Where the Stars Still Shine (11 page)

“Now?”

“Why not?”

“What if Greg finds out?”

“He’s asleep and we’ll be quiet.”

Now that I’m thinking about ice cream, I can’t unthink it. “Let’s go.”

Alex uses the bathroom to clean up while I put on my clothes. When we’re dressed, we sneak out of the trailer and hug the dark perimeter of the yard, crouching like spies—and trying not to laugh—until we’re away from the house.

“My truck is up on Grand,” he says. “I parked up there earlier, then doubled back on foot.”

“Resourceful.”

“I have my moments.”

We reach the truck and he drives down Pinellas to the Sparta gas station. Alex goes inside first and leads me to a low white freezer chest filled with ice-cream treats, like Klondike bars, ice-cream sandwiches, and rocket pops.

My favorite is the ice-cream sandwich. Mom and I get them sometimes as a special treat, and she was the one who taught me that the best way to eat them is to lick away the ice cream until it’s only a thin layer inside the chocolate sandwich.

“What are you going to have?” Cold air blasts out as
Alex opens the door and selects a Drumstick ice-cream cone. My hand reaches for the ice-cream sandwich, but it occurs to me that I don’t have to choose it because Mom and I always do. I can get whatever I want. Instead I take a Drumstick.

We get to the checkout counter when I change my mind. “Wait.”

I go back for the ice-cream sandwich.

As we sit on the dropped tailgate of Alex’s truck under a streetlight in the gas-station parking lot, he licks the peanut bits off his Drumstick, oblivious to the inner turmoil I’m suffering over ice cream. And now that the frozen sandwich is in my hand, paid for and unwrapped, I don’t want it. Tears prickle my eyes, and I hate that I’m making something as simple as choosing ice cream more complicated than it needs to be. And I hate that I seem to cry all the time. I’m so tired of crying.

“I’ll be right back.” I hop down from the tailgate, go inside the store, and buy a Drumstick. I throw the ice-cream sandwich away.

Alex doesn’t comment on my weird ice-cream-buying habit as I hoist myself onto the tailgate. “Ready for your sponge identification lesson?”

“Really?”

He leans back and slides a blue milk crate toward us. Inside are sponges.

“This one is the easiest,” he says, pulling out one with a stem and about a dozen long knobby-knuckled fingers. “It’s the finger sponge. It’s not used for anything except decoration, and tourists love it.”

The next one resembles a bowl, with a hollowed-out center and a flat bottom.

“Grass sponge,” he says. “The small sizes are used for painting and, I guess, for putting on makeup, but the pot-shaped ones are really popular in the store. People put plants in them.”

He drops it into the crate and draws out another. “Wire sponges are mostly used for insulation, so you don’t really have to think about this one because we sell these to industrial customers.”

He tosses that one over his shoulder and brings out two more that look similar to each other.

“Wool and yellow sponges are fairly interchangeable, but the wool is softer. Wool sponges are for personal stuff, like taking a bath or shower, and yellow sponges are the household ones for washing dishes or whatever. You can use grass sponges for all that stuff, too, but tourists want to think they’re getting something special so we make the distinction.”

“Finger, wool, grass, wire, and yellow,” I repeat.

“Yep.” Alex pops the last bit of Drumstick in his mouth and brushes his fingers on his jeans. “And if you
forget, wing it. Tourists are going to believe anything you say because you’re beautiful and you’re Greek. So you can tell them a grass sponge is a wool sponge and they won’t know the difference.”

He hands me the wool sponge. “For you.”

“I’ve smelled these things on your boat.” I crinkle my nose and hand it back. “I’m not sure I want that thing touching me in the shower.”

Alex laughs and swaps it for the finger sponge. He presents it to me like a bouquet of flowers, pulling it out from behind his back with a flourish. “Sponges are better than flowers,” he says, as if he’s read my mind, “because they’ll never die. They’re already dead.”

I take the sponge. It’s quite pretty, really—like a winter tree bowing to the breeze—and it’s the closest thing I’ve ever come to getting flowers from a boy. Or any gift at all. Still, I laugh it away, so he can’t see that it means something. “Thanks.”

“There’s more where that came from.” He gives me an exaggerated wink. “Of course, I’d have to dive down and harvest them, so—just hang on to that one, okay?”

