26 Kisses (14 page)

I fall into step beside him. “Your nose is already turning pink,” I say, handing him the mini bottle of sunscreen I keep in my purse during the summer.

Seth takes it gratefully and slathers it over every bit of exposed skin. He doesn’t rub it into his ears all the way, and little white blobs cling to the ends of his hair. The beach is crowded today: towels, umbrellas, and kids’ toys litter the bleached sand. The lake reflects the deep blue of the sky, and tiny waves lap at our feet as we follow the curved path of the shoreline.

My phone vibrates with a new text. It’s from Killian.
i liked yesterday. you?

I flush and shove the phone back into my pocket. Seth glances over at me, raising his eyebrows. “I feel like I’ve barely seen you lately,” I say quickly, reaching over to give his hand a quick squeeze.

Seth squeezes back and then releases his grip, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You’ve been busy. And heartbroken.”

“Yeah,” I say, ducking as a squawking seagull swoops over our heads to investigate an abandoned bag of chips. “That does take up a surprising amount of time.”

Seth grins. “I can imagine. You have to listen to sad songs and cry along with them, write letters to your ex that you’ll never send . . .”

“Eat lots of ice cream,” I supply. “Read trashy magazines.”

“Get a drastic haircut.”

“Dang! I knew I forgot something.” I tug on the ends of my hair, which is exactly the same as it’s always been. I wish I had taken advantage of the breakup to do some of those things. They sound a lot more interesting than what I actually did—lie in bed and cry my way through two boxes of Kleenex and an entire season of
The Bachelor
illegally streamed online.

A familiar-looking guy trudges toward us, shoes dangling from one hand. I shade my eyes. “Hey, Zane?”

He looks around, not able to place my voice. I wave, finally catching his attention, and he jogs over the sand to us. Two years younger than I am and as jumpy as they come, Zane is also the most talented kid on our debate team. The dude is some kind of rhetoric genius, albeit slightly awkward.

“Hi, Vee.” Zane’s dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. He looks nearly as out of place here on the beach as Seth does.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

Zane shrugs and steps aside as a couple of kids with floating noodles race by, splashing into the water. “I was going to meet Tracy here, but I think I must have gotten the wrong time or something, and I lost my phone, so I can’t call her.”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and scroll through, not sure whether I have Tracy’s number, squashing the temptation to read Killian’s text again. “You’re in luck.” I hold out my phone. “Go ahead.”

Zane hesitates. “Really?”

“Absolutely.”

He takes my phone, a shy smile on his face, and turns away. Seth gives me a questioning look, and I mouth,
Freshman
, at him, only belatedly realizing Zane isn’t technically a freshman anymore. The thought makes me unreasonably sad—everything is changing, even the things that shouldn’t really matter, yet somehow do.

Zane’s on the phone for only a minute. “I got the wrong day,” he says, shrugging and handing the phone back to me. “I guess I really can’t function without my planner.”

I laugh. We always gave Zane crap about his dedication to his stupid school-issued schedule planner, filling in his homework assignments and debate practices like his life depended on it.

“By the way,” he says, holding out his hand to Seth, “I should introduce myself. I’m Zane Haywood.”

Seth hesitates for a moment but recovers quickly and gamely takes Zane’s hand. “Seth.”

There’s a beat of awkward silence as Zane grins at Seth and pumps his hand up and down, basking in the glory of getting to meet the elusive musical genius Seth Moore, who everybody at Butterfield High knows but few know much about. “Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I wasn’t sure if you guys knew each other.”

Zane waves away my apology. “Thanks for letting me use your phone,” he says.

“No problem. See you around.”

He takes a few steps but then spins back toward us. “Hey, Vee? Some of us from the team were thinking about hanging out. You in?”

I glance at Seth, whose face twitches as he suppresses a smile.

“Uh, sure,” I say, looking up at Zane. “Who’s coming?”

