Cinderella Steals Home (12 page)

"I guess not." I return his smile. "What are you guys doing?"
 

"Doan's dad has a boat," Justin says. "We thought we'd take it out on the lake. We usually do it every year."
 

My stomach tightens at the sound of Doan's name.

"Oh," I say, trying to casually brush the sweat on my palms off on my shorts.
 
"I think I'm good."
 

Justin just smiles at me. "Yeah, right. You're not sitting around at home with Dad and Tanya on the Fourth, Holls. I won't let you."
 

"Yeah, but I don't -- "

"No buts about it," he cuts in. "You have no good reason for not coming with us."
 

"Actually, I --"

"Nope. I don't care about whatever's going on with you and Doan. You're coming."
 

I feel my cheeks flush. "Nothing's going on with me and Doan," I protest.
 

"Good." Justin grins. "Then there's no reason you shouldn't want to come."

I let out a sigh. He's got me, and he knows it, and so do I.
 

"When do we leave?"
 

"Half an hour."
 

My eyes widen. "You think I can be ready that fast?"
 

Justin shrugs, a devilish gleam in his eye. "Remember you don't care about anyone that's going, right? You should be ready in five minutes."
 

I glare at him, don't say anything and hurry out of the room. I can hear him chuckling softly behind me as he puts the milk back in the fridge.
 

***
 

Justin stops his BMW in a sandy parking lot in front of a wide lake resting in the valley of several different mountains lining it on all sides. My jaw drops slightly at how beautiful the scene in front of me is; I've never seen anything like this.
 

The lake is huge, bigger than I remember it being the last time I came here when I was just a kid. Hundreds of tiny specks litter the water's surface -- islands. They're small, of course, even when you get close to them in a boat, but they're just big enough to pilot over to and lay out on.
 

And the way the sunlight reflects off the mountains, making them glow red even at mid-morning -- it's beautiful. Breathtaking, even.

Justin opens his car door and startles me out of my trance.
 

With one last longing look, I unbuckle my seatbelt and hop out of the car. I glance around subtly behind my sunglasses, looking for Doan.

I find him standing knee deep in the water, wiping at something on the side of the boat with a blue rag. I see him before he sees me, and I'm glad. It's like when you spot an enemy spider crawling across your bedroom ceiling late at night and you can't let it out of your sight because the very second you do, it disappears, and then you can't sleep, and it sneaks up and attacks when you least it expect it.
 

Yeah.

I'm not about to let Doan be that spider.
 

I stand here for a few seconds until Justin sneaks up behind me.

"Enjoying the view?" he asks, startling me from my thoughts.
 

I spin around, hand over my suddenly rapidly-beating heart. "Jesus, Justin, you scared me."
 

He grins devilishly at me. "You didn't answer my question."
 

I glare at him. "It's really pretty here," I say, raising my eyebrows as if I'm issuing some sort of challenge, and I think I might be.
 

But my brother only laughs. "Oh, Holls," he says. "And you think Doan's the crazy one."
 

I don't respond, and when I glance over to where I last saw Doan standing, I realize he's gone.
 

Just like the spider.

Great.
 

"Come on, give me a hand with this thing."
 

My brother points to the cooler he packed this morning before we left the house. I bend down to pick up one end and he grabs the other before walking backwards down toward the shoreline.
 

Meanwhile, I'm nervous the whole time because I can't keep an eye on Doan.
 

"Here's good," Justin says, and I release the end I'm holding. The cooler drops down onto the ground with a thud, kicking up a cloud of sand. He shoots me a dirty look because he hadn't let go of his side yet, but I barely notice.
 

My brother walks away to get more of the stuff he brought with us out of the car, and leaves me standing alone awkwardly near the boat. I look around, trying to find something to do so I don't look out of place, but there's nothing -- and no one -- I recognize.
 

"Let's get that on board."
 

I spin around, heart instantly in my throat. Sure enough, Doan's crept up behind me and I hadn't noticed him coming.
 

"What?" I say, stomach twisting just at the sight of him.
 

He lifts an eyebrow, then points down at the ground without taking his eyes off of me.
 

"The cooler," he says like my idiocy amuses him, and probably it does.
 
"We want that on the boat. Help me bring it on."
 

"Fine," I snap, my tone harsh mostly because I'm embarrassed. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm five."
 

He shakes his head but says nothing, and we both lean down to grab an end. I look at the boat floating easily in shallow waters and don't see any kind of ramp or dock to get on.
 

"How are we going to get this on there?" I ask.
 

"Boy you're on a roll today," he says, and I suppress the urge to let go of the cooler and give him a kick where it'll hurt. "See the boat? See the really shallow water? You walk through it. And there's a ladder on the other side."
 

I glare at him. "How am I supposed to know that?"
 

He laughs. "Don't be so testy, Holls. I'm just messing with you."
 

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't want to be messed with," I mutter under my breath. He isn't supposed to hear me, but he lets out a low chuckle anyway.
 

"And that's what makes it so much fun for me."
 

I shake my head. Every time he does something to make me think maybe he isn't the total asshole I pegged him for on day one, he does something else to bring me right back to my initial conclusion about him.
 

And it bugs me that I still can't let it go, let him go, that I can't tell him to piss off and let me forget him. He does just enough to keep me dying to know his story. Walking away is the right thing, the smart thing, and yet it's the only thing I can't figure out how to do.
 

And it's making me kind of crazy.
 

I'm wearing flip-flops and a sundress so wading through the shallow, wonderfully cool waters is no big deal. Doan glances back at me after we take a few steps in as if he expects me to protest or complain, but the water feels nice and refreshing lapping at the skin around my ankles hot from the sun.
 

