“He took you for Indian food? Did he pay?” Kirby leaned against my bedroom doorframe later that night, hyped up after finding my lunch leftovers in the fridge. Spazzy as she was, her eyes were at half-mast, and her auburn locks were rimmed with frizz. She’d been pulling double duty ever since I signed on to the regatta, keeping up with emergencies at the library and at Mermaid Tears.
I nodded from my computer desk, waved her in.
“Seriously, what are you doing?” She kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the end of my bed. “A lunch date? With Christian?”
Not a date.
“Maybe not for you. But Elyse, Christian never pays. It’s his policy or whatever so he doesn’t set up any expectations.” Kirby barely took a breath. “So if he paid, that’s a really big deal. What do you think it means? Are you guys, like, hooking up?”
She’d made air quotes around “hooking up,” whispering the words as though they were foul.
I couldn’t hold back my smile. Kirby was so worried, it was bordering on ridiculous. She reminded me of my sister Hazel, who was only a year older than Natalie and me and took her responsibility as our elder very seriously.
You’re so macocious, I mouthed, but Kirby wasn’t familiar with the word. A busybody, I tried again.
“How do you say ‘concerned friend’ in Trini? Because that’s what I am. Vanessa got me worried,” she explained. “She said you guys weren’t at the boat when she went over there with the picnic basket, and you weren’t answering my texts. Which reminds me . . .” Kirby grabbed the cell from my desk. “I’m putting Vanessa’s number in here for you. Hey, this isn’t even turned on!” She shook her head, waited for the phone to blink to life. “Honestly, Elyse.”
I’d been on the laptop when Kirby found me, so I pulled up the notepad app and typed out a quick summary of our day.
The Coos Bay hardware store had what we needed, and after that, Christian had taken me to India’s Palace for lunch.
“It’s not strictly Trinbagonian,” he’d said, “but I think you’ll like this place.”
He was right on both counts—I did like it. And it wasn’t Trinbagonian. Not even close to the roti shops back home, to the fragrant feasts my friends’ parents had cooked. But he’d been so excited to take me there; he’d done research online, read about the Indian influence on our food back home. He’d hoped India’s Palace would bring me back to some of the best parts of the islands.
He was so sweet, almost shy about it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how different it was.
Christian had insisted I order, thinking I had this insider’s knowledge. I was so touched by the gesture that I let him believe it, pointing out dishes on the menu like I knew what I was doing. I ordered enough food for a week—hence the leftovers in Lemon’s fridge.
We had an amazing day.
But the best part wasn’t the food, the spiciness, the cool mango lassi to wash it all down. It was the fact that Christian had been researching stuff about T&T, thinking of my home. The fact that he’d done something special, just for me.
“But what did you guys talk about?” Kirby wanted to know. “I mean, you were gone a long time.” She tucked her legs up underneath her body, settling in for the gossip. For a minute it seemed like she’d forgotten her campaign against Christian—like he was just a regular cute boy, like she and I were just another pair of girlfriends talking about our crushes.
It was . . . nice.
Still typing, I told her a little bit about our conversation—how Christian had wanted to know all about the country, the history, what the food was like, how so many different kinds of people could come together on twin islands. I’d tried to keep up, responding in my notebook as quickly as I could, but each answer brought more questions. It was as if the cleaning masks we’d been wearing on the boat had stifled all the words, and once we’d gone out without them, the torrent unleashed.
He was on his second helping of chicken vindaloo, still asking questions, before I’d even finished my samosa. When I jokingly pointed out the unfair advantage, he reached across the table, fingers brushing mine as he slid the Sharpie and notebook out of my grasp. He turned to a fresh page and scratched out a note, then passed it back silently.
We’d gone on like that for another hour, asking questions and talking through written words alone. By the time our waiter had asked us to wrap it up, my stomach, my notebook, and the restaurant were near capacity. Hours had passed. Neither of us had realized how long we’d been sitting, talking, writing. We’d been lost in our own world, lost in hundreds of words. Both of our writing hands were inked and smudged, evidence of our questions and answers—his about Trinidad and Tobago. Mine about California and Oregon. Favorite foods. Movies. Funny stories from school.
But none too deep about our families, about the scars they’d left.
It was like we’d both sensed it, the boundaries of conversation. The too-real words that would pierce our hearts, pop this fragile bubble of new friendship with shards from the past that neither of us was ready to face.
