When Alexa woke up the next morning she was lying in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, under an unfamiliar comforter. She was alone. Ohgodohgodohgod. She was alone in a strange bed. On a chair next to the bed she saw her O’Neill dress folded neatly. Oh God. She lifted up the covers and peeked down, afraid she would find that she was naked. No. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants (Sweatpants! Surely this was a first.) and—she felt behind her neck—a hooded sweatshirt. She pulled the sweatshirt away from her body to examine it. It was purple, and it said knights on it in gold. Where had she just seen a sweatshirt with gold writing? Fragments from the night before began to filter back into her brain. She was drinking cranberry juice and vodka. She was angry with Tyler. She was looking at the moon. She was spinning.
There was a soft knocking at the door, and when she said, “Yes?” her voice cracked, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. Into the room walked a boy, and the rest of the puzzle pieces clicked into place. She’d drunk two drinks on an empty stomach, and then she’d fallen onto this boy’s sweatshirt. She remembered him guiding her gently around the side of the house, and into a car.
“I’m Cameron,” he said. “Hartwell. Cam. In case you don’t remember. I brought you tea.” She noticed that before putting down the tea he laid down a coaster. There was a matching coaster underneath a half-empty (half-full?) water glass, which triggered a memory of two Advils proffered to her.
“Is this your house?”
“Yup. This is the guest room. I slept in my room.” That grin again. “It was all very proper. You were shaking in that dress, so I gave you some clothes to put on. Which you did by yourself. In the bathroom.”
“Thanks,” she said warily. “But where are we?”
“Off Turkey Hill.”
Turkey Hill was the neighborhood on the other side of the highway from downtown, where many of the houses were bigger, newer, with yards and driveways and garages. Alexa never had reason to go out to Turkey Hill. Turkey Hill was exactly as far from Plum Island as you could get while still being in Newburyport. What the hell was she doing on Turkey Hill?
“Why were you at Zoe’s party?”
“Shelby wanted to go. My, um, girlfriend. You know Shelby?” Alexa nodded. “She and Zoe ran cross country together, they’re close.” He shrugged.
“What happened to Shelby last night?” Alexa wanted to know, and she also didn’t.
“She went home,” Cam said. (Was that a grin playing at the corners of his mouth?) “She got a ride with someone else.”
Most likely, thought Alexa, Shelby had to get to bed on time. She probably had the early shift handing out breakfast to homeless people in Lowell, or she was organizing a charity walk on Boston Common.
“She was mad,” added Cam.
“Mad?”
Now the grin was full-on. “She didn’t like it that I said I would take you home.”
“So why did you?”
“You looked like you could use the help.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Well, you begged me not to take you home.”
“I did?”
He nodded. “You wouldn’t even give me your address.” This sounded plausible; Alexa sort of remembered shaking her head and making a motion like she was zipping her lips. “I asked you if you wanted to come here for a little while. We watched some Samantha Bee, and you fell asleep. I thought it was best if I just got you to bed instead of trying to get you back in the car and having a whole situation with your parents.”
“My mom,” she corrected. Then: “Samantha Bee? You’re so woke.” She was teasing, and also not.
“I try.”
“How come I don’t know you? Have you always lived here?”
“Since I was three.”
“You didn’t go to Newburyport High.”
“Immaculate Conception through eighth grade.” (The Catholic school. Alexa hadn’t known many of the IC kids, except for a few girls she played town soccer with in elementary and middle school.) “Then St. John’s Prep. I go to school in Vermont now.” He pointed to his T-shirt, which was gray. In purple letters were the words saint michael’s college and in the middle of the shirt was a drawing of a knighthead.
That explained it. “Wow. I’m so sorry. I have no idea how I got so drunk.” Even though she did know: it was simply a terrible mix of liquor and a strong beer and an extremely empty stomach. “What time is it?”
“Just after eight,” said Cam. “I’m an early riser. Do you need to call someone? Tell them where you are?”
Just after eight was good. In her house, nobody would expect her to be up before ten o’clock, and since Tyler had picked her up for last night’s party, her Jeep was still in the driveway. Even so, precautionary measures were in order.
Alexa picked up her phone, which was on the nightstand, plugged into a charger: a thoughtful bonus. There were five texts and two voice mails from Tyler, which she didn’t feel like listening to or reading yet. Her best bet was Morgan. She sent her a text. Soooo tired. Can u tell mom I got up and went back to bed? She knew that she had left the door to her bedroom closed, as she always did, and she knew that Morgan wouldn’t question her whereabouts and that her mother had read a long book last year about the power and necessity of sleep for the development of the teenage brain and since then had never judged Alexa for sleeping too much. Alexa could use the 360 app to ascertain when her mom and Morgan left the house, and then she would ask Cam to drive her home.
“Where are your parents?” she asked. Please don’t let there be parents downstairs, she thought. There was no way she wanted to do a walk of shame, shameless though it may be, past anybody’s parents.
“They’re not home. They went to the lake.”
New England was lousy with lakes, but the way Cam said it, so casually, as if there were only one, spoke to Alexa of legitimate money. She raised an eyebrow and said, like she didn’t really care, “Where?” Even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“Winnipesaukee.” She waited. “Wolfeboro,” he admitted. Bingo! Home of Mitt Romney and the Marriotts.