“Is sponging really that bad?”

“Not really.” He leans on his hands and looks up at the sky. It’s kind of hard to see with the lights of the gas station, but the moon has expanded since the last time I paid attention to it and it’s peeking around the edge of
the Sparta sign. “I’ve always loved it. I mean, being underwater is—I don’t think I can even explain it in a way that will make sense. I’m a lot more comfortable in the water than I am on dry land. But my crewmate Jeff doesn’t dive. He handles everything on deck, which is cool, but I
never
have the option of not going down. I can’t be tired. I can’t be sick.”

“What if you
are
sick?”

“No sponges, no money,” he says, glancing at his watch, a wide brown strap lashed around his wrist. “So unless I can’t breathe, I go. And speaking of going … we should probably head home.”

I don’t want to go yet, but we’re well into tomorrow and I start work in only a handful of hours. “Yeah.”

Alex parks the truck down the street from Greg’s house and lets me out on the driver’s side so he won’t have to slam the passenger door. “I’d walk you home.” He keeps his voice low. “But under the circumstances—”

“It’s okay.” I nod. “Thanks for—”

He cuts me off with a kiss that makes my toes curl under and my heart feel as if it’s going to climb right out of my chest and throw itself at his feet. It’s an entirely new feeling.

“I, um—” he says, getting back into the truck. “See you later.”

I stand there for—I don’t know—maybe a minute,
wondering what is happening between Alex Kosta and me. Just when it feels as if this might be something more than nothing, he pulls away. He doesn’t make me feel as if I’m just another piece of ass, but maybe he’s just better at this game than Danny or Matt or—Adam. I remember now that the first guy’s name was Adam and he played guitar in a park, busking for change. He charmed me with a little song he made up on the spot with my name in it, and at thirteen I lost my virginity to him in his van.

It’s a distinct possibility that I am a terrible judge of character.

I sneak over the fence, being careful not to trample the flowers, and press myself into the shadows until I’m inside the Airstream. I place the finger sponge on the little shelf above my bed and crawl in, not bothering to even take off my clothes. Alex’s scent lingers on my pillow, and I fall asleep with the ghost of his fingers moving through my hair.

Eight o’clock arrives much too quickly. I jolt upright when my alarm goes off and squint at the numbers, convinced they must be wrong. But it is official—the four hours of sleep I’ve had are all I’m going to get. My insides vibrate with tiredness as I drag myself out of bed, gather my bathroom supplies, and go into the house.

Greg, Phoebe, and the boys have gone to the early service at the Greek Orthodox church, so the house is empty. On the drive to Tarpon Springs from the airport, Greg told me I was welcome to attend church with them, but I have no interest in God. Especially when it seems he’s never really had any interest in me.

When I’m washed, dried, dressed, and caffeinated, I walk down to the shop. As I pass Alex’s boat, I wonder
if he fell asleep thinking of me the way I thought of him. But mostly I wonder if he’s lucky enough to still be sleeping. The shop is already open when I get there and Theo is counting money into the cash register.

He looks up and smiles. “Hey, Callie, I’m Theo. Pick out a shirt.” He gestures at a tiered wooden display filled with T-shirts in a variety of colors and styles. All of them have
Tarpon Sponge Supply Co
. printed on them. “The first one is on me. If you want more, which you probably will, you’ll get the 50 percent employee discount. Same goes with jewelry. It’s always good if you wear stuff from here, because if the customers see how good it looks on you, they’ll want to buy it.”

“Okay.”

I choose a bright-turquoise T-shirt with a red scuba diver swimming across the front.

“Changing room’s behind that curtain.” He closes the cash drawer. “And when you’re done, I’ll show you around.”

It takes only about an hour to learn all the ins and outs of the shop. We sell T-shirts and sponges, along with hemp and leather jewelry, hippie-style dresses, sunglasses, and handmade goat-milk soaps. My job is to help customers find whatever they need and to ring them up after they’ve found it. I also sell tickets for the sponge-diving tour boat docked beside the building.
Simple stuff. Theo tells me that if I do a good job, he’ll let me open and close the shop and make the bank deposits. Those sound like extra responsibilities rather than rewards, but I don’t point that out.

