Only One (Reed Brothers) (3 page)

I just turn and stare out the open window.

“Are you going to talk to me at all on the ride?” she asks. But she doesn’t look upset. Just curious.

“Probably not.” I lean back heavily against the seat and slide my feet out of my sandals. I lift them to rest on the dash.

“Okay then,” she says. And then she turns the radio up as loud as it will go, until my feet are thumping and my ears vibrate.

I can’t help but wonder who will be at the beach when we get there. All the people I once knew? Amber? Rose? Nick? Oh, God. Nick. I wonder what he looks like now. I wonder if he’s even still there. I want to ask Patty all these questions, because she might know the answers, but I’d have to talk to her to do that.

Mom rests her left wrist on the steering wheel and shifts with her right hand. Once we hit the highway, we’re all breezy air and noise. And I’m fine with that because I don’t have to talk to her. I don’t even have to pretend that I like her.

###

I wake up with a jerk and a squeal of the brakes, and my eyes open. My skin is gritty, and I have never felt less like myself than I do at this moment. Where are we?

We’re in the driveway of the beach house. That much looks familiar. But I have to blink my eyes a few times before I remember how I came to be here.

“We’re here!” my mother sings. She shoves my shoulder. “Help me unload.”

It’s late. Almost midnight. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“Nope.” She doesn’t say any more than that. She just shoves my shoulder again and I get out. I start unloading suitcases and boxes of food and supplies.

The house looks different. I remember it as larger than life. But it’s not. It’s small and quaint. It’s all beachy, with fishing signs hanging in the carport and fishing nets decorating the space. None of us fish. I never did understand those being there.

The inside is just like I remember it, but smaller. It’s painted in yellows, blues, greens, and peachy colors. And the furniture is just as bright. I walk through and push open the sliding glass door. I step onto the deck and the ocean wind wraps around me, covering me in wet, cool, refreshing air.

I lift my face to the breeze and close my eyes, inhaling deeply. For a second, life is perfect. Then she steps outside with me, and it’s not.

I walk down the steps that lead to the ocean and let my feet sink into the sand. I hear the sliding glass doors close behind me with a slight bang. She’s gone back inside. Good. I walk down to the shore until the sand starts to suck at my feet.

This place used to be magical. But now it’s just that place that belongs to my mother.

The saltwater laps at my shins, tugging me in with its greedy grasp. Maybe if I just try to focus on the ocean, I can make this work. This trip doesn’t have to be about her. It can be a little about me, too, can’t it?

I turn and look back at the house. The light in the living room goes off. What? I start back in that direction and open the sliding glass door. My mom’s bedroom door is closed. She just went to bed?

“Good night, Patty,” I whisper, throwing up my hands.

I take a quick shower and go to my old room. The sheets are folded up on the bed, so I put them on it and then slide between them in a T-shirt and my underwear. I can’t believe she went to bed without a word to me. Then I remind myself that I’m not supposed to care.

###

I wake up the next morning and stumble into the hallway. I can smell coffee brewing and I walk toward it. If there’s one thing I get from my mother, it’s the love of the coffee bean. I’ll take it iced, brewed, instant, or any other way you want to present it, as long as I can have some. As though on auto pilot, I walk toward the kitchen.

I hear shuffling and see that the fridge is open and someone is rummaging around in it. She’s wearing jeans? At the beach?

But then the person stands up, and it’s not my mother at all. He’s blond and tall and he’s…not my mother. His eyes go wide for a second and he freezes. Then they start to take a lazy slide down my body. My seriously under-dressed body.

I cross my arms in front of my chest, since I’m not wearing a bra. “Who are you?” I ask. I step behind the counter, trying to put something between me and him as I tug on the hem of my T-shirt.

His brows shoot up. He has the end of a cheese stick hanging out from between his lips. He bites down hard and chews for a second with one eye closed. Then he grins. “How quickly she forgets,” he says. He hitches a hip against the counter and looks at me. There’s a quirky grin on his lips and I find myself wanting to smile along with him. Well, I would if I wasn’t wearing just my undies.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

It hits me like a ton of bricks when I realize who he is. “Nick?” I gasp out.

