Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (43 page)

“Jerry is amazing with Lanessa,” she said to Diver. “It’s too bad, really. He’s due to be released in a couple of weeks. We don’t want to keep the dolphins prisoner, so we let them go after a while.”

Diver nodded. “Yeah, but he doesn’t want to go yet. He wants to make sure Lanessa is okay.”

Oka-a-a-a-y, Diana thought, glancing at Diver to see if he was joking. “What makes you think he wants to stay on?”

Diver shrugged. Then he smiled ruefully. “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. Summer’s not totally sure I’m not crazy, and that Marquez girl, she
is
sure. That I’m crazy.”

“I won’t think you’re crazy,” Diana said.

“Well…Jerry told me.”

Deep breath. “Jerry
told
you?”

“Yes, he wants to make sure Lanessa is okay, but then he does have to go. He has things he wants to do.”

“What does he want to do?” Diana asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

Diver looked at her solemnly. “He wants to mate. You know, if he can meet the right female.”

Diana giggled, then stopped herself. “Sometimes I can’t always tell when you’re kidding,” she said.

Diver just looked at her. If he was kidding, he was keeping a very straight face.

“Just out of curiosity,” Diana said, “what did you tell Lanessa that got her into the pool?”

Now Diver looked uncomfortable. He stared out of the window, seemingly absorbed by the sight of a beautiful gold and blue windsurfer scooting beneath the causeway.

“What is it, a secret?” Diana asked. “One minute she didn’t want to play, the next minute she did. It would be nice to know what you told her. Did you tell her not to be afraid of Jerry? What?”

“She’s not afraid of Jerry,” Diver said. “She was afraid of you.”

Diana stared, dumbstruck. Then she was angry. “Afraid of
me
? What do you mean? She loves me.”

“She does. But sometimes you scare her. She can tell when you’re angry, even deep down. I don’t know what happened to her,” he said grimly, “but she knows all about anger. She can feel it, like knowing when a storm is coming. She learned to sense it.”

“I am not angry,” Diana said angrily. “At least, I wasn’t then.”

Diver shrugged. “I guess she thought you were. Deep down, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, right,” Diana snapped. “So what did you tell her? What did you whisper in her ear?”

“I told her not to be afraid, because you were hurt too, just like her.”

Diana felt her stomach lurch. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring her vision. That was the look Lanessa had given her. Pity. Shared sadness.

“Oh, God,” Diana said, brushing furiously at her tears. “Don’t ever…That’s not right. I don’t deserve…” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Diver, I’ve read that girl’s file. Whatever I’ve gone through is nothing. It’s nothing. Not compared to her. Besides, look, I’ve hit back. I’ve gotten revenge, and that has…has cured me, made me strong again.”

They had arrived back on the key. Diana pulled the car to a stop in the marina parking lot.

“Lanessa can’t get revenge,” Diver said. “So how will she get strong again?”

“I don’t know,” Diana admitted. Then she put her hand on Diver’s arm. She and Lanessa weren’t the only ones with secrets. “Did you, Diver? Did you ever get revenge?”

“No,” he said simply.

He got out of the car, but then leaned down to look in the window. “By the way, Jerry says you’re the most beautiful human female he’s ever seen. He thinks it doesn’t matter if you disturb my
wa.
He says it’s worth it.”

“
Jerry
said that?”

Diver smiled. “Okay, maybe I made up that part.”

Summer’s day with Sean Valletti turned out not to be entirely innocent.

They drove to Key West, listening to loud music on the way. This was the most innocent part of the day, since conversation was pretty much impossible as long as Sean had the stereo cranked.

But when they reached Key West and got out to wander the streets in a search for the perfect birthday gift for Mrs. Valletti, conversation became almost unavoidable.

“What kind of things does she like?” Summer asked. She had stashed her uniform back on the Jet Ski and had borrowed a T-shirt from Sean to go over her bathing suit. It turned out to be one of his football jerseys. She was walking around with
Valletti
on her back, above the number twenty-two.

“She likes the usual kind of stuff, I guess,” he answered, sounding puzzled by the question. “You know, mom stuff.”

“Does she have any hobbies or anything? Does she like to cook? Does she garden? Does she read books?”

He shrugged. “How about some kind of clothing?

“Do you know what size she is?” Summer asked.

“About like this.” He held his hand up beside Summer, indicating his mother’s height. “Somewhere around there.”

They shopped without much direction, wandering from shop to shop as Summer became increasingly desperate to get some clue as to what would make Mrs. Valletti happy. The wrong choice could make Summer a laughingstock. She could become the girl who had bought a pair of sandals for Mrs. Valletti, only to discover that she was an amputee.

It wouldn’t be
that
bad, she reassured herself. Surely Sean would mention it if his mother was missing a leg.

