The Sea of Tranquility (28 page)

I’m not sure if he’s referring to the wishing or the confessions, but I go with the pennies. I don’t even wish. I just throw one.

“I’m sorry.” The two easiest and emptiest words to say and I say them.

“Because I don’t remember my mom or because you asked?”

“Both. But mostly the asking.”

“No one ever asks. Like they think they’re doing me a favor. That if they don’t bring it up, I won’t have to think about it. I never stop thinking about it. Just because I don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean I forget. I don’t talk about it because no one ever asks.” He stops and looks at me again and I wonder if I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t want to, because if I say something, I’m afraid I might say everything. He turns back to the fountain so his eyes aren’t on me anymore, but I think he’s still watching. “I’d ask you, you know. If I was allowed. I’d ask you a thousand times until you’d tell me. But you won’t let me ask.”

***

We manage to find the laughter in the evening again, and we wish ourselves through most of the bucket of pennies. At one point, a mother with two little girls passes through and Josh gives them each a handful of pennies and begs them to help us because we’re running out of things to wish for. They take the affair very seriously as if each wish is so precious that they can’t afford to waste it. They squeeze their eyes shut and concentrate, making sure they do it just right. And I wish for every one of their wishes to come true.

Towards the end, we start making mega-wishes and fortifying them with handfuls of pennies. One of those wishes results in the clasp of my bracelet coming undone, causing it to fly off into the fountain along with my wish-imbued pennies. Josh rolls up the bottoms of his jeans and pulls off his boots. I just have to take off my shoes because I’m still in the skirt I wore to school and it’s plenty short. We scan around, hoping there aren’t any security guards in the area before we step in. Thankfully the water is shallow, because it’s freakishly cold and my legs are ice the second I get in.

“Where did it go?” he asks. I point off in the direction I threw the pennies. I don’t think it could have gotten very far. We head off in that direction but it’s impossible to see anything because the entire fountain floor is carpeted with coins. Half of them probably came from us. It’s a tapestry of silver and copper and colored light. Every time I see something I think might be my bracelet, I have to reach down and submerge my arm into the water, which is what I’m doing when Josh decides to push my leg with his foot just enough to knock me off balance and send me face first into the ice cold water. The splash is followed by laughter from him and a death glare from me. I plan to grab him and pull him in after me, but I don’t have to, because he tries to step away from my grasp too quickly and falls in all on his own.

“Karma’s a bitch, Bennett.”

His pants and half of his shirt are soaked, but he managed to keep his head out of the water unlike the drowned rat that is me. When he looks at me, he starts laughing all over again and I finally dissolve in it, too. “Don’t do the last name bullshit. I hate it,” he says.

“Not really caring what you hate right now,” I say, trying to force some venom into my voice, but it’s hard when I’m fighting what I am quite certain are the early stages of hypothermia. I feel like one of those insane polar bear people who jump in the freezing cold ocean every year and I mentally put that on my list of things I will never do.

“Screw the bracelet. It’s not worth it,” I say, climbing out of the water with Josh right behind me. He doesn’t argue.

We split up the rest of the pennies between the two little girls whose mother gives us a dirty look because I think she’s had enough wishing for the night. Or maybe because we’re soaking wet and just climbed out of the fountain. I pick up the empty pail and swing it back and forth between us while we walk to the parking garage, leaving the fountain, my bracelet, eighteen dollars in pennies and two giggling girls behind us. Josh reaches over to take the pail from me. He stops my hand and opens my fingers, retrieving the handle with his left hand and holding mine open with his right. His hand is no warmer than my own, but it feels good anyway, and I wait for him to let go, but he doesn’t.

When we reach his truck in the parking garage, he tosses the bucket into the back and then reaches up and cradles my face in his hands the way he did that day on the Leightons’ front porch.

“Black shit,” he says, letting one side of his mouth turn up as he wipes the streaks away with his thumbs. Then, he moves away and opens my door. “Happy birthday, Sunshine.”