He grins and I know I got it right. How I missed it to begin with, I’ll never know.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He points toward the door. “I came to mow the grass, and your mom was on her way out the door for chemo, and she said to help myself to some food. So I did.” He smiles again.

“She’s gone?”

He nods, a curious expression on his face. “To the hospital. A friend picked her up.”

“Oh.” I play with a loose thread on the sleeve of my shirt, because I don’t know what to say to him.

“She’s not well, huh?” he asks. His gaze is curious, though. Not sympathetic.

“Guess not,” I say.

He holds out his half-eaten cheese stick. “Want some cheese?”

“Ew. No thank you.”

His eyes narrow. “I seem to remember that once upon a time we swapped more spit than there is on this cheese.” He laughs as heat creeps up my cheeks. “Are you aware that you’re in your undies?” he asks.

“I was kind of hoping you weren’t aware of it, actually. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

He points to his face. “And you have pillow marks on your face.”

I scrub a hand down my cheek. I probably have dark rings of old mascara under my eyes, too.

His voice softens. “And you’re hot as hell looking like that,” he says quietly.

My heart trips. “God,” I breathe.

He grins. “Got to get to work,” he says. He shakes his cheese at me. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Okay,” I say quietly with a wave.

He laughs as he slams out the door. I hear some rattling and then the mower starts up. I sink onto a barstool. Crap. That wasn’t how I’d hoped that would go. Seeing Nick again, I’d hoped to be pretty. And put-together. And better than the last time he saw me. But I was none of those things.

I was just me. And just me isn’t enough to keep anyone around.

I pour some coffee and take it to my room. My reflection mocks me from the dresser mirror. Indeed, I do have dark shadows of mascara under my eyes, and my hair looks like rats have crawled into it and taken up residence. God, why does it have to happen like this? Why couldn’t I have known he was here so I could be prepared? And why is he mowing our grass? And why didn’t my mother tell me she was going for chemo?

I wash my face and brush my teeth, and then put on a bathing suit. I’m at the beach, and I fully intend to take advantage of it. I have no idea when my mother will be back. I take a bottle of water, a shirt, and a towel and settle on the beach so I can begin to get my summer tan on. It’s windy on the beach, so I lather myself in sunscreen. The sun can be deceptive even when it doesn’t feel as hot. I lie back and close my eyes. The warmth of the sun seeps into my skin, and I feel all loose and languid in no time.

It was really strange seeing Nick after all this time. He’s grown up. I guess I have too, but my age doesn’t seem quite so jarring. The last time I saw Nick, he still had braces, because I remember him cutting my lip with them when he kissed me for the first time. It was at my fourteenth birthday party. We were dancing on the sand to a slow song playing on the speakers Dad dragged onto the porch just for my party.

His hair looks like it has been kissed by the sun and he’s broader than I remember. As broad as a doorway. He used to be skinny, but now he’s…not. He’s sexy. And he seems so much older than me. We’re both nineteen, and I’m pretty sure that he graduated this year just like I did. Amber and Rose are the same age as us. I think Mom said they’re here, too. They’re both summer people like we are. Nick was the only one who hung out with us who actually lived here, aside from the friends he brought around. His parents had a trailer in a nearby park. It wasn’t like our houses, which sit directly on the beach. We met him one day walking down the beach at dusk. I’ll never forget that day.

“You three look like you could use some directions,” a voice called out from beneath the pier.

Amber grabbed my arm and Rose whistled quietly. “Goodness, he’s handsome,” Amber breathed.

“We’re not lost,” I said. “But thank you.”

He was standing under the pier with two other boys. They laughed to themselves, but he wasn’t laughing. We kept walking, and he jogged backward in front of us, not even bothering to look and see where he was going.

“Are you sure you’re not lost? Because I could have sworn you were trying to find the way to my heart.” He laid his hand on his skinny chest and batted his blond lashes at us dramatically. “It’s easy. Chocolate and kisses. Not necessarily in that order.” Suddenly, he tripped and fell onto his back. He just laid there and laughed.

Amber giggled. Rose snarled up her nose. And I fell instantly and irrevocably in love.

