felt myself smile, wide, just at seeing him.

“Oh, my God,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes at my expression. “I’m going to take that as my cue to go.”

“No, stay,” I said, but even I could hear how halfhearted this sounded, and she laughed.

“Nice try,” she said. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“See you tomorrow?” I asked.

“Definitely,” she said. She stood and pulled a pair of shorts
and a tank top over her bikini, stuffing her towel and the magazines we’d been paging through into her canvas bag just as Henry arrived on the dock. “Hey,” she said, walking past him and giving him a good-natured shove. I had been worried, probably more than I would have admitted, about seeing them together after learning that they’d dated. But watching them interact for a few minutes had been enough to make me see that there was nothing between them. More than anything else, they seemed to behave like brother and sister now.

“Oh, are you leaving?” Henry asked her, and even though he was clearly trying to sound disappointed, I could tell what Lucy meant—Henry was also a terrible liar. Lucy just shook her head and waved good-bye.