“Anything new?”
I know there won’t be. My aunt Gulia is caught in an end-less loop of bad boyfriends and bad jobs and bad choices. Her whole life is like my last March.
He shrugs, takes a deep breath, gives a yell, and flings himself out into the air above the rushing water. I wait for his head to bob back up.
“You’re stalling!” Nic calls up. “Going soft?”
It is a rush, that moment when you’re suspended in the air, and then rocket deep into the cold water. When I splash back to the surface, the adrenaline is tingling through me, more of a cool thrill than the water. I’m laughing as I come to the surface, and so’s Nic.
“Aunt Gulia and Dad being a grouch in one day. No wonder you’re tense.”
“Hey, at least she didn’t ask for money this time. Grouch?
I’d say Uncle Mike was more of a dick. But then, so was I.” He shoots me a wicked grin. “At least Vee knows how to take care of that.”
I put my hands over my ears. “La-la-la!”
“It’s funny how you’re such a prude about that when you—”
Nic stops, his voice cutting off like Cass’s mower earlier today.
The water suddenly seems colder. “When I what?”
“Gwen . . .” he starts, then trails off, ducking his head under the water as if trying to clear it. When he resurfaces, I’m ready.
“Just say it, Nic.”
“Spence Channing? For real? What were you thinking? I thought he was just . . . blowing smoke. Like that rumor about him doing five girls in a hot tub. I mean, come on, who does 142
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that? Entitled prick. But I never thought—” He shakes wet hair off his forehead. “That Alex guy, okay, typical douche giving you a snow job. But Channing?”
“Don’t get all self-righteous on me, Nico.”
“Gwen . . . I didn’t mean it like that. You know I don’t judge.”
“You had a little slip there.”
He sighs. “I know. It’s just . . . Let’s get out.”
We swim for shore, climb back up to the Bronco, pull tow-els out of the trunk. Then Nic turns to me, pinching his thumb and index finger together. “We’re this close to screwing up and getting stuck, Gwen. You know? I worry about it with me.
That I’ll be pissed off and not thinking and do something that ruins everything. I don’t want to worry about it with you too.
You’re . . . you’re too smart for that. But one little slip, and there you are . . . stuck in this place with some baby or some STD or some crummy reputation. I don’t want—”
“I already have the crummy reputation, Nic.” And you’re the one looking at engagement rings at age eighteen and not telling me. But the accusation tangles into a lump in my throat. I can’t ask. Not after he’s had to deal with both his mom and my dad today.
“Not really. ’Cause I never heard a thing until Hoop was going on about it. He thought I already knew.”
“Yeah, I pretty much thought everyone knew.” My voice catches on everyone.
Nic looks at me. I look away.
“Well, not me,” he says. “Probably not a lot of people. And it’s not like I’m going to pass it on. I just don’t really get where your head was. I told you not to go to that party.”
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“I’m the swim team mascot, remember? I like to party.”
He swears under his breath, hunches his shoulders, twitches them like he’s shaking something off. Nic shutting down.
I dive out into the water, shut my eyes, swim away from him, off to Seal Rock. It’s firm and familiar under my hands.
Still faintly warm from the sun. I climb up, rest my cheek on my folded knees, and look out, far out, to the edge of the ocean.
Nic’s right. I should never have gone to Spence’s party.
When your host is famous for hot tub orgies, you sort of know what to expect. But I wasn’t going to hide after what happened with Cass. I wasn’t going to let those Hill guys, those swim team guys, think I was good enough to record their times in the pool, good enough for a one-night stand, but not good enough to socialize with. Nic and Viv were at the White House Inn. The only hotel on Seashell—which Nic had to have saved for ages to afford. I’d spent the afternoon lingerie shopping at Victoria’s Secret with Viv, after helping Nic call in an order for the flowers and the gift basket to be left in their suite. I teetered along the cobblestone path in my unaccustomed heels next to Hoop, who was cracking his knuckles as though expecting a wrestling match at the door.
As we paused on the walkway, Emma Christianson brushed by us—tall, blond, angular, high-cheekboned, the image of money and poise, and I lost my nerve.
“Are we actually invited? We’re not walking into some scene where they’ll beat us up or anything, are we?”
Hoop rolled his eyes. “Daaaaamn, Gwenners. You know how these parties are. Spence invited hell near everybody from school—he’s gotta save face since Somers threw that big one 144
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earlier. They’re so crazy competitive. Dumbasses. Come on, I’m going to get me a beer and some serious action. Don’t worry, you look fiiiiiine.”
