Dixon, Olly, and Warren arrived midafternoon. A couple of Rachel’s friends were only minutes behind—including Lisa, Cam’s girlfriend. Olivia and Faith showed up with Jon Fletcher and a couple of the football guys. Ashton and his girlfriend arrived next. I threw myself into playing hostess, chattering away to everybody as they showed up.
June ushered everyone outside, and we quickly decided to head down to the beach to hang out and start tossing around a football—but only after pilfering a bunch of snacks from the kitchen while June and Matthew weren’t looking.
“Plus”—Warren produced a bottle of vodka with a flourish and a grin—“I got this for later.”
“Or now,” Olivia suggested, bouncing over to him to pluck the bottle out of his hands. She unscrewed the cap, took a sip, and then sputtered, almost spitting it all back up onto the sand and sending the rest of us into fits of laughter. Half the group suddenly found themselves in a competition to see who could take a sip of straight vodka without reacting.
Jon Fletcher was pretty good, but Amanda won by a mile, taking three large gulps without so much as blinking, to everyone’s astonishment and a round of applause.
As the afternoon wore on, more people started to arrive, filtering down to the beach to join us. They brought more drinks, some snacks. Someone brought a Bluetooth speaker and set it on someone else’s towel. People sunbathed, swam, played ball…Jon Fletcher made the mistake of lying down to take a nap and was currently being buried in sand up to his chin.
Our first night at the beach house, the housewarming party Noah and Lee had organized had made the place feel cramped and crazy. Today might have started out as something for a more intimate crowd, but it definitely hadn’t turned out that way. It wasn’t just our close friends—somehow, word had gotten out. This was a whole thing.
When I pointed out as much to Lee, he just shrugged and said, “Hey, gotta do this one justice, Shelly.”
“Guess you’ve got a point.”
I headed back up to the beach house to check on things. The five of us had been taking it in shifts to go see when the barbecue was starting up and food was ready, and right now it was my turn.
My dad was just starting to fire up the barbecue, and Matthew was laying out platters of meat next to him. They were deep in discussion about something. A cry came from the pool, followed by a splash—Brad and two of his friends were playing there. One of them had a water gun and squirted me with it as I approached.
“Oh no! I’ve…been…attacked!” I gasped, staggering and clutching at my wet leg. “Tell my brother…he…gets all my…agh.”
I collapsed to the ground.
“I heard gets all her money,” Brad announced. “Right, Dad?”
“Hmm, I heard gets all her chores.”
I climbed back up, stopping to ruffle Brad’s hair and dunk him abruptly under the water on my way to say hi to my dad. I gave him a hug.
“Happy Fourth, bud.”
“You too, Dad.”
“You guys having a good time down there?” Dad asked.
“Sure sounds like it,” Matthew added with a smile.
“Are we too loud?”
“Nah, it’s good. It’s not like we’ve got many neighbors left around here right now to worry about, huh?”
“I guess so. Yeah, it’s…it’s great. I’m just starting to think we don’t have enough food for everyone. I swear, I thought this wasn’t gonna be such a big thing.”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Dad reassured me. “A lot of your friends brought food. We’re gonna be eating hot dogs and potato salad and pie for weeks. Hey, bud, uh…L-Linda’s in the kitchen with June. It’d be good if you maybe went to say hi.”
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t a little kid, that he didn’t need to tell me to go say hi to her, but he looked so goddamn nervous I didn’t have the heart to bite back with a sarcastic remark. I wasn’t used to seeing my dad nervous. But right now, his eyebrows furrowed behind his prescription sunglasses, his forehead lined with deep creases, and he snapped the barbecue tongs closed repeatedly, agitatedly.
So I chirped, “Sure! Of course. And, um, a couple of people brought some drinks? Not much, just a little. Maybe keep Brad and his buddies off the beach for a little while?”
My dad sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
“So long as nobody pukes in the pool, it’s all good,” Matthew told me. “Anyone pukes in the pool, or anywhere else for that matter, you kids are cleaning it up.”
“Roger that.” I saluted them both and left them to the barbecuing.
Inside, June and Linda were chatting and laughing over something, moving about the kitchen together organizing bowls and platters, many of which I didn’t recognize, and I could only assume—
“Oh, Elle! Thank your friends again from us. They’ve all brought so much food. Although”—June held up a tub of potato salad, sniffing and squinting at it—“if Matthew asks, their potato salad isn’t as good as his.”
I mimed zipping my lips shut.
Linda was wearing a gray linen sundress with a brown woven belt tied around her waist and matching flat brown sandals. She gave me a smile that was borderline wary and said a hopeful, “Hi, Elle. It’s great to see you again.”
I remembered how nervous my dad had been to tell me about Linda, and how nervous he’d looked again outside. She’d apparently heard so much about me; I imagined that she hadn’t been overly honest about our first meeting, since my dad hadn’t said too much about it to me and what a disaster it had been. Maybe I owed her one for that. Brad liked her. June and Matthew seemed to like her. Dad obviously liked her a lot.
Okay, take two. Let’s try this again.
Drawing a deep breath, I decided in that instant to give her a second chance at a first impression.
I mean, she sure looked like a nice person.
“You too,” I told her, giving her the broadest, sincerest smile I could manage. “And June said you brought pie! That’s really nice of you.”
I didn’t miss the relief on her face over the fact I didn’t snipe at her.
“Oh, it’s nothing. My pleasure.”
“Did you, um…” I glanced at June, who gave me an encouraging little nod. “Did you not, uh…want to spend the day with your family?”
“My parents have their own plans for this evening,” she told me with a laugh, not explaining any further, and I decided that as willing as I was to give her a second chance, I didn’t care that much to ask. “I saw them this morning. And my ex and I aren’t exactly on ‘spend the holiday together’ terms.”