“No,” I said, much too quickly for it to be the truth. Because it absolutely was. I hadn’t talked to him since we’d been on the dock together, but whenever I’d gone into Borrowed Thyme to pick something up, I’d been disappointed when it wasn’t him behind the counter. I’d seen him a few times at a distance, in his kayak on the lake, silhouetted against the sun.
“You need to do something about that,” Lucy said as she lay back down on the ground and closed her eyes. “Either become friends with him again, or tell him how you feel and get it over with.” Before I could respond, Lucy’s phone beeped with a text, and she grinned as she sat up. “Bet you it’s Kyle,” she said, drawing out the syllables of his name. But her face fell as she read the text. “It’s just Elliot,” she said, dropping her phone back on the grass again. “He says he needs you to come back.” Since I’d started to have more of a social life, I’d begun carrying my phone again, but Elliot would always call Lucy’s phone, even when the message was for me.
“Fine.” I sighed, but I was already standing up and sliding my feet into my flip-flops. I was actually grateful to have some time to think about what Lucy had said. I wasn’t going to ask Henry out—he had a girlfriend with annoyingly perfect hair—but maybe we could be friends again. Did I really have anything to lose?
“Don’t let him trick you into staying,” Lucy said as I started toward the snack bar. “We still need to talk about the Kyle situation.”
I nodded as I headed to the employee entrance. I had a feeling that Elliot might actually need my help, because if he just wanted one of us to keep him company, he would have asked for Lucy. “What is it?” I asked, as I came in through the side door, going temporarily blind as my eyes adjusted to the darkness after the brightness of the day outside.
Elliot tipped his head toward the front window. “You were requested specifically,” he said. Gelsey and Nora stood in front of the window, my sister smiling, Nora looking impatient.
“Hey, you two,” I said, stepping up to the center of the counter. “What’s up?”
“Where were you?” Nora asked, folding her arms across her chest. While she’d gotten slightly less grumpy recently, she certainly hadn’t become sunshine and light, by any stretch of the imagination.
“I was just taking a break,” I said, wondering why I was justifying myself to a twelve-year-old. “Do you guys want something?”
“Sprite,” they said in unison. “And barbeque chips,” Gelsey continued, “and frozen M&Ms.”
Nora peered into the darkness of the snack bar. “Is Lucy here?”
“She’s up on the grass,” I said, pointing. The girls’ adoration of Lucy had been cemented when, the day after the slumber party, they’d come to the beach and Lucy had taught them how to do round-offs.
Elliot filled the sodas and grabbed the snacks while I rang them up. I handed Gelsey back the change, and after a moment’s consideration, she magnanimously put a single quarter in the tip jar.
“Thanks,” I said. Nora took a sip of her soda and Gelsey opened the bag of chips, but neither of them made any effort to leave. “Was there something else?” I asked. We weren’t exactly besieged by customers, but apparently Fred didn’t like people just hanging out in front of the snack bar, as it discouraged the people who didn’t want to wait on line.
“Uh-huh,” Gelsey said, crunching down on a chip, then tilting the bag toward Nora, who pursed her lips and carefully selected one. “You need to pick up the dog from the groomer’s when you’re done with work.”
“You’re kidding.” I sighed. “Again?”
Both Gelsey and Nora nodded. “Again,” Nora confirmed. “Your brother has a problem.”
Last week, my mother, shocked at just how many squeaky toys Murphy had managed to accumulate in a very short time, had forbidden all of us (but specifically Warren, since he was the only one buying them) from getting the dog any more accessories. And so, Warren had been devising increasingly desperate and obvious excuses to go to Doggone It!, see Wendy the vet-in-training, and possibly get up the nerve to say more than hello. The first time he’d spilled something on the dog, we’d thought it was an accident. Warren claimed that he’d just been drinking some tomato juice when the dog had run into the kitchen. He took the dog to get groomed, and nobody thought anything of this until, two days later, Warren managed to spill grape juice on him. Back Murphy went to the groomer, and when I caught Warren stalking the dog with a bottle of ketchup (because the dog, no fool, had started to flee whenever he saw my brother approaching), I’d finally confronted him about it.
“You need to stop tormenting the dog,” I told Warren as I forcibly removed the ketchup from his hands and stuck it back in the fridge. “You’re going to give him some kind of skin rash or something. I don’t think dogs are supposed to be washed this often.”