But just as bad, from Summer’s point of view, was the way Sean insisted on touching her—a little pressure in the small of her back when she went in front of him through a door, a little shoulder-to-shoulder hug, a chin chuck when she said something dumb about football. All of this while she was walking around wearing his shirt, his number and name plastered on her as if she were his private property.

They stopped for lunch at a waterfront restaurant where they ordered fried conch and grouper fingers and ate them on paper plates out in the sun. It could not have been a more conspicuous place.

“How’s yours?” he asked.

“Good,” she said, her mouth full of food. She was trying to keep her face lowered, avoiding eye contact with passersby while at the same time trying to check each face.

“I like you,” Sean said suddenly. “You’re different.”

“I am?” Summer said, hating herself for the giddy little-girl tone that crept into her voice.

“Yeah. I mean, you’re, like, normal and all.”

Summer felt a little deflated.

“What I mean is, you’re easy to hang out with,” he clarified. “You know, like I don’t have to be…whatever. There’s all this pressure sometimes. Being the big football player and driving a cool car and so on. Girls always expect so much out of me.”

“I guess that would be true,” Summer said.

“Totally. I mean, Liz? Liz Block? She told me she was surprised when I didn’t try to do her on the first date. Like she just assumed I was this animal.”

Summer choked violently on a piece of fried grouper. She ran to a nearby trash can and hacked it up with a seriously disgusting noise. When she returned to the table, between the gagging and the humiliation, she could tell her face was a brilliant shade of red.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No prob,” he said. “You didn’t get anything on my shirt, right?”

Summer checked. “No, I don’t think so.”

“It would be okay even if you did,” Sean said generously. “I’ve had blood all over it, anyway. Football gets kind of violent.”

Summer tried out a nonchalant smile. Nonchalant, as if she weren’t replaying every second of her gagging-and-choking routine. As if she weren’t replaying what Sean had said that had led to her gagging and choking. She had the definite feeling that she was out of her usual milieu, that Sean Valletti, while he might be no older than she, was moving in a completely different circle.

“See? That’s what I mean by your being cool,” Sean said. “You didn’t get all grossed out when I was talking about blood.”

“I guess we’re even, then,” Summer said. “You didn’t get all grossed out when I blew fish out of my nose.”

He stared at her, and the furious blush that had just begun to recede came back like a flood tide.

Blew fish out of my nose? Blew
fish
out of my
nose?

Then he smiled. “Yep, I like you. I can’t wait till we get back to school in the fall. It’ll be like, ‘What? You’re going with Summer Smith?’ And then you’ll come in, only you’ll look totally different. You know, the way you look now.”

This was confusing. He liked the way she looked now. But he didn’t like the way she usually looked. Not that she cared, she reminded herself, suddenly remembering with a flash of intense guilt that the only guy whose opinion she cared about was Seth.

“Do I look different than I usually do?” Well, it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“Duh,” he said. “Back home you’re always wearing all these big, floppy things, and scarves and coats and all, and glasses.”

“I don’t wear glasses,” she said.

“Really? Huh. I thought you wore glasses.”

“No.”

“Anyway, you just need to dress more like this,” he said.

“I can’t exactly wear a bathing suit and a football jersey to class,” Summer pointed out.

Sean smiled. “It would be kind of cold. All I know is, I saw you here, and you were this totally different girl. You’re all tan and you look really hot. You don’t mind if I say that, do you? I mean, about looking hot. Because you do.”

“Thanks. Probably deep down inside I’m still the same humble, average girl, though,” she said, with the first sarcasm she had shown toward him. He did not notice.

Sean laughed. “Who cares? You and I will be the coolest-looking couple at this big party, this Bachelorama.”

“The Bacchanal.” Okay, so Diana was right. He was not a genius.

“Bacchanal. Party. Whatever, right?”

Summer tapped her foot against her chair distractedly. “Actually, Sean, I’m not sure about that. I—I kind of already told this other guy I’d go with him.”

Sean didn’t try to hide his surprise. “What guy?”

“This guy I met down here,” Summer said, gazing at her plate of fish.

“Can you call it off?” Sean asked. It sounded more like an order than a question. “I mean, seriously. What’s the point of a little summer fling, when you and I have something that could last?”

Summer couldn’t even respond. Sean didn’t strike her as the most astute guy in the world, but it was almost as if he’d read her mind.

He reached across the table and took her hand. “Please? This whole summer has changed for me since I found you—”

He pulled her around the table and onto his lap. Summer resisted, but not with any sincerity.

He kissed her.

He was not a bad kisser.

“Because I feel like a total creep. I feel like something that would get stuck on the bottom of your shoe if you walked through a gas station bathroom. I feel like a criminal. Like someone should track me down and arrest me and throw me into jail and beat me with sticks.” Summer made a face that expressed total self-loathing, absolute disgust with herself.

Diana just grinned. “Arrest you? Who would that be? The Love Police?” She laughed her dry, not-quite-sincere laugh.

