Thirty Sunsets (12 page)

My hands linger around his neck for a few moments, then slide downward and follow the curves of his biceps. His hands are pinned underneath me, but his torso pushes closer.

It’s the sound of a couple of kids chortling that makes my eyelids flutter open. The kids are standing a few feet away, pointing and snickering. They’re both boys, maybe twelve or thirteen. Our eyes meet, and I instinctively push Scott away.

“Noooooo … ” he beseeches.

But I push harder, our tangled limbs beginning to disassemble. I point to the boys, who blush and skitter away.

“We need more privacy,” Scott murmurs.

I push myself up on my elbows, then wipe sand from my arms.

“My aunt’s going out to dinner in a while,” Scott tells me, his eyes thick-lidded and his voice throaty. “I’ll tell her I need to stay behind to finish painting the bathroom. We’ll have the place to ourselves … at least for a couple of hours.”

Um … um …

“I don’t think so,” I say, rising to my feet, my toes wriggling in my squishy shoes.

“Aw, c’mon … ”

I wipe more sand off my body. “My family’s going through some … stuff,” I say. “Not tonight.”

“But soon?” he prods, studying my face for an answer.

I just stand there. I don’t know what to say.

Scott lowers his chin and looks up at me shyly. Then he winks, his deep-set eyes twinkly beneath a mop of sandy-blond hair.

“Yeah,” he says. “Soon.”

“Is it true?”

Dad looks up from his baseball game.

“Is it true that Mom is auditioning her church friends to adopt the baby?”

“
Forrest!
” Mom snaps, walking into the family room from the kitchen, a cheese grater in her hand.

“You had a family lined up for Brian’s baby? The only thing left to do was break the news to him and Liv? Is it even
possible
to be that controlling?”

Dad lowers the volume on the game and pats the sofa for me to sit down, but I don’t move.

I stare Mom down, expecting her to erupt in defiance. But instead, she stuns me by dissolving into tears.

Whoa. Mom
never
cries.

Dad walks over and hugs her loosely. “Can we dial it down?” he asks me.

“Sure,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. “Once you guys stop blindsiding me with a secret du jour, I’ll stop reacting with ‘What the hell.’”

But my petulance is half-hearted. I hate seeing Mom cry. (Have I ever actually
seen
Mom cry before?)

Dad nudges her toward the couch, and they both sit down. I sigh, then plop in the easy chair next to them. “How could you have imagined Brian would ever be willing to give up a baby for adoption?” I ask Mom.

Her hand fumbles by her mouth.

Dad squeezes Mom closer. “Your mother was just trying to help … to come up with some ideas, some options … ”

“Did Brian and Olivia ask for options?” I challenge.

“What do they know?” Mom asks through tears, her defiance roaring back. “They’re eighteen! They can’t know what it means to become parents!”

“No one can know until they do it,” Dad says, trying to sound conciliatory but inciting Mom even more.

“We don’t need platitudes, Michael! We need answers! We need a plan, a plan that will be in
everyone’s
best interests, including
my grandchild’s
!”

She crumbles into a fresh set of tears.

“But it’s not your decision to make,” I say quietly.

“Oh, thanks for the memo,” Mom says, surprising me again. Sarcasm is rarely in her repertoire.

“But you had some
couple
lined up,” I say, pitching forward.

“Oh, of course I didn’t,” Mom says dismissively, wiping her eyes. “It’s common knowledge that this lovely couple in church can’t have children and wants to adopt. I was just making mental notes. It’s not like I was hustling them to an attorney’s office in the dead of night.”

I almost laugh in spite of myself. “Well, Brian is major-league pissed,” I say instead.

“Oh, Forrest, you’re just
full
of breaking news today,” Mom says. Sarcasm again? I’m seeing whole new dimensions of my mother.

“Brian will be fine,” Dad assures us. “Our conversation was just a little more … indelicate than we would’ve liked.”

“I was plenty delicate,” Mom says, narrowing her eyes at him. “But what do
I
know? You two are obviously the experts on how to handle a family crisis.”

“Just for future reference,” I suggest, “let’s file this away as Exhibit A of how
not
to do it.” Dad chuckles, and a room full of tension suddenly seems to dissipate. Even Mom relaxes, leaning into his shoulder.

“You know, at work I get accolades all the time for my skills in crisis management,” Mom says, and Dad and I exchange glances.

“Leave this one off your résumé, honey,” he says, and we sputter with laughter. She picks up a throw pillow and bonks him over the head.

“Laugh all you want,” she says, but her voice is light. “The cold hard fact is that we’re
still
facing a world of problems. If you think Brian and Olivia are equipped at this point in their lives to go prancing merrily into some happily-ever-after future, then … ”

“I’ll babysit!” I say, raising my hand.

Mom rolls her eyes. “God help us all.”

“I met a guy on the beach.”

Shelley gasps on the other end of the phone, and I cringe. Did I really just say that? What am I, twelve?

“Tell, tell!” she trills, and I stretch my legs out from the cedar chair on the deck, crossing them at the ankles.

“He’s totally super cute,” I say in a Valley Girl impersonation, and Shelley squeals.

“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” she asks.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “We just ran into each other a couple of times on the beach, and earlier today, we … ”

“Eloped?” Shelley ventures.

“Yes, Shelley,” I deadpan. “We’re happily married now.”

“What’s his name?” she prods.

“Scott,” I answer, a goofy smile spreading across my face.

“Scottie the Hottie! What does he look like?”