“I wished that my hand would work again,” I tell him when he climbs in after me. It was my first wish and the only one that mattered.

“I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it’s an impossible wish.” He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time.

“It’s not stupid to want to see her again.”

“It wasn’t so much that I wanted to see her again,” he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. “I wanted her to see you.”

CHAPTER 33

Josh

“There are clean towels in the guest bathroom. I’m going to shower in the master.”

“I hope you have a big hot water heater, because I may never come out,” Sunshine yells from the hall. She’s still shivering because she has almost no body fat on her and I kind of feel like shit for the whole fountain thing.

“I’m going to put water on for tea. You want some?” I call from the kitchen where I’m filling the tea kettle.

“You drink hot tea?”

“So?”

“So, you’re not old. Or British. I can count on one finger the number of teenage boys who drink hot tea.”

“I used to make it for my grandfather. I got used to it. Shut up.” I finish filling the kettle and put it on top of the stove before I head into the bathroom. “You want it or not?”

“Not. Tea sucks. I’ll be out in an hour. Maybe two.” The bathroom door slams.

I’m out of the shower ten minutes later and the water is still running in the guest bathroom so I guess she wasn’t lying. I throw my wet clothes in the empty washer then head into the kitchen to turn the stove burner on. Maybe tea does suck, but I heat the water anyway. She won’t turn down hot chocolate.

The doorbell rings and I figure it has to be Drew, because other than the girl using all the hot water in my bathroom, he’s the only person who would come over here. He’s got a key so I don’t know why he doesn’t just come in.

“What?” I open the door, ready to hear about whatever minor irritation has sent him fleeing from his house this time, but it isn’t Drew. It’s a kid I’ve never seen before and he’s staring at me so intensely that I feel like he’s checking me out. Not like he wants me, but like he wants to know who the hell I am, except that he’s the one knocking on my door.

“Can I help you?” I finally ask because the kid isn’t talking.

“Is my sister here?”
Sister? “
Margot said she’d probably be here. Nastya.” He spits out her name like it tastes bad in his mouth.

“She’s your sister?” There’s not much of a resemblance unless you really, really look. He actually looks a lot like Margot.

“Yeah. She left. Is she here?”

I push back the door and let him in. The water in the shower is still running and there’s no ignoring it.
Damn it, Sunshine
. He’s not looking relieved and I can guess why as I stand in front of him in a t-shirt and sweatpants, still wet from the shower, while we listen to the water continue running two doors down.

“She’s in the shower,” I say, because it’s not like I can hide the fact. I need to warn her before she comes out. “I’ll go let her know you’re here.”

“Why is my sister showering in your house?” he demands before I can get away. He’s pissed. I’m getting the full over-protective brother treatment and I kind of respect him for it, but I don’t like the way he’s talking to me, in my own house, like I’m some sort of scumbag. It’s the same thing Margot did when she came over. I don’t think I’m particularly threatening and it’s not as if Nastya comes across like some delicate flower.

“Your sister is eighteen years old. She can do more than shower here if she wants.”

“My sister is emotionally stunted at fifteen.” He levels his eyes at me. This is not really a conversation I anticipated having tonight. I don’t even know how to respond to that.

“So you’re saying she’s immature?” It’s the only thing I can come up with. And I can’t decide which side I’m on anyway. Some days she seems older than anyone I’ve ever met and others she’s like a little girl.

“I’m saying she’s messed up.” He exhales and he looks tired, like he’s said this a thousand times before and he doesn’t want to be here, saying it now.

“I don’t agree.” I do agree. I just don’t know why or how or anything that might matter.

“I know my sister.”

“I know your sister.” I know what she tells me. The fragments of a life she gives me glimpses of on the days she’s feeling particularly generous, or maybe just reckless.

“Did you even know today was her birthday?” he asks. I don’t answer. “I didn’t think so. From the look on your face earlier, you didn’t know she had a brother, either. You ever wonder what else you don’t know?”
Always.
“She’s got issues and she doesn’t need another one. Leave it alone.”