“It isn’t funny.” Summer threw herself on Diana’s bed and curled up in a ball. “I have to hide somewhere. I can’t let Seth find me yet. I would just blurt out everything. I can’t believe I let him kiss me. I am such scum.”

“Ah, self-loathing,” Diana said brightly. “You’ve come to the right place. I know all about feeling like scum. But you chose the wrong place to hide out. I mean, there’s still one TV truck camped out in the driveway.”

“I thought there were six,” Summer said.

Diana shrugged. “I guess the others went off after some other story. I heard some supermodel freaked out and shot her husband. Anyway, I guess that’s a bigger deal than poor little Ross Merrick, who couldn’t quite…anyway.”

The phone rang. Summer jumped.

“If that’s Seth, I’m not here!”

Diana picked it up, listened, arched an eyebrow. “Diana. Who else would it be?” She listened some more. “Yeah, Summer is here…. Uh-huh. Yeah, she’s all upset because she let that guy with the hairy chest kiss her.”

Summer leaped up off the bed and menaced Diana with her fist. “If that’s Seth…”

“Relax. It’s Marquez.” Into the phone she said, “Come on over, then. Just tell the TV guy you’re our maid.”

Marquez arrived twenty minutes later, looking disgruntled and cranky. Once again Summer wondered if Diana and Marquez had somehow switched personalities.

“The TV guy isn’t there anymore,” Marquez told Diana.

“No one?” Diana seemed surprised.

“He was driving off just as I came up,” Marquez said, “tearing out of here so fast I thought maybe he found out about, you know, how you feed on human souls.”

“Maybe he just got a look at that blouse,” Diana said, sneering at Marquez’s outfit.

“So,” Marquez said to Summer. “Tonsil hockey with the big dumb guy from Bonzoburg.”

“Bloomington,” Summer corrected automatically. “And it was mostly him doing it.”

Marquez winked at Diana. “Mostly,” she repeated.

“I just keep thinking, what if Seth had walked by right then?” Summer said.

“Yes, that would have been bad,” Marquez agreed. “Although maybe it would do him good. You know, guys get so arrogant when they think you like them. It never hurts to put them in their place a little.”

“I don’t
want
to put Seth in his place,” Summer wailed.

“So then what’s the deal?” Diana asked. “Why are you going out with Sean and
mostly
letting him kiss you?”

Summer shrugged. “You guys wouldn’t understand.”

Marquez clapped her hands together briskly. “Yeah, you’re right. So now what should we talk about?”

Summer ignored her. “Look, Sean Valletti is
the
cool guy at our school.”

“It’s a sad little school, isn’t it?” Marquez said.

“You don’t think he’s cute?” Summer demanded.

“Cute? Sure, he’s cute,” Marquez said. “Big deal. Cute is fine. But look, even I don’t think cute is everything. I mean, if cute was all anyone cared about, we’d all three be going after Diver, since he is undeniably the cutest guy on planet earth.” She paused and in a deeper voice added, “Totally cute.” Then, as if snapping out of a momentary trance, “But look, as cute as he is, there was nothing there. You know.”

“Just because when
you
kissed him he ran screaming for the nearest exit,” Diana said.

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” Marquez said sharply. “Although…close enough,” she admitted.

Diana just smiled, a smug, faraway expression that intrigued Summer.

“My point is,” Marquez continued, “that just being cute or popular is not everything. And I’m shocked that you, Summer, of all people, would be affected by such superficial considerations.”

Diana agreed. “Yes, I always thought of you as deep and sort of moral, you know?”

Marquez put her arm around Diana’s shoulders, and the two of them slowly shook their heads at Summer. “Your mother and I are very disappointed in you, Summer,” Marquez said solemnly.

“Yeah, right,” Summer said. “You can’t say anything, Marquez. You’re the one who taught me that relationships shouldn’t mess up your life. That’s why you were chasing Diver, because you kept saying how nice and low-stress it would be, no heavy emotional stuff like with J.T. Plus you were the one telling me about the end of summer, how Seth would go off one way and I’d go off the other, and I’d be devastated.”

“You took romantic advice from Marquez?” Diana asked, rolling her eyes.

Marquez winced. “Look, forget all that. Okay? Do you like this Sean guy?”

Summer sighed. “Actually, it was kind of a surprise. He’s this major cute guy, and every girl is all hot for him. But it turns out he’s kind of a jerk.”

“Kind of a jerk?” Diana said.

“Kind of a jerk in the way that Bloomington is kind of cold in January,” Summer clarified.

“And how do you feel about Seth?” Marquez asked.

“I’m totally in love. Like I get these warm flashes every time I think about kissing him. Like when I think about
not
seeing him, I feel sick to my stomach.”

Marquez actually smiled. “Well, then, duh. Even you can figure this out.”

“But summer’s going to end. How can I stay with him when I know that it’s going to be really painful?”

“I guess if you love someone that much, you have to accept the fact that it can end up being painful,” Marquez said solemnly.