"What, not too cold for you?"
 

I shake my head. "It's perfect."
 

"Surprising."
 

"Why?"
 

"I thought girls like you always squeal when you get in the water," he replies. "'It's too cold! It's too cold! I can't get in there!'"

"Don't go into acting," I tell him as I try not to laugh at his terrible impression of a girl. "Your falsetto isn't exactly impressive."
 

He wiggles his eyebrows at me, and it's like all the tension he caused me just minutes ago disappears. He has an uncanny way of doing that to me. It's that damn hook again.
 

And that makes me kind of crazy, too.
 

"If that's the least impressive thing about me, then I think I'm doing okay," he says, and that shuts me up pretty fast. I have no idea how to respond.
 

He leads me through the rest of the water and right around to the back side of the boat that wasn't visible from the shore, and sure enough, there's a ladder going straight down into the water.
 

"Pass me the cooler and climb up," he says, and I do. When I'm securely on deck, I turn around to take the cooler from him.
 

He's reaching over to me with it and I grab for it, but it must've gotten wet or I don't get a good enough grip because it slips out of my hands and tumbles down into the water. It floats there for a second or two, then sinks, but the water's so shallow that the top of the cooler doesn't submerge all the way.
 

Doan and I stare at it for a few beats, then look at each other before bursting out laughing.
 

"I don't even know why this is funny," he says, and I try to nod in-between heaves of my shoulders. "It really isn't."
 

He's holding onto the railing of the ladder for support with one hand and pressing his fingers into the corner of his eyes with the other to keep the tears from leaking out. I'm just standing on deck, my shoulders shaking, no sound coming out of my mouth.
 

When Doan gets a hold of himself, he looks at me. "Is that really how you laugh?" he asks. "Or were you just faking it?"
 

I try to pull myself together. "No," I say. "Usually when things are super funny to me, I laugh so hard that I don't make any noise. Like that."
 

He stares at me, the teasing glimmer suddenly fading from his eyes, and a strange, unreadable smile forming across his lips. I feel uncomfortable under the intensity of his gaze.
 

"That," he says simply, "might be the strangest thing I have ever heard."
 

There's no malice, no rudeness, in his voice, and I'm surprised, mostly because I agree with him.

"Yeah, it's pretty weird."
 

"But it's cute. Definitely cute."
 

Doan breaks our eye contact and reaches down into the water to pick up the cooler as my heart slams against my chest at those simple words. Damn him.
 

He passes the box to me a second time and I grip it harder now and manage to get it on board without meeting his eyes. I set it down just off to the side of the ladder and watch as he climbs aboard.
 

"We're just waiting on a few more people and then we can head out," he says. "I'll put this stuff in the fridge below deck. You can come see it if you want."
 

I don't say anything as I follow him down a narrow set of stairs and into a cramped kitchen. There's a single-burner stove, sink and microwave immediately to my left and a wide, tan leather wrap-around couch fills the rest of the small space.
 

"This is the galley," he says. He stops in front of a small mini fridge, the kind you expect to see in college dorm rooms, and kneels down, setting the cooler on the floor next to him. "Have a seat."
 

I wander -- okay, it takes me all of two steps -- over to the couch and sit on the section closest to the fridge. I watch as Doan carefully lifts the lid of the cooler to make sure lake water doesn't come sloshing out, but my eyes widen when I take in the rows and rows of beer cans inside.
 

I guess I'm not really sure what I expected when my 21-year-old brother asked me to hang out with him and his college friends on the Fourth of July, but somehow, drinking beer never crossed my mind.
 

I don't know why I thought Justin, of all people, would pack a cooler full of Diet Coke and Sprite to bring to Doan, of all people, but here we are.
 

When I look up at him, I see Doan staring back at me with an intense expression on his face, almost as if he'd known to watch for my reaction and didn't want to miss it.
 

I blink twice, trying to keep my face blank and relaxed.
 

Beer.
 

It isn't really a big deal at all -- even if I'm 18 years old and have still never taken a sip.
 

Plenty of people drink, and they do it all the time, and they turned out okay. But I still know it doesn't always happen that way. All of my friends back in Pennsylvania do it. I just -- I don't know. I guess I was always afraid that I'd be that person, the one who couldn't handle it, that something bad would happen to me the first time I drank. So I didn't.

But between my brother and Doan, I have a hard time imagining that I'll be able to avoid it here for long.

And I know Justin won't let anything terrible happen to me if I try.

"You good, Holls?"
 

I snap out of my thoughts and look at Doan, trying to paint a carefree smile on my face. "Fine. I'm fine."
 

He raises an eyebrow like he doesn't believe me, but says nothing as he starts placing beer cans inside the small fridge.
 

"So," he says, "I hope you have your bathing suit on under that dress."
 

I glance down at my outfit like I won't remember what I'm wearing if I don't look. "Of course I do. We're at the lake, aren't we?"
 

"Sure, but sometimes people forget," he says. "Or they want to stay on the boat. Which is lame."
 

"I've never been lame," I fire back.
 

"Okay, okay, you win," he says, holding up his hands in an 'I surrender' pose.
 

The cooler's empty now and Doan pushes himself to his feet and closes the door to the fridge.
 

"Let's get back on deck."
 

"Can you sleep on this boat?" I ask as we climb up the small staircase. I can't imagine that there's another space below deck than the one we're in now, and I don't see a bedroom anywhere.
 

"Yeah," he says. "The couch turns into a bed." He glances back at me over his shoulder. "Why? You interested in a slumber party?"