He shrugs. “Oh, you know. Pretty much everyone. Jason, Callie, Jenn, Tracy.”

So by
everyone
, he means the underclassmen, not the juniors and seniors I hung out with during the school year.

“And, uh, you can come too, if you want.” Zane glances at Seth.

“Sweet. Cool.” Seth clearly has no idea what to say.

“Awesome. Well, I’ll see you guys.” Zane basically runs away.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Seth sighs and shakes out his limbs, as if that conversation literally set into his muscles and caused him pain. “So awkward.”

“Awkward but nice.” I glare at Seth, reminding him not to judge everyone around him.

He nods. “Yeah, I guess.” He stretches his arms over his head, his shirt lifting to reveal a sliver of skin at his stomach that is even paler than the rest of him. “Want to go back? I think I’ve had enough of the beach for the summer.”

“Let’s at least wade in a little bit.” With the sun beating down on my head and the waves so cool against my toes, I can’t walk away from the lake without getting a little wet.

Seth wrinkles his nose at the thought of actually stepping into the water, and I snatch his shoes out of his hand, dropping them near the line where the wet, packed sand starts to dry out. “Can’t I just wait here for you?” he says.

“Roll your pants up higher,” I say. “This will be good for you.”

He sighs and bends over, struggling to force the stiff denim of his jeans up over his knees. “I’m only going in for a minute. I hate it when my feet get all pruney.”

“Okay, Grandpa.”

The water is heaven. Clear, cool, soft. I take giant steps, pushing myself in deeper and deeper, ignoring the occasional piece of seaweed brushing against my skin. When I’m knee deep, I turn back to find Seth hesitating near the shore, the tiny waves lapping somewhere around his ankles.

“Come on!” I call.

His shoulders slump, but he inches forward, his face tipped down as he searches for anything that might be lurking under a couple inches of crystal-clear lake water. I look back out over the horizon and hold my hands up to my face to block the view of the beach and the people swimming. All I can see is the water and the sun and the sky, the light reflecting a million different ways as the lake moves with the wind and whatever deep, unfathomable forces that lie beneath it. I close my eyes and, just for a second, everything is perfect.

“Okay, this is as far as I go,” Seth announces from behind me. “My pants are already wet.”

I drop my hands to my sides. I could do it, if I thought I could handle the truth. I could ask him about Mel right now and get the whole issue cleared up.

“Vee?” Seth says. “I said I’m not going any farther.” The grumpy tone I haven’t heard for a while starts to edge back into his voice. He rarely talks like that when Mel is around, I realize.

I take a deep breath. “Seth, I have to ask you something.”

“Yeah?” He sounds distracted, ready to get off the beach and move on with his day.

My mouth is dry, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to force the question out loud enough to rise over the sound of waves lapping against the shore. “Are you in love with Mel?” I ask, still looking out over the never-ending stretch of water, unable to tell where the lake stops and the sky begins.

The beat of silence that hangs in the air before Seth answers tells me everything I need to know.

“I’m not in love with anybody,” he says finally.

“It’s okay,” I say, reaching down to cup some water into my hand and splash it over my face, shivering as cold droplets slide down my neck and inside my shirt. “It won’t bother me if you two get together.” This is the first time I’ve ever lied to Seth, and my skin grows colder. Even with everything that happened between us before Mel moved to Butterfield, I always told him the truth. He knew I didn’t like him the same way he liked me, and although I’m sure that didn’t make it any easier for him, at least I was honest.

“That’s not going to happen,” he says with such finality, I turn around to stare at him. Seth looks out of place in the water, the same way he looks out of place in the hallways at school or sitting at a desk in a classroom. The only time I ever see him blend in seamlessly with his environment is when he’s sitting behind the piano—or when he’s with me and Mel.

“Why not?” My heart lifts for a moment because I’m selfish. Maybe Seth is going to suppress his feelings for Mel so that the balance of our three-way friendship won’t be thrown off. Maybe he would do that for me.

