“No,” she says staunchly. “It was just a stupid mistake. You make a plan for a reason, and my plan is to marry Alex. Now let me sleep.”
**
Ryan drags himself off the couch when I come downstairs, and wraps his arms around me from behind, kissing my cheek. “Good morning,” he says. It feels so natural, as if we never broke up. As if this is the kitchen in his apartment like any other morning.
He also has morning wood, just like a regular morning. “I’m not sleeping with you,” I laugh.
“I’d settle for something else,” he says, only half joking. “Come shower with me.” He bites my earlobe, making me shiver in spite of myself. His mouth moves to my neck, and I find myself relaxing into him. God, it’s been a long time. Okay, it’s been six weeks, but it feels like a long time.
“Nope,” I whisper, but it’s a little breathy.
“You’ll change your mind after you see me play,” he says. He’s right. I already know this. His hands are still on my hips, his mouth on my neck, and I know that seeing him play is all it would take to sway me.
“I’m closing tonight,” I say apologetically. “I just found out.”
A door shuts down the hall and he releases me. “We’re back in a few weeks. Will you come see us then?” he asks.
“Definitely,” I reply, casting an angry look at James’s door. “I’ll put in for time off today.”
**
James still never comes to the beach with us — or with me, anyway — so it’s a surprise when he emerges from his room in swim trunks, looking so good that for just a moment I stop hating him. Max and Ryan walk ahead, carrying a cooler and laughing as if they’ve been friends since high school. Typical Max, and also typical Ryan. Why are things never awkward for them? I’m guessing neither of them has had a moment like I’m having right now, walking beside James with a hundred accusations in my head demanding to be heard.
“I got a mysterious text from Brian this morning,” I tell him. “Informing me that I’m closing.”
“I’m closing too. I’ll give you a ride.”
“It seems to me that it’s the least you can do,” I say bitterly, “since you’re the one responsible for the schedule change.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. And then he has the nerve to smile.
“You don’t want me to watch Ryan play,” I accuse.
“Musical appreciation enriches us all,” he smirks. “Why would anyone try to stand in your way?”
“That’s a good question, James. Maybe you should answer it.”
There is no answer, just that same smug look of quiet triumph on his face that begs for a good slapping. Max looks back and forth between us and then stops, pointing at this bush we pass every day, covered in purple flowers that weren’t there the week before.
“You see that?” he asks. “That’s the New England aster. It doesn’t normally bloom until September or October.” The depth of Max’s useless knowledge never ceases to amaze me.
“What’s your point, Max?” sighs James irritably. “Because I feel sure there’s a point here.”
“My point,” Max smirks, “is that things don’t bloom because they’re told it’s the correct time. They bloom because the conditions are right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” demands Ginny. “Because the rest of us haven’t been smoking pot all morning so we can’t decipher your cryptic little comments.”
“James knows what I mean,” Max grins, walking ahead. And based on the way James is glaring at him, it appears Max is right.
We find a spot on the beach and I spread my towel between Ginny and Ryan.
“Why aren’t you wearing a bikini?” Ryan asks as I undress. I never wore one again after the day James accused me of wearing dental floss.
“Elle never wears a bikini,” says Max. “We’ve all assumed it’s because she has some kind of scar or horrible disfigurement. Maybe asymmetry from a bad boob job.”
Ryan grins. “Speaking as someone who’s experienced the whole package, I can assure you that there is no disfigurement. And those puppies,” he says, looking at my chest, “are 100% real.”
“Can we not talk about this?” I snap at both of them.
They stop but Max gives Ryan a thumbs up, laughing silently. I watch as James takes off to run on the beach without a word to any of us.
“What’s his deal?” asks Ginny. “I’ve never seen him run so much in my life.”
“Your brother has some demons to exorcise,” says Max.
“What demons?” she demands.
Max’s glance flickers over to me before he shrugs. “We all have parts of ourselves we struggle with.”
Ginny snorts. “I don’t see you struggling with much.”
“The fact that I’m a less principled man than James,” he sighs, “is hardly a mystery.”
Chapter 25
I spend the night ignoring James as best I can. I put in my drink orders without a hint of a smile or even common courtesy. The words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ don’t cross my lips once when I’m forced to speak to him.
“Are you really going to spend the whole summer not speaking to me?” he asks as we drive home. “Over this?”
“Are you admitting you did it?”
“No.”
I groan in exasperation. “Well, I still think you did, but no, going for the whole summer without speaking to you seems a little unrealistic.”
He smiles a little. “So exactly what portion of the summer will you refuse to speak to me before forgiving me for doing something I’ve never said I did?”
“What do you care? You still avoid me unless you’ve been drinking.”
“That’s not true,” he says, staring ahead of him, but there’s something uncertain in his voice. “I think I’ve tried really hard to fix that.”
I look at him flatly. “That’s kind of the point, James. You’re not supposed to have to ‘try’. Being in the same room with me shouldn’t be so onerous for you that it’s this massive struggle.”
His jaw grinds. “You’re twisting what I said.”
I’m sick of even discussing it. He’s clearly not going to admit he changed the schedule. He’s not going to admit he doesn’t want to be around me. He’s just going to keep doing what he’s been doing. Torturing me in small ways without offering a single good reason for doing so.
I rest my face against the window and think about Max’s lecture on being in the moment. Because as bad as this moment is, in September when I’m back at school and James is only a memory, I’d give anything to have these seconds back. To watch his profile, troubled and a little pissed off at the moment, to watch his hands at the wheel. To lean forward just close enough that I could breathe in his smell of beach and pine and soap. It’s not a happy feeling, wanting him endlessly and getting nothing in return. But the truth is that I’d take this over happiness without him any day.