Maine Squeeze (14 page)

It was too late, and it kind of repeated some other rules on the list, but whatever. Doing it made me feel better, as if I'd proved some sort of point, which of course I hadn't.

I went back up to my room and tried to work some more, but I couldn't stop racking my brain for the name of that light blue paint shade that my mother loved so much. I could ask her in an E-mail, but that might make her suspicious.

I knew—I'd ask at the hardware store. Eddie would remember the name of it, and I could see if he had some in stock. I grabbed the car keys from the counter and went outside.

I was about half a mile from the store when I saw him running on the side of the road.

My first thought was to pull over and ask if he wanted a ride. It was raining, after all.

My second thought was to swerve and hit him.

I decided to ignore both urges and just drive past with a friendly wave to Evan. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if he recognized me. The mirror was tilted toward me, and I noticed that my hair was a complete frizzone. Naturally.

At the store, Eddie was busy helping another customer, so I picked up this big flip-book from the counter that showed hundreds of colors and tints of paint. I went through all of the blues, but none of them sounded familiar.

I kept flipping through colors, hoping I'd recognize it when I saw it. Then I gave up and wandered down the paint aisle. I was surprised I didn't see Betty McGonagle there, stocking up on a few gallons of Atlantic Ocean Blue and Sunset Sea Foam. She must buy her paint by the gallon.

“Colleen? What are you doing here?” Eddie asked when I drifted past the counter for the third or fourth time.

“I need paint. Do you remember the paint my mom bought? For the master bedroom?”

“Hm.” Eddie scratched his head. “No, can't say as I do.”

“You don't? Because I don't, either. And I've got to buy some more because I need to repaint.”

“No sense painting in this weather,” Eddie said.

The little bell above the entrance jingled, and I turned to see Evan walking into the store. He was sopping wet. Rain dripped from his hair to his shirt, from his shirt to the floor. His shoes made a squishy sound as he approached the counter.

“What did you need today, young man?” Eddie asked. “Besides a raincoat, an umbrella, and more sense than God gave a lobster.”

Two points for Eddie, I thought with a smile.

Evan ran his hands through his hair. “Uh … ants.” He pointed to the boxes stacked in the display rack beside the counter. “I mean, ant traps.”

“Ant traps,” I repeated. “You ran here in the rain for ant traps.”

“The man's got a problem,” Eddie said as he rang up the sale.

Man? No. Problem? Yes.

“All of a sudden, they're everywhere. My cousin's panicking,” Evan said. “I told him I'd pick these up when I was out on my morning run.”

“Right.” I nodded as he pulled a ten-dollar bill from his shorts pocket.

“It might stop raining, you know,” Eddie said. “I suspect we'll be done with this front in … oh, two, three days at most.” He chuckled. His telephone rang, so he picked it up with a polite wave to both of us. So much for getting paint.

Evan and I walked to the doorway and stood there for a second, watching the rain come down even harder now.

“Do you want a ride back to your house or anything?” I offered.

For a second he looked flustered, which was nice, because so far I felt like I was doing all the flustering. “Yeah. I'd better not get these traps wet,” he said.

“You wouldn't want wet ant traps,” I agreed. “Anything but that.”

“Shut up,” Evan said, and we both sprinted to the car, which was silly, considering he was already drenched and I was about to be. I slammed the door behind me and started the engine. A Volvo was a good thing to have in a flood.

“So. You still owe me for the sandals, you know,” Evan said as we started down the road.

“What? I
gave
you money,” I reminded him.

“No, you gave me half.”

“Evan!” I slapped the steering wheel. “Come on. Do you really want to be like that?”

“Like what? Cheap? Like you're being?”

I ignored his “cheap” shot and drummed my thumbs against the steering wheel as I drove. “So, I have a question.”

“Yes?” Evan asked.

“Why did you come back this year?”

“Where else would I want to be in the summer? This place is paradise,” he replied.

“Paradise.” I rolled down the window a little bit, and raindrops pelted my arm. Evan must have run pretty far. He didn't exactly smell … paradisiacal. Then, too, there was that Ultimate Endurance deodorant scent sort of hanging in the air. “Are you training for anything right now?” I asked. He'd run a few marathons already. I'd never even made it the whole way around the island, though some busy nights at work, I could have sworn I'd walked five miles—unfortunately, all of them back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen.

“No, not really. Well, I want to make the cross-country team at BU, so I guess I'm training for that. But if I don't make it … you know. I'll just transfer to Bates or something.”

I laughed. “Yeah, right.” I looked over at him. “You wouldn't.”

“I wouldn't?” he said.

“Come on. Really. Would you?” I asked.

“I doubt it, Coll. Aren't Maine winters brutal?”

“They're cold, but they're not horrible,” I said. “At least, I don't think so.”

“Yeah, but you love sweaters. I don't do sweaters.”

I smiled, because it was almost sweet of him to remember my stacks of sweaters in the hall closet.

Then I really remembered how he knew about them.

We'd been in my house; he had come over for dinner so he could finally meet Mom and Dad, and I'd brought him upstairs as part of the house tour.

