Amanda blinked at me. “Well, Noah confronted him. Told him to stop mooning over you. It’s a little bit sad, really. The way he looks at you. I feel bad for the guy.”
I suddenly remembered last spring, before Noah and I got together, when I found out he’d been “warning” guys to stay away from me in some stupid and misguided attempt to look out for me.
Frowning at Amanda, I folded my arms and demanded, “Did he tell Levi to stay away from me? Keep his distance or something?”
She shook her head, looking startled. “No! He just said it was about time Levi got over you and that it wasn’t fair to either of you to carry on the way he was. Then, of course, they had that big bust-up down on the beach anyway. I did tell him, I said, if you’re going to talk to the boy, at least try to be a grown-up about it.” She sighed and rolled her eyes; there was something almost indulgent about it, though. “That idiot, honestly. There’s no talking to him sometimes. He’s so bloody headstrong.”
“That’s one word for it,” Lee muttered.
They were all looking at me.
Waiting for me to protest, I guessed, like the last time this subject came up.
“I…”
They kept looking at me and waiting.
I flushed. “Okay, so…so maybe you guys have a point. About Levi having…having a crush on me.”
“Oh!” Rachel sighed, throwing her hands in the air. “Now she sees it! Did it really take Noah getting punched in the face for you to realize that?”
It maybe took Levi kissing me again to realize that, but…
“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered. “He’s still my friend. It’s not my fault I never noticed.”
Lee slung his arm around my shoulders roughly, pulling me forward and ruffling my hair. “You’re an idiot sometimes, Shelly.” He let me up. “So what did he say? Levi? And Noah, for that matter.”
“Noah didn’t exactly say much,” I explained. “Levi…”
Oh man. That was a whole other can of worms. One I wasn’t quite ready to deal with just yet.
Chapter Thirty
Noah hadn’t come back, but none of us were too worried about him. The mood down on the beach took a while to pick back up after the intensity of the volleyball game, but soon enough it seemed that everyone was enjoying themselves again.
“Everything okay?” Lee asked me as our friends cracked open some beers and Amanda explained the rules of some drinking game to everybody.
“Sure,” I told him, and plastered on a smile to prove it. There was no way I was going to let Noah—or Levi—spoil the rest of my final Fourth of July at the beach house.
As the evening drew on, Matthew and my dad set up the fireworks. June brought out desserts, with Amanda and Rachel and Linda helping. I’d decided to stay out of the way at that point. Too many hands and all that.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Noah?” Brad had asked me and Lee. “He can’t miss the fireworks.”
“How about we video them for him?” Lee suggested. I’d tried calling Noah, left him a message to say he should come home.
He ended up texting his mom, saying he was just out clearing his head.
I had an idea of exactly where he was but decided to leave him be. He’d come home when he was ready. And today was about all of us, about our final Fourth of July at the beach house, not about me chasing after Noah.
That evening, after all our friends had gone and Brad’s buddies had been collected by their parents and after we’d cleaned the place up a little, we piled into the rumpus room at the back of the house with drinks and plates of leftovers to snack on.
Dad was setting up Monopoly. The board was old, used so many times it frayed at the edges and felt soft to the touch. A lot of the cards and game money were faded, crinkled, and bent, some of them stained from our games as careless, messy children.
There weren’t enough pieces to go around for us to all play by ourselves, since we’d lost two of the tokens years ago. Rachel and Lee teamed up. Brad would be playing with Dad. June and Matthew were a team. Amanda, Linda, and I would play by ourselves.
“We get the race car!” Brad cried, grabbing for it.
“Not so fast,” Linda told him with a laugh. “We have to roll to pick the pieces.”
I pulled a face at Lee. We never rolled to pick pieces. We all had our own pieces. We just rolled to see who went first.
But, hey, fine.
Whatever.
I rolled a one when it was my turn. I didn’t really care, until Linda rolled a six—the highest of everyone—and said with a great big smile, “Looks like the honor is all mine! And I think I’ll pick”—her fingers danced over the pieces—“the doggy!”
My hand flung out before I could stop it, snatching up the dog.
“Sorry,” I blurted, realizing what I’d just done. “It’s just that I’m always the Scottie dog.”
“Oh, no, Elle.” Linda laughed, holding her palm out to me patiently. “Those are the rules. I get first choice.”
June gave me a sympathetic look from her spot next to Linda, but all I could do was scowl. I’d been so willing to give her another chance today, but this was where I drew the line.
My voice was biting when I retorted, “I don’t care. I’m the Scottie dog.”
I knew I was being a brat. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t wipe the scowl off my face or compose myself or stop the irritation that boiled away in my veins the more I stared at her.
I knew I was being a brat, and I knew someone was going to try to talk me down, but I really, really didn’t expect it to be Dad.
“Elle, come on,” my dad said, sounding unusually stern. “Why don’t you just give Linda the piece?”
I scoffed, glaring at him now in utter disbelief.
He was really going to take her side? On this?
I saw June wince, but she didn’t step in to defend me either. In fact, when she caught me looking her way, she gave me a small nod, with an expression that said, Go on, Elle, listen to your dad.
Well, fine.
If that was how they were going to be.
“It’s just kind of tradition,” Lee tried on my behalf. “Elle’s always the Scottie dog.”
“No,” I snapped, pushing myself up from the floor and throwing the little metal piece savagely at the table. It hit the Chance cards, sending them scattering. Rachel was quick to tidy them up. “It’s fine. Take the dog. I didn’t want to play anyway.”