“Do you know anything about web design?” he asks.

“No.”

He drops a book about designing websites on the counter beside me. “I’ll pay you extra if you can figure out how to get our website up and running.”

I have no idea how I’m going to accomplish this, but extra money is extra money. “Okay.”

“When Kat gets here, I want the two of you to go out on the eleven o’clock boat,” he says. “I don’t expect you to be an expert on sponges and sponge diving, but it doesn’t hurt to have a working knowledge for when customers ask questions.”

A couple enter the store with their preteen daughter in tow.

“Hey, folks,” Theo greets, stepping out from behind the counter. “How are you today?” He’s so at ease with strangers. I hope he doesn’t expect me to be able to do that.

From my post at the cash register, I watch the mother wander slowly along the baskets of sponges, pausing occasionally to pick one up and squeeze it. The daughter makes a beeline to the T-shirts and unfolds six different
styles before deciding she doesn’t want any of them. Leaving the shirts in a jumbled pile, she heads for the spinning rack of jewelry. Her hand freezes on the display and her mouth drops open, her eyes pointed at the open doorway.

I turn my head to see what she sees.

Alex stands in the opening looking as if he’s just stepped off the boat from Greece. He wears an ethnic-looking tunic-style shirt with an intricate flower design embroidered along the neck and a pair of loose-fitting white pants, and his curls are perfectly messy. On anyone else this look would be trying too hard, a silly costume, but on him—I have to check my own mouth to make sure it’s closed. He casts his beautiful smile at the girl, who goes as pink as her tank top.

“Here’s our diver now.” Theo drops an arm around Alex’s shoulders before he has a chance to smile at me. If he was going to smile at me at all. “Alexandros is second-generation Greek and has been sponging since he was twelve. He’ll be on the eleven o’clock tour boat. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, Callista”—Theo says my name with an accent that makes me seem more exotic than I am—“still has a few available.”

The couple debate quietly for a minute and then come up to the register to buy the tickets, while their daughter steals glances at Alex in the mirror as she
pretends to try on necklaces. Judging by her expression, I think we’re both disappointed when he walks out.

After the tourists are gone, Theo says he needs to run an errand.

“I won’t be long,” he says. “Think you can handle it?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“If you get robbed—”

“Really? What are the odds?”

He laughs. “Good point. Be back soon.”

I’m folding the mess the girl left behind on the T-shirt display when Alex returns. He comes up beside me. “Hey,” he says. “When will your grounding be over?”

“Next weekend, I think.”

“I was thinking—”

“Callie!” Kat blows into the store like a breeze and whisks me away from Alex as if he’s not even there, leaving me to wonder what he was going to say.
What was he thinking?

She’s wearing a simple navy-blue dress that skims her knees and is ultraconservative compared to the skinny jeans and short shorts she usually wears, and her makeup is lighter than normal, too.

“Ugh, I know,” she says, pulling me toward the dressing room. “My mom will not let me wear anything even remotely cute to church. Must. Change. Immediately.”

I glance over my shoulder at Alex, who gives me a two-fingered wave and leaves.

“What did he want?” Kat asks, from the other side of the closed curtain.

“Nothing,” I say. “He was just saying hi.”

She snorts, and I wonder if there is something in their common history that makes her hate him—beyond her perception that he’s a man whore, I mean. Why does she care? But I don’t ask. Not here.

Kat emerges a couple minutes later wearing a pale-yellow Tarpon Sponge Supply Co. T-shirt, denim shorts, and leather sandals. Her lips are slicked with her signature rosy gloss and her lashes spiked with mascara, making her the girl I recognize.

“Good shirt choice.” As she selects a shell necklace from the jewelry rack and fastens it around her neck, I notice she’s wearing a black cord around her wrist with an evil eye bead knotted in the middle. “That color looks amazing with your skin tone.”

“Where did you get that bracelet?”

“Oh, you can buy evil eye bracelets everywhere around here,” she says. “Mine was one of those stretchy, elastic kinds with beads all the way around, but I wore it so much the band disintegrated. I saved one of the beads and threaded it on a cord. If you want one, you can get one right across the street.”

I reach into my pocket and pull out my matching bead. “I’ve had it as long as I can remember, but I don’t know where it came from.”