“We keep this door open because Hutch likes to sleep on the sweaters,” I had explained. And Evan had gently pushed me inside the closet and closed the accordion-style door behind us and started kissing me. I was thinking, Good idea, Mom, getting this walk-in closet added during the big home renovation! And we were still kissing in the dark when I stepped on Hutch and there was a loud cat “Yowl!”

We all jumped, and Evan flung open the door so quickly that it sprang back shut again—on Hutch's tail. “Yowl!” Hutch cried while we were laughing and kissing.

“Everything okay up there?” Mom called up the stairs.

“Fine! Everything's fine, Mom!” I yelled. “Hutch is just being funny.”

Evan wiped a smudge of my lip gloss off his mouth while Hutch hissed at him as he finally bolted out of the closet to safety. That was one of the times we'd very nearly gotten caught. It wasn't the only one.

“Colleen?” Evan coughed. “The house is back there.”

“What?” I suddenly snapped out of the memory. “Oh. Right.
Right
.”

“Were you thinking what I was thinking?” he asked as I did a U-turn.

“Um. What was that?” If he said anything about the closet incident, or asked how Hutch was doing, or said he wanted to visit the cats, I didn't know what I would do. I was still mad at him. But I also might jump him and head for the nearest closet.

I am such a bad person.

“With this weather? Work's going to be so dead tonight,” Evan said. “Don't you think?”

“Oh, yeah. Really, incredibly dead.”

The way I should be for thinking such disgusting things about an ex-boyfriend.

When I got home, Sam and Erica were huddled in front of the TV, watching a movie.

“Where've you been?” Sam asked when I walked in.

“Oh. Ah. The hardware store.”

“What did you get?” Erica asked.

I looked around the living room for a minute, trying to remember. “Nothing. I guess.”

Erica stared at me with a confused expression. “Oh.”

“You seem kind of down,” Sam commented. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything's fine,” I said, but I was talking as if I were a prerecorded message.

“Coll. Really?” Erica pressed.

“Yeah.” I didn't want to admit, not even to Sam and Erica, that I had no idea (a) what I was doing, (b) how I was feeling, (c) what I should do next, and (d) what it all meant.

I told myself I should call Ben. It was almost four and he'd be home from work, so we could talk before I went in at four thirty. But it was like I didn't even know what to talk to him about right now. I definitely wouldn't tell him how I spent my afternoon.

So I told Erica and Sam about the purple lupine paint job Blair had done on my parents' bedroom, and we all ran upstairs to check it out.

“No wonder you were in such a bad mood,” Sam commented.

“Don't worry—we'll fix it. My grandparents have tons of painting supplies,” Erica said. “Masking tape, rollers, pans, all of it.”

“What was she
thinking
?”

Blair walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head. I'd had no idea she was home, and I don't think anyone else did, either.

“I was thinking I needed a change. I don't see what's so criminal in that. My parents always let me paint my room whatever color I choose.”

“But … that's your house. Not her parents' actual bedroom,” Sam pointed out.

“Look, it's okay—we'll just have to repaint before they get back. It's fine for now,” I said.

As long as Aunt Sue and Uncle Frank didn't see it. I could just see Aunt Sue placing a panicked, late-night phone call to Spain—about paint.

Chapter 12

“Colleen, there's someone at the takeout window who wants to see you,” Maggie said the next day as lunch was winding down.

Maggie was a fourteen-year-old girl with braces, here for the summer and getting her big break at the takeout window the same way that I had.

“Who is it?” I asked. For some reason I glanced over my shoulder to see where Evan was. As if he'd run outside to the takeout window or something to try to trick me. He was devious like that.

“A very cute guy,” Maggie said. “So I'm really bummed that he wouldn't let me take his order. Now
go
. I'll do this.”

She took over my salad prep work while I wiped my hands on my apron and crossed the kitchen, toward the windows. I looked through the screen and saw Ben standing there, arms folded in front of him.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you?” Ben smiled.

It was so nice to see him smile like that. And at me, no less. He must not be angry anymore, but I wasn't going to push my luck. “Thanks,” I said. “But what about work?”

“I'm done for the day,” he said.

“Oh, my gosh, is it three already?”

“It's three thirty, actually,” Ben said.

I couldn't believe it. We hadn't stopped being busy long enough for me to even take a short break, never mind look at the clock more than a few times.

“So could I get a lobster roll and fries?”

“To go or to eat here?” I asked.

“Coll, I was kind of hoping you could come outside for a break and eat with me,” Ben said.

“You know what? That's a great idea,” I said, smiling. “Hold on one second—grab a table and I'll be out with your food.” I went back into the kitchen, placed an order for the two of us, and went to find Trudy so I could tell her I was taking my half-hour break. It was a good time, because the between-shifts lull was actually, finally, happening. An hour and a half later than usual.

By the time I found Trudy our food was ready, so I carried it out the back door. I set the plates down on the picnic table where Ben was already sitting. “Oops—I forgot drinks. What do you want?”