Cold water shakes me from my sun-induced stupor. I look up and see Rose’s red hair before I see anything else. She’s limned by the sun, and I can’t even see her features, but I know it’s her. She laughs down at me as she pours cold water on my hot back.

“Girl, I can not believe you came to the beach and didn’t invite me to hang with you.” She laughs and drops down on the sand beside me. I sit up and shake the lethargy from my brain.

“Girl, I can not believe you didn’t bring Amber with you,” I toss back.

She jerks a thumb past her shoulder, and I see Amber standing directly behind her. Now summer can officially begin. Amber, Rose, and I keep up with one another on Facebook. It’s not like real life, but I get to see pictures of them and they can see pictures of me, so seeing them now is nothing like it was seeing Nick again. I had no idea what to expect with him at all.

Amber drops onto the sand beside us.

“How did you guys know I was here?” I ask, completely bewildered by their presence. I didn’t tell them because I kept hoping I would find a way to get out of the trip. That didn’t happen, obviously.

Amber shrugs. “Your mom called our moms.”

“Oh.” Why can’t she just stop her meddling? “What else did she tell you?”

I flop back on the sand, because I don’t want to see pity on their faces. Amber shrugs again. “Just that she was going to be busy a lot this summer, and wanted to arrange for us all to get together and play.” Amber laughs out loud. But then she sobers. “While she gets chemo.” She looks at the beach instead of at me.

Rose lays a hand on my arm. “How bad is it?”

I flip over so I can face the sand. “She has a couple of months left,” I say. I lay my face down on my towel.

“That’s why she wanted you to come with her this summer?” Rose asks.

I lift my shoulders in a half shrug. “I don’t know.” Actually, I do. Guilt made her want me to come this summer. That’s all it was. She didn’t want me to share her last hours. She just didn’t want to die with anyone thinking she was
that mom who left.

“Are you sad?”

“Only that you guys are blocking the view.” I point toward a young man lying a few chairs from us. “Check that out.”

Amber turns. “Don’t bother,” she says, turning up her lip. “He’s a dick.”

I roll over and sit up. “Who is he?”

“His parents rented the house next to yours last year, and again this year. He was at the beach blast last night.” She narrows her eyes at me. “And he’s a dick. Trust me.” Amber looks up toward my house, her hand shading her eyes. “Who’s mowing your grass?” she asks.

“Nick,” I say on a blow of breath.

Amber’s brow rises. “Wow. That quick, huh?”

“What quick?” I look from Amber to Rose and back.

“He’s been acting all weird ever since he found out you were coming.” She looks everywhere but at me.

“What do you mean by weird?”

Rose shoves Amber’s shoulder. “Shut up,” she says. “She just means weirder than normal.”

I sit up and put my shirt on over my bathing suit. “When did you guys get here?”

“A week ago?” Amber looks at Rose and she nods.

“So, what’s been going on the last three summers? Any hookups I need to know about?”

Amber gnaws on her lower lip as she thinks about it. “Not any that would surprise you.”

“What are you not telling me?”

Amber shrugs. “The past few summers have been angst-free.”

Rose snickers. “Or at least angst-light.”

Summers are never angst-light. They’re always full of hookups. Vacation girls try to find coastal boys. And coastal boys look for vacation girls. That’s the way of things.

Suddenly, sand flies up in my face. I rub my lips and spit it out. And once I have blinked the sun out of my eyes, I can see him standing over me. He’s wearing a bathing suit now, though, and nothing else. And damn, he’s even bigger than I thought he was. “God, Nick,” I say. “Be careful.”

“You look like you need to get wet,” he says, his voice excited as he rubs his hands together.

“I’m fine just like I am.” I hold up a finger to warn him, but it’s too late.

He picks me up under my arms and the next thing I know, I’m over his shoulder. I bat at the backs of his thighs, but he walks quickly toward the ocean and doesn’t act like he even feels it. So I pinch his butt. He stops and spins around like he wants to look into my face. But all it does is make me dizzy.

“If I have a bruise on my butt cheek tomorrow, I’m going to give you one to match it,” he says with a laugh.

My heart pitches. I pinch him again, because there’s nothing else I can do. “Put me down,” I squeal. The waves are now nipping at his calves. “Put me
down
,” I scream a little louder.