I don’t appreciate being referred to as an issue.

“If there’s something you want me to know, why don’t you tell me? Otherwise you can take the condescending attitude and get out of my house.”

He doesn’t answer. He won’t betray her, and as much as I want to know what the hell is going on, I can respect that. Still, I’m not letting him make me the villain here. I want to like this kid, but he’s starting to piss me off.

“You like taking advantage of messed up girls? Is that your thing?” he asks.

“What’s yours? Pointless accusations and intimidation?”

The water stops running and I’m ready to bolt down the hall to intercept her before she comes out, but the door opens before I can get there. I didn’t even have a chance to leave her a dry change of clothes. She comes out of the hallway, dripping wet with a towel wrapped around her and all the blood drains down from my brain and my stupid dick twitches because that’s what it does when beautiful, wet, towel-clad girls come out of my shower. I wish I could enjoy the view because,
seriously.
But this isn’t the time, and fortunately, my dick gets the message that her extremely pissed-off looking brother is standing next to me and stays down.

She opens her mouth but sees him before any words make it out. I don’t know whose eyes are wider. Something unspoken goes on between the two of them. I can’t tell if she looks frightened or ashamed, but it looks like she’s gotten younger just seeing him. The tea kettle whistles and we’re so on edge that I think we all might piss our pants right here. Except for Nastya, because right now, she’s not wearing any. I look between the two of them and settle on her.

“Got company, Sunshine. Anyone want tea?”

***

Her brother eventually leaves once he accepts that she isn’t going back with him. I wonder how much hell she’s going to catch for that. Answering to people isn’t something I ever have to worry about, so it never crosses my mind, but she has a family and I don’t know how she gets away with just not going home, even if she is eighteen. She made a comment once that her parents are afraid to discipline her but she didn’t elaborate. I wonder if they’re scared of her, too. She spends most of her time here already, but how much of that information gets back to her parents is beyond me. If her family didn’t think we were screwing before, they do now.

“You’re not sleeping on the couch.” I tell her when she pulls the pillow and blanket she’s used before out of the linen closet.

“All right. Sorry.” She puts them down and starts looking around for her keys.

“You don’t have to leave.”

“But you said‌—‌”

“I just meant that the couch is seriously uncomfortable. You can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I am not taking your bed. I don’t mind the couch. I’ve slept on it before.”

“So you know it sucks.”

“It’s better than always going back to Margot’s and being alone. I don’t want you giving up your bed.” She sits down on the couch and clutches the pillow in her lap.

“So sleep with me.”

“What?” Her eyes go wide and I laugh.

“Not that kind of sleep with me. Just sleep. It’s a king-size bed, you won’t even know I’m there.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” She looks around like she’s trying to figure something out. “How is it possible that you only have one bed in this house, anyway?”

“There’s a twin bed in Amanda’s room but you can’t find it anymore because I started storing everything in there and it’s underneath a bunch of crap. I got rid of the one in my old room when they needed to bring in the hospital bed for my grandfather. So now I just have the one in the master.” She doesn’t look at me like she feels bad, just like she understands.

“It can’t really be that bad,” she says, walking down to Amanda’s room. The door is always closed and she’s never gone in before, but she does now.

She steps inside to the almost non-existent pathway of visible carpet, and scans the room. There are boxes and piles of old clothing folded on the bed. A couple of random pieces of furniture I built, but wasn’t happy with, are shoved here and there; things I would keep in the garage, but don’t, because I need the space out there more than I need it here.

“Okay, it is that bad,” she laughs, before her eyes narrow with curiosity and I turn to see what she’s looking at. “You have a piano,” she says softly, stepping over to it. “Why is it in here?”

“Amanda was taking lessons. I never did. I rolled it in here a couple years ago when I needed the space in the living room for one of the tables.”

She runs her fingers along the top of the keys so lightly that I’m not sure she even touches them at all. There’s a reverence in the way she does it.