“Blond hair, green eyes, bulging biceps … ”

She gasps. “I didn’t know what you were gonna say was bulging.”

I giggle. “He wanted me to hang out at his aunt’s house tonight while she was at a restaurant. We would’ve had the place all to ourselves.”

Pause.

“Okay, that’s not a great idea,” Shelley says, suddenly wary.

I narrow my eyes. “What? He just wanted to hang out.”

“Take it slow, Forrest,” she says. “He may have had something other than popcorn in mind.”

I tsk. “We just met. God. What do you take me for?”

“A girl with a tragic dearth of experience in this area,” Shelley says slowly.

“And you’re worldly all of a sudden?”

“Worldlier than
you
, if you think that all the average guy wants to do is snuggle on the couch. Is that a word? ‘Worldlier’?”

I’m feeling a little cornered all of a sudden. It was a big enough risk mentioning Scott in the first place without Shelley turning all schoolmarm on me.

“Invite him to have dinner with your family,” she says.

“And then maybe Dad can take us to a matinee?”

“I’m serious, Forrest. Freaky things can happen on the beach.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, I’m not twelve years old! Why did I even
tell
you this?”

“Because you like him,” Shelley answers evenly. “You’ve hardly ever liked a guy enough to mention him to me, so if you’re mentioning him, it’s a big deal. And since you blew off Dating 101 while normal people were flirting with guys with braces at middle school dances, well … you’ve skipped a few steps and you need to take it slow. That’s all I’m saying.”

I exhale through puffed-up cheeks. I shouldn’t have called. It was stupid to mention Scott (it was one friggin’ kiss, for crying out loud!) and I certainly can’t tell Shelley what’s going on with Brian, as much as I’m dying to, and since when did Shelley turn preachy? I really need to wrap this up.

“I better get going,” I tell her.

“Hey, is it true that Olivia is bulimic?”

I roll my eyes. “Gotta go. I promised Dad a game of Scrabble.”

“Now
that’s
more your speed,” she says, and though I know she’s being silly, the remark still stings.

I’ll
choose my speed from now on, thank you very much.

eighteen

“Ya okay?”

This is the first chance I’ve had to talk to Olivia alone since our shopping trip.

“Yeah,” she says from her bottom bunk. “I think Brian overreacted.”

“Right,” I say, staring at ceiling from my bed. “What’s the big deal about promising your baby to some nice couple from church?”

She giggles. “That’s what I mean. She never even
talked
to the couple from church. Brian didn’t exactly get the facts straight.”

I give a low whistle. “Mom’s gonna love you,” I say.

Pause.

“Not that it didn’t hurt,” Olivia concedes. “The fact that your mom thinks we would even
consider
giving our baby up for adoption … yeah, that hurt. But she’s had a lot to adjust to in the past few weeks.”

“Whatever. People get pregnant every day, you know. It’s not like she’s dealing with an alien invasion. She’s so naive. Mom has been way too sheltered all her life.”

Crickets are chirping outside our bedroom.

“Your mom’s a lot tougher than you think she is,” Olivia says.

I pause, then ask, “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she says quickly. “I’m just … getting the impression that your mom is a lot stronger than she seems.”

I knit my fingers together. “Today when I overheard Mom and Dad fighting … ”

“Yeah?”

“Mom was telling Dad he didn’t get a vote about the baby.”

Silence.

“What do you think she meant by that?” I ask.

More silence.

“And Dad said he didn’t appreciate being treated like an outsider,” I continue, not sure myself why I can’t quite shake these words from my head. “An outsider.”

Olivia says nothing.

“You know something I don’t,” I say, and even as I utter the words, I feel a strange sense of clarity. I’m just not sure what I’m clear about.

“What do you know?” I ask her, leaning up on an elbow.

“Nothing,” Olivia murmurs unconvincingly.

I inch myself to a sitting position. “You do. You know something I don’t.” Our ceiling fan oscillates lazily overhead. “What do you know?”

When Olivia doesn’t reply, I lean over my bunk and face her in the moonlight. “If you knew something, would you tell me?”

She swallows and averts her eyes. “Of course,” she finally says, then locks eyes with me again. “I’m the BFF who took you bikini shopping, remember? Hey, you’ve
got
to wear that pink bikini tomorrow. It’s supposed to be sunny all day.”

I gaze at her for a moment, then plop back onto my bed. “I saw him today.”

Olivia’s mattress squeaks as she shifts in her bed. “The guy you took the walk with a few nights ago?”

“Yeah … ” I finger a lock of hair. “We kinda … made out on the beach. Just for a couple of minutes.”

God. I
am
twelve.

“Is it the first time you’ve kissed a guy?” Olivia asks.

“Of course not,” I say, stunning myself by lying so effortlessly.

Olivia stands up and faces me. “I thought you said he blew you off when he was with his friends.”

I nod quickly. “I know it was totally jerky, but he
did
kinda explain it. He said he was … ”

“I don’t care what he said,” Olivia says disdainfully. “That’s not okay, Forrest.”

I shake my head. “No, really, it was just … it was just a misunderstanding. Then he spent the rest of the week painting his aunt’s bathroom—he’s staying at her beach house this summer—and … ”

“And you were making out?” Olivia prods.

“Just kissing.”

“How old is he?” Olivia persists.

I’m embarrassed that I don’t know, so here comes lie number two: “Seventeen.”

Olivia runs a hand through her hair. “He sounds like a player, Forrest.”