But the look he gives me is dark and complicated, the half smile on his mouth not reaching his eyes. “I don’t want to ruin it,” he says. And I know he’s not talking about ruining what the three of us have—he’s talking about ruining whatever’s going on between him and Mel right now. He’s afraid to tell her how he feels because she might shut him down, the same way I did five years ago.

“Seth . . .”

He shakes his head. “It’s fine, Vee. Really, it’s fine now. But I just . . . don’t want to have to go through it again.” The wind ruffles his hair, and a long curl falls over his eyes.

“Okay.” I nod.

I turn back and run my hands over my arms, goose bumps rising up on my skin. It’s not a surprise, obviously. But sometimes, even if you already know something, hearing it out loud makes it real in a way that’s hard to deal with.
You have no reason to be jealous,
I say to myself.
None at all.

We eventually get out of the water and walk back to the car, Seth grumbling about getting sand everywhere, and things feel almost normal again. But the sun doesn’t seem as bright as it did an hour earlier, and the crowded parking lot grates on my nerves. Once again, I’m winning the Worst Friend Award, because I don’t do the one thing that would make up for everything I’ve put Seth through over the years.

I don’t tell him I’m pretty sure Mel loves him, too.

I walk into the house to the sound of the vacuum cleaner, which is an unusual enough occurrence that I have to go check it out. Mom is standing on a chair in the middle of the living room, vacuuming dust off the top of the ceiling fan blades.

I hit the power button, and the ancient Electrolux sputters to a stop. Mom looks down at me, dirt streaked across her face.

“Have you been reading
Good Housekeeping
again?” I ask. “Because I don’t believe you thought of doing that all by yourself.”

Mom gives me a wry smile. “Guilty.” She steps down off the chair and collapses onto the couch. “Being a grown-up is exhausting.”

I lie down at the other end and put my feet in her lap. “Tell me about it.” Seth and I didn’t talk about anything important after we left the beach, but his feelings for Mel hung in the air between us the whole ride home, like a dripping faucet you can’t quite bring yourself to fix but is just loud enough to be impossible to ignore.

“Lila invited me to her party tomorrow,” Mom says.

I sit up and look at her. “Are you going?”

Mom looks alarmed. “Are you kidding me? It wasn’t a real invitation. I’m sure she just felt like she should ask me to come.”

“Oh.” I lie back down. “I wish you could go instead of me.”

“That makes one of us.”

I reach down and turn on the vacuum, waving the brush over her feet. She squeals and pushes me away, pulling the plug out of the wall.

“Mel has this whole summer romance plan cooked up for me,” I say, making it sound like a big joke. “You could come watch me crash and burn while trying to flirt with guys at this stupid party.”

Mom sits up and hugs a throw pillow, her tan arms dark against the white fabric. “Vee, are you doing okay without Mark?”

I shrug, glancing away from her. “I guess.” Even though it was only a few weeks ago, I’m a little embarrassed about how I reacted to the breakup. I probably could have been a little less dramatic. “It still sucks. It seems like the Bentley women are always getting left behind, huh?”

I feel the wrongness of my words as soon as they leave my mouth, and Mom’s eyes widen in surprise. “I’m sorry,” I blurt, reaching out to her. “That was a stupid thing to say.”

Mom grabs my hand and holds on tight, her eyes locking on mine. “Vee, you know things didn’t work out between your dad and me for a lot of reasons. He didn’t just—” She swallows. “He didn’t just leave me. And I don’t want you to worry that the same thing is going to happen to you, because it’s not.”

Her eyes are watering, and I hate myself. No matter how many times she tells me and Jeffrey that the divorce was amicable, I remember the way her face crumpled when Dad walked out the door that last time. “I know,” I say, gently pulling my hand away and brushing my bangs out of my face. “I’m sorry.”

Mom turns away, and I sink back into the couch cushions, wondering how someone who is so good at saying the right thing during a debate can get pretty much everything else so totally wrong.