I’d borrowed a dress from Viv, who is considerably smaller than me—everywhere. So it was super-tight. And red. And low-cut.
I was used to parties with only a keg, or just six-packs bobbling around in melting ice in a dingy tub. This one had an entire bar—black-and-white and mirrored in a dizzying way—set up with four blenders churning out margaritas and some sort of pink drink. Spence, in a black T-shirt with a purple lei draped over it, was dumping the last of a bottle of rum into one of the blenders. He watched as we walked in and flashed me his perfect smile, the one that rarely reached his eyes—but it did now. “Whoa-ho, it’s the princess of Castle’s. Whaddya know. Didn’t think you’d show for this one, Gwen.”
Pouring a tall glass of the pink stuff, he reached over, wedged one of those little umbrellas in it, pressed it into my hand.
“I was just going to go for a Coke. Not much of a drinker,”
I said.
“Yeah, she’s a freakin’ lightweight,” Hoop confirmed. Then he gave me a friendly pat—on my butt—and slid away, shoulders bobbing to the music.
“Yet here you are.” Spence’s eyebrows lifted.
What I’d told Spence was true. Still, I immediately took a nervous slug of whatever the drink was, nearly choking on a chunk of ice. Spence just sat there while I coughed, sputtered, and eventually got control of myself. I put my glass down and hiked the top of my dress up. He smiled more broadly and gave 145
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me a practiced once-over, as though tracing the path of the blush I could feel rising.
They must offer a secret course for these guys on Hayden Hill: Putting Girls Off Balance 101. Well, to hell with it. I turned on my heel and headed toward the door I’d seen Hoop vanish through. Time for me to stick with my own kind.
Hoop had collapsed bonelessly on the couch and was ani-matedly recounting to some girl I didn’t know the story of a marlin he’d once landed off the coast of the island. I recog-nized the story. It was Nic’s marlin.
I drifted from room to room, trying to look as though I knew the house and exactly where I was headed in it. There was a hallway with a series of marble busts, a huge oval mirror, some tall shiny black standing vases with waxy white lilies.
Then a room set up to look like it was outdoors, even though it wasn’t, which contained several cockatoos in cages that reeked as though the newspaper hadn’t been changed in a while. One of the cockatoos hopped up and down as I entered, screeching, “Live bait! Live bait!” I twisted the gold-plated handle of the French doors and headed out onto the terrace. Even Spence’s birds disconcerted me.
It was a huge terrace, like a whole outdoor version of the house. I could dimly make out a figure at the curved end, looking out over all of Stony Bay. I knew who it was just by the way he was leaning on his elbows, by the glint of the hair on his down-tucked head. I wanted so badly to walk up behind him that my right foot nearly tingled, and I was suddenly afraid it would take control, dragging me into a place I knew better than to go. How on earth could I still feel that way? Nice work, 146
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Sundance. This swirl of hurt and shame and loss and confusion tightened in my stomach. I bumped back into the terrace-y room, to be greeted by the same creepy cockatoo shrieking, “There’s gold in them thar hills!” I swallowed down the last of my drink, now warm and full of strawberry seeds.
“You didn’t shut the door all the way.” Spence was leaning against the wall by the door. He gestured at the French doors behind me. “The birds need the temperature carefully regu-lated. Very important to my mother. But then, she’s in Mar-bella right now, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. So, Gwen Castle, what are you looking for, in here all by yourself?
Got to be a reason you came to this party.”
His eyes were the weirdest yellow-green color, slightly tilted up at the corners. Cat eyes. They’d always seemed to skip over me before, but now they were fixed steadily on my face. When I said nothing in response—since I had no real answer—he raised a thumb slowly to his lips and chewed on his nail, completely without self-consciousness, despite the fact that, now that I was looking, I noticed that all his other nails were bitten to the quick. Then he nodded like he’d come to a decision.
“You need another strawberry daiquiri.” Slipping his arm around my waist, his fingers resting lightly on my hip, he towed me out the door.
“I really don’t need—”
“Come on, Gwen Castle. You haven’t had enough. Not yet.
Besides, you’ve always struck me as a girl who gets an awful lot of ‘not enough.’ That won’t happen tonight.”
We took a different route to the bar than I’d taken before, down a long hallway with red-and-gold flocked wallpaper, 147
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