“I see,” she said. She lifted the mug of tea to her lips. It was lightly sweetened, with just a hint of milk. Alexa was not a tea drinker. Her caffeine of choice was a cortado, especially the ones they served downtown at the Coffee Factory, or a double espresso from Starbucks with a small dollop of milk, no sugar. But, in the interest of being polite to this young man who had not taken advantage of her, she took a cautionary sip. It tasted like liquid gold, at once cleansing and nourishing. The warmth traveled down her body, all the way to her toes, then back up again, to her head. She had to stop herself from gulping the rest of it. “Thanks again,” she said. “For the tea—for everything. You really saved me from getting in a lot of trouble.”
“I am your knight in purple armor,” he said, grinning. His grin was—well, infectious was too strong a word, wasn’t it? Or was it? She found herself grinning back. Pull it together, Alexa, she told herself sternly. You have a boyfriend.
“You seem like you have a lot of school spirit,” she said. It wasn’t a compliment, not necessarily, but he took it as one.
“Thanks,” he said. “I play golf.”
“Golf? College golf?”
He nodded and smiled some more, seeming not at all embarrassed.
She rose from the bed, wondering if he was watching her, not that she cared, but of course he was watching her.
“Bathroom’s that way,” he said, “in case you don’t remember.” (She didn’t.)
She looked out the window. She could see a pristine pool bordered by iron lawn chairs with bright orange cushions and contrasting turquoise pillows—a color combination of which she approved. She could see a badminton net set up with a crisp yellow border around it, and the requisite corn hole game, painted with the Red Sox logo.
“Be right back,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound coquettish. The bathroom was en suite. There were two sinks, side by side, the kind where the sinks look like bowls or vessels dug up from a Greek archeological site and refurbished to perfection. She looked in the mirror above one of the sinks. Her hair was a disaster, and her mascara was smeared. She would never, ever let Tyler see her like this, nor would Tyler want to. She washed her face, then opened the cabinet under one of the sinks to see if she could find some passable moisturizer. There was a brand-new tub of Kiehl’s ultra facial cream, which would do just fine. She slathered it on, and returned to the bedroom.
Cam was still grinning. He had made the bed and returned the throw pillows to where they must have been before she crashed the night before.
“Breakfast?” he said. “I make a good omelet.”
Of course he did. She was really hungry. She acquiesced to the omelet, which, it turned out, was one of the best she had ever tasted; it was positively dripping with cheddar cheese, and also included a costarring role of a gorgeous tomato.
While they ate they played a couple of rounds of the name game. They knew a few people in common; they were only two years apart in school. They went to different preschools, Alexa to Knoll-Edge and Cam to Mrs. Murray’s, so their paths had diverged from the beginning. She told him about Colby with a straight face and he said, “I have a buddy there. I’ll tell him to look out for you. He’ll be a junior, same as me. We went to the Prep together. Ethan Whittaker.”
“Great,” she said. “Ethan Whittaker. I’ll keep my eye out for him.”
When she finished her omelet she loaded her plate in the dishwasher and offered to load his as well, not because she considered that woman’s work but because he had done the cooking so it seemed only fair. The omelet pan was already clean, set upside down to dry.
“I have to work at nine,” said Cam. “We’d better get going. I’ll drop you off at home on my way, okay?”
She nodded. “Where do you work?” She figured he’d say something like training guide dogs to help blind war veterans or running summer camps for youth services.
“Market Basket,” he said. “Mostly on checkout. And I’m training to be an assistant manager.” This revelation didn’t add a milligram to the scale on which Alexa had been weighing Cam’s cachet, but he looked so proud that she squeezed out this: “My mom loves Market Basket. She almost never goes to Shaw’s.” And even though she would like nothing more than to repair to the guest room and sink once again into those glorious sheets, under that cloud of a comforter, she said, “I don’t want to make you late.” She pointed at her St. Michael’s spirit wear and said, “Um, I can change back into my dress now and give you this . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” Cam said. “I have plenty. You can get it to me another time. I grabbed your dress for you.” He handed her a CVS bag with her dress folded neatly inside. Her flip-flops she found in the massive mudroom. Cam swung open the door from the mudroom to the outside. There was a minivan in the driveway. “Your chariot, my lady,” he said, bowing and making a sweeping gesture with his hand that should have been completely awkward but was somehow sort of charming.
She could probably have him if she wanted him, this egg-savvy, golfing, guestroom-offering Catholic boy with the nice brown eyes and the promising biceps. She could take him from Shelby McIntyre in a millisecond, in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t require more than a toss of her hair, a few strategic texts and one sunset beach picnic. But, there were other considerations. There was Tyler. There were her two jobs. There was the fact that Alexa had attracted the interest of many, many different kinds of boys since the year she turned fourteen but had never dated a golfer.
The air was wet and pulpy with humidity. In the yard across the street a kid of six or so was kicking around a soccer ball, and another kid was zipping down the street on a scooter. It was summer, obviously. But in a funny way it felt like it was Christmas morning and Cameron Hartwell was a present Alexa hadn’t yet unwrapped.
Before she got into the minivan she marched up to Cam, placed a hand on each of his cheeks, and kissed him.