I hardly registered any of that, though, because Tulsa MacCreadie was standing at the glass-topped patio table, wearing sunglasses and drinking a beer. I looked fast, not wanting to be caught staring. Then I looked again. In person he was shorter than I’d thought he’d be, but just as handsome, perfectly curly hair and eyebrows like two dark, expressive punctuation marks across the top of his summer-tanned face. “Hey, Charla,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “How you been?”
“Tulsa,” Guy said. He was wearing red shorts and a brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt like the dad in an eighties movie, big dark sunglasses on his face. “This is Daisy Chain.”
Tulsa tipped his beer in our direction. “Ladies,” he said, though for one weird moment it seemed like he was actually only looking at me. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Olivia said.
“Hi!” Ashley bubbled. For all her big talk earlier, Kristin was struck silent, her mouth just slightly agape.
I frowned. It irked me, how Guy had introduced us all together like that, like we weren’t distinct people. “I’m Dana,” I blurted. “This is Ashley, Kristin, and Olivia.”
Tulsa nodded without comment, taking a swig of his beer. I felt like an idiot.
Olivia grabbed my arm and steered me toward the pool. “Be cool,” she muttered.
“I was being cool!” I protested, feeling my face flame. “I just don’t like being part of some machine.”
The boys turned up a little later, with Lucas in Juliet’s van. I could hear their noise before I saw them, felt my chest kick up the way it hadn’t even at the sight of Tulsa. Alex is here. He was wearing his swim trunks and a white V-neck T-shirt, his cheeks a bit pink from the heat. I was so relieved to see him that I wanted to bolt across the yard and catch him in a full-body tackle; instead, I held back, pulling a bit at the bathing suit Olivia had loaned me, feeling naked. “Hey,” I said, trying to keep it casual in case anyone was watching.
“You look really, really pretty,” Alex murmured, and I grinned.
The boys had been to Guy’s a bunch of times before, and within ten minutes they were playing a noisy game of tag like it was just another day at the complex pool. Kristin sunned herself like a lizard on a rock. Her bikini was so small that I thought it was probably good she’d waxed every last hair off her body.
For lunch, Guy’s chef grilled turkey burgers and hot dogs, plus steaks for the adults and vegetables for Tulsa. I stayed far away from Alex, not wanting anyone to get any ideas. “This isn’t so weird to you?” I asked Olivia, rubbing my bare feet through the rough Florida crabgrass—even Guy’s gardeners were no match for that.
She shrugged. “We gotta get used to this kind of thing, I think.”
I smirked. “If I’m ever used to a thing like this, you can throw me in the fancy pool.”
I finished my burger and Diet Coke, then went inside to pee, blinking at the darkness of the house as my eyes adjusted. In the bathroom everything was made of marble with gold faucets—the sink, the huge sunken bathtub, and what looked like a second toilet, only without a seat. I stared at it for a minute, then washed my hands and went and got Olivia and Ash.
“Come look at something with me?” I asked, leading them back to the bathroom. “What is this?”
Ashley laughed.
“It’s a bidet,” Olivia informed me.
“A what?”
“It’s for washing your butt after you poop,” Ashley explained. “It’s European.”
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. “Like, instead of toilet paper? That’s disgusting.”
“You are such a yokel sometimes,” Ashley said, but she was laughing.
“I’d rather be a yokel than a European who doesn’t use toilet paper,” I said. I reached out and pressed the gold button on it experimentally. The thing made a fssshhhh sound and a stream of water arched out, like a water fountain, and I was done. I doubled over laughing, and that set off Olivia and Ashley, and then all three of us were just cackling like maniacs, like we’d totally lost our minds. For the rest of the day, all either one of them had to do was mouth fssshhhhhhh and I had to excuse myself.
I was standing by the enormous fruit boat later that afternoon, picking all the strawberries out of the hollowed-out watermelon, when I looked up and suddenly Tulsa was right there beside me. “Hey, Polka Dots,” he said, gesturing to my bathing suit.
“Um, hey,” I said, feeling embarrassed for some reason. Tulsa had that quality about him—the ability to make you feel lame just for being alive, by virtue of the fact that he was also alive and doing it so much better than everyone else. “What’s up?”
Tulsa shrugged carelessly. “Having fun?” he asked.
I swallowed. Be cool, I reminded myself. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s good.”
“Tell me your name one more time, Polka Dots?”
“Dana,” I said, swallowing, glancing across the yard to see if anyone was looking. Everybody else was splashing around in the pool. “Dana Cartwright.”
“Dana Cartwright,” Tulsa repeated thoughtfully. “I’ve heard about you,” he said.
“About me?” I blinked. “What’d you hear?”
“That you’re the only one here worth watching.”
I gaped. “Who said that?”
Tulsa shrugged again, looking at me over the mouth of his beer bottle. “I have my sources.”
I wasn’t buying. “You’re thinking of Olivia,” I said, but Tulsa shook his head.
“I know about Olivia,” he said. “I’m talking about you.” He tipped his beer in my direction just like he had earlier. “Have fun, Polka Dots.”
“I will,” I managed. “Thanks.”
Tulsa strolled inside Guy’s house like he owned it. Everybody else was still splashing around in the pool. Trevor grabbed my ankle and tugged on it when I wandered over, making like he was going to pull me into the water and winking when I shrieked in spite of myself.
“Get in already, Cartwright!” he chided cheerfully. “What are you, too good for such humble accommodations?”
I snorted. “Better get out of the way,” I warned him, and cannonballed right into the deep end.
“What’d Tulsa want?” Olivia asked later, once we’d climbed out of the pool and were wrapping Guy’s immaculately white towels around our waists. “I saw you guys talking before.”
I smiled, scooping my wet hair up into a ponytail; as soon as you got out of the water it was unbearably hot again, like being fired from above in a giant kiln. “Oh, you know. Sweeping me off to his private villa. Making me his trophy bride.”
Olivia laughed. “Obviously,” she said as we sat down on the low wall that surrounded the pool deck. “Really, though.”
“He said—” I stopped for a moment, afraid of sounding ridiculous: like I was bragging or, worse, completely deluded. But it was only Olivia, wasn’t it? I could tell Olivia anything. “Don’t laugh, okay? But he told me he heard I’m the one here worth watching.”
“He did?” Olivia raised her eyebrows, surprise painted all over her face. “Really?”
“I know,” I said, laughing a little myself. The boys were still horsing around in the pool. “I told him he was probably confusing me with one of you, but—”