“How do you have a talk like that and still have your guard up?” Sloane asks, lowering her sunglasses to stare me down properly. “It’s like a rom-com movie breakthrough, that moment when your heroine finally realizes that maybe the jerkoff hero isn’t such a jerkoff and may actually have a heart.”
I lean forward, resting my head against the giant flamingo float in Sloane’s swimming pool. I breathe in the plastic smell of the pink bird, relishing the way it mixes in the air with the scent of chlorine and sunscreen. It smells like summer, and for half a second, it’s like being at Dad’s house rather than thousands of miles away.
“Kaia, why won’t you just accept that you’re the heroine and he’s the hero and this is all meant to be?” she continues. “It’s literally written in the stars and strung together with twinkle lights. It’s so bright and beautiful, and you just keep turning off the light.”
Sloane doesn’t live in the real world. I think she’s probably the best thing I could’ve found on this island, but my God, she’s clueless. I’m sure she spends a lot of time hanging out in her big house watching movies where everyone falls in love and gets their happily ever after. She’s on an island separated from the rest of the world. She probably thinks the rest of the planet lives on a movie set, and now she has a front row seat to the filming of my movie.
But this isn’t a rom-com or even a romance in general. This is summer with my dad, chasing swells, living on an island, escaping all the things that haunt me back home.
“You should let me meet him,” she says.
“What?” I hook my arm around the flamingo’s neck immediately, trying to keep my balance. “You’re not meeting him. You’ll try to put in a good word for me or something. I know how girls like you operate.”
She bursts into laughter, which echoes around us. “I’d be cool about it,” she retorts. “I know girl code. He wouldn’t even know that I was putting in a good word. It’d just seep into his subconscious, and later, he’d realize that you were pretty amazing and wonder why he never saw it before.”
I’m not sure if Hollywood is in the market for new writers, but they should definitely fly out here and talk to Sloane about her daydreams of chick flicks and rom-coms. The girl has them down to an art – so much so that she’s trying to turn my life into one.
“I want to show you somewhere today. It’s my favorite place on the island,” she says, slipping off of her unicorn float and paddling toward me. “It’ll take your mind off of the boy for a little bit.”
She ducks under water and swims away before I can object that my mind isn’t on the boy. But she knows better and so do I. He was supposed to be my punching bag for the summer, someone I could use to channel my anger toward, but all I can think about is how perfect his silhouette looked against the backdrop of the bleeding sky last night. The way his jaw line curved sharply around his face was like a beautiful mountain resting against the sunset.
Ugh. Why couldn’t my dad find someone who wasn’t so beautiful to take under his wing? Regardless of how gorgeous he is, he has a reputation, and just because he’s trying to redeem himself doesn’t mean he won’t slip back into his old habits. Those things are hard to break. Who knows what a sponsorship and few trophies might do to his ego?
I push myself off of the flamingo into the cool water and swim over to the edge, where Sloane is sitting with her legs dangling into the pool. A towel drapes over her shoulders.
“So, where’s your favorite place on the island?” I ask.
“You’ll see when we get there,” she says.
An hour later, the sun attempts to dry my hair as we walk toward the massive gates to Catalina Botanical Gardens. Bright pink and purple flowers pop out of the green leaves, as if they knew they were to grow in perfect placement for photo opportunities. Vines weave up the walls like they’re holding them in place to guard the plants behind them.
“It’s my dream job to work here,” Sloane says before pressing a button to open the large gates. The iron creaks as it pulls back, allowing us to enter. “I’m going to major in botany and hopefully work here after college or maybe even during if I can get in.”
She points toward a mossy bridge, so I proceed in that direction. Purple and blue hydrangeas hang like grapevines from the arch of the overpass. Small yellow flowers line the edges of the walkway. Ahead of us is a giant horse made solely from driftwood. It stands tall, rearing back as if about to charge into battle.
“This is pretty elaborate,” I say. I’ve never been to any type of garden, much less one of this extreme. “Did they grow all of this here?”
Sloane nods. “Everything was grown locally. Some plants didn’t survive here, but they’ve spent decades studying them and preserving what they can to keep certain plants from extinction,” she explains. “I’ve always loved the flowers. I like to watch them grow. It amazes me how a little seed turns into something this beautiful.”
She spins around, like she’s absorbing all of the colors of the flowers around us, inhaling her own rainbow of petals and leaves. I envy that freedom, that ability to dream for something so big without fears of reality creeping in. I feel my chest tighten every time someone asks what my plans are for college or what I want to do with my life. A few weeks ago, I had to have permission and a hall pass just to go pee, and now everyone acts like I’m supposed to know my life’s path and have a solid plan to accomplish it.
I start to voice these thoughts, even though I know it’d burst her carefree bubble, but the expression on her face already says that everything isn’t all rainbows and flower crowns. She stops spinning in the breeze and quickly turns her back on our path.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper, stepping closer toward her.
“My ex-boyfriend...and his new girlfriend,” she whispers back.
I casually glimpse around, hoping I can figure out at a glance which guy she’s referring to. It’s pretty easy, though. We’re surrounded by employees, senior citizens, and married couples with children. Spotting a cute guy with a girl clinging to his arm isn’t hard.
“Let’s go this way,” she says, walking away quickly before I can interject.
“What’s the story?” I ask, catching up to her.
I try to keep an open mind because it could’ve been a terrible break up. Maybe he’s a cheating asshole. Maybe he broke her heart. Sloane is definitely softer than I am because I would’ve made a point to be seen, even with wet hair and smelling like chlorine. If you hurt me, I’m going to be a thorn in your side, like it or not. Even if it breaks me, I won’t let you know I’m broken. That’s probably why Dad says that I come across as harsh. I live in defense mode, but it’s safer with these walls around my heart.
“His name is Clark,” she whispers before glancing back to make sure he’s out of earshot. Then she speaks normally. “I’ve known him my whole life. We dated for the last year and a half, but he broke up with me the day after graduation. He said he needed to be single for a little while to make sure he knew what he really wanted out of life.”
Oh, I hope she didn’t believe that. This guy sounds like a snobbish jerk. If I wasn’t surrounded by trees with purple leaves, I’d probably be more pissed at this guy, but it’s hard to be in fight mode when you have stargazers and birds of paradise growing around you.
“It was so dumb,” she continues, relieving my worries that she bought into it. “He said he was being forced to make all of these ‘adult decisions’ all of a sudden, and they’d follow him for the rest of his life, and he needed a clear head for it. He didn’t want a girlfriend because he didn’t want that to influence him. He was dating Naomi a week later. That’s her.”
“Yet it didn’t kill your desire for a happily ever after?” I ask.
By the way this girl was talking in the pool, you’d never guess she just endured a horrible break up with a guy full of bullshit and lies. She’s like a literal butterfly, floating through a garden, free and optimistic that the right caterpillar is out there brewing just for her.
“I’m not letting one stupid guy crush that,” she declares. “There’s no way I’m letting him have that kind of victory. Him or anyone else, really. One day I’ll be the heroine, and I may go through a few wrong heroes in the meantime, but I refuse to believe that I won’t have a happy ending.”
Maybe Sloane has more fight mode inside of her than I realized. “So, you really want to meet Dominic?” I ask.
She smiles because she knows she’s won. “I’ll do whatever you need,” she says. “Bonfire on the beach? Taco truck? Pool day? You name it. I’m officially your fairy god sister – because I’m not old enough to be your fairy godmother.”