We’d gathered up our leftovers and driven back to the Cove in silence, as if neither of us wanted to break the spell we’d weaved on our long lunch break. Even after we’d parked the truck in the Kanes’ garage and walked back to Lemon’s house together, we’d exchanged only glances, shared only smiles.
Outside the gift shop door downstairs, Christian had grabbed my free hand, turned it over.
His skin was warm, rough from all the work we’d been doing on the Vega.
With his teeth he’d uncapped the Sharpie I hadn’t seen him take from my pocket, and he wrote a final message on my palm.
Sweet dreams.
I peeked at it now, careful to keep it hidden from Kirby.
That part of the story was all mine.
“Sounds like you had a great day,” Kirby said, her smile warm and genuine. “I’m glad, Elyse. It shows. You look . . . I don’t know. Less depressed? Is that wrong to say?”
I barked out a breathy laugh. She was right. Today had felt more like a vacation than any of my days in Oregon. I could still taste the tangy mango lassi, and my stomach was more than excited for a midnight raid on the fridge later—a thought which only reminded me of Christian, his surprising attentiveness today. I wasn’t ready to admit this to Kirby, but thinking of him fanned the spark inside me into an ember, red and glowing.
Still . . . with the house on the line I couldn’t get sidetracked by fantasies about a boy whose main mission in life was making girls swoon. Kirby didn’t know Christian fully, and maybe she was unfair in her harsh judgments. But that didn’t mean she was entirely wrong. I’d seen the way girls looked at him, how he flirted. How it was obvious that some of them had gotten entangled with him in summers past. I had no interest in being one of those girls this time next summer, watching with envy whenever he brought someone home for the “grand tour.”
I had to focus on the Queen, not her captain. That’s what I’d been doing on the computer when Kirby had started her playful interrogation.
I updated her on the dock-block situation. After Christian dropped me off tonight, I’d spent the last two hours online, scouting out hardware and boating stores within a half-hour drive. Things worked out today, but the Vega would need a lot more work before she was seaworthy, and Coos Bay was too far to drive every time we needed a handful of bolts.
We need a closer hardware store, I typed for Kirby. Not in the Cove, but not as far as CB. Any ideas?
“You do realize the coast has about five billion state parks and campgrounds, and that most of them have their own marinas, right?” Kirby looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. When I didn’t make the connection, she said, “The bigger marinas have their own supply stores with camping and sailing gear. Some of them even sell boats and parts on-site.”
She nudged me over, smooshing onto the chair next to me. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up a map with all the parks and marinas in the area. From there we found the ones with supply stores or boat sale operations.
In a rare moment of unrestrained joy, I flung my arms around her.
“Wow,” she said. “If I’d known my Google fu was the way to your heart, I would’ve shown off my librarian-in-training skills long ago.”
I sent the page to print on Lemon’s networked printer in the gallery, and off we went. Kirby beat me to it, swiped the paper from the output tray.
“One condition,” she said, waving the page between us. I braced myself for another lecture about Christian, but Kirby only smiled. “In thanks for my services, you have to share those leftovers. I haven’t had Indian in forever!”
I nodded toward the kitchen so we could start the late-night feast. But as Kirby set out clean plates and silverware, her smile slipped, and I froze. I recognized the look that had taken hold, rearranging her features.
Fear.
I tapped the countertop to get her attention. What’s up, gyal?
“Noah doesn’t like this any more than Christian,” she said. Her gaze dropped to a water spot on the counter, and she dragged her finger through it as she talked. “I feel so bad for him. For both of them. And I’m trying to be super supportive for Noah, because I know how hard it’ll be for him if he loses and has to deal with his dad’s disappointment. Same as Christian, I guess. It’s just . . . it’s weird, you know? And Noah’s in the middle and I’m in the middle and I just . . .” She stopped playing with the water and met my eyes again, lowering her voice. “I like him, Elyse. I really, really, really like him.”
I gave her an encouraging smile. Christian had teased her and called her Sleeping with the Enemy, and we all laughed, but I knew it wasn’t easy for her. Everyone knew it, just like we all knew how much she liked Noah.
“This whole week, the library’s been crawling with those P and D guys, looking at old blueprints and town infrastructure stuff.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “I like Noah, more than anyone. But I don’t want to lose the house. I don’t want to lose the Cove.”
It was the first time she’d admitted her fears to me, the first time she’d given any indication that losing the house was even a possibility for her. I reached across the counter and grabbed her hands, and as clear as I could form the words, I made her the same promise Christian had made me.
We’re not going to lose.