| |
The Davis family owned a three-story contemporary house that sat directly on the beach. It was mostly fashioned out of glass windows, but the architecture was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The size also surprised me; it wasn’t much smaller than Angelica’s house. I supposed that with six kids, the family had to have a somewhat larger house than most families did—but this was pretty exquisite.
When I knocked on the front door, no one answered. I realized that Jackson and his family were probably in the backyard already.
The scent of barbeque chicken and smoke from the grill filled my nostrils as I walked around the house and into the backyard, where I found more people than I’d been expecting. Jackson told me that they were having a ‘family barbeque’ which I’d taken as a small gathering; this was more like a large reunion.
“Felicia, I’m so glad you could make it!” I turned to find that Nora was waving at me, and it surprised me that she was the first one who had noticed me. She looked much more casual today than the first time I’d met her. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun, and she was wearing a pair of denim shorts with a white bandeau top that revealed her toned shoulders.
“Let me introduce you to everyone,” Nora said, grabbing me by the arm.
As we approached a girl with curly blonde hair and a surfer tan (in fact, I was pretty sure I had seen this very girl riding the waves during one of my shifts the other day), Nora said, “This is Carson.”
I was shocked that this girl was one of their sisters. Aside from the tan, she looked nothing like Jackson or Nora.
“Hi, Felicia,” Carson beamed at me. “It’s so nice to meet you.” I noticed that Carson’s Southern accent was more pronounced than Jackson and Nora’s were. I wondered why.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I replied politely.
“Jackson told me that you like Dave Matthews Band,” Carson said, and I recalled mentioning that I liked them when he had walked me home the other night. “I have concert tickets for September. Maybe you’d like to come with?”
“Um, sure,” I replied, trying not to think about how awkward it was that Carson would invite me to a concert without even really knowing me yet. It was even more peculiar that Jackson had talked about me to her. I’d thought it was strange enough that Nora had given me the day off, but at least she had already met me.
“I’m coming, too,” another girl said, strolling over to us. “It will be lots of fun. Hi, I’m Kiersten.”
“Kiersten is another one of our sisters,” Nora explained, and I nodded. I wasn’t about to tell her that I actually remembered all of Jackson’s sisters’ names.
Kiersten looked nothing like Jackson and Nora and nothing like Carson, either. Her skin was a warm shade that gave her cheeks a natural blush, and her hair was a shade of mousy brown. She wore black capris and a dressy tank top; she looked more professional than both Nora and Carson (who was sporting a pair of overalls and a tube top).
“Jackson is in the house with Abby,” Nora explained. “He should be out in a minute. Why don’t you grab something to eat?”
I was tempted to say that the smell of the food was actually beginning to make me feel sick to my stomach, but I didn’t want to be rude. So, instead, I nodded and grabbed a plastic plate and began filling it up with deviled eggs and potato salad from bowls that had been laid out on a picnic table.
The back door swung open and Jackson came outside with a girl with hair that had been dyed mahogany, who I assumed to be Abby. When he saw me, his face lit up, and he walked over to me. “Hey, Chair Thirteen.”
“I wish you would stop calling me that,” I said with a smile. “Thirteen is an unlucky number, you know.”
“Nonsense.” Jackson shook his head. “Thirteen is the luckiest number there is.”
“Oh, and why is that?” I giggled.
“Well, I was born on the thirteenth,” Jackson replied. “Friday the thirteenth, to be exact. Some might think that’s an unlucky birthday, but I don’t feel unlucky right now.” When he met my eyes, I felt the butterflies swarm around my stomach again. I knew he was flirting with me, and it made me happy.
I was trying to figure out what to say without sounding too lame when a mahogany-haired girl strolled over to me. “You’re Felicia?” she asked.
I nodded. “And you must be Abby. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” she replied curtly before turning around and scampering over to her sisters, who were all standing in a circle talking to each other. Abby leaned in and whispered something to Nora. All four sisters looked up at me, and even though I turned away from them so they wouldn’t think I was staring, I could feel eight eyes on me.
“Well, that’s not awkward,” I said quietly to Jackson.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty sure my sisters like you,” Jackson said.
“It doesn’t seem like it,” I replied, glancing back over at them. When they noticed that I was looking in their direction, they all looked away from me and went back to whispering to each other. I felt nervous that I was most likely the topic of the conversation right now; what could they possibly be saying about me?
“Trust me,” Jackson replied, grabbing my hand. “If they didn’t like you, they’d already be trying to make you leave by now. I feel pretty positive about this.”
I felt my eyes widen. I know he’d said his sisters were intimidating, but I hadn’t expected them to be that mean—then again, they were talking about me, and if Jackson was right, they didn’t even dislike me. I felt relieved—although I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was right.
“Hey, do you want to take a walk?” Jackson asked, motioning to the beach. “This area’s pretty private, for the most part.”
“Sure, let’s go,” I nearly blurted out. Anything to escape from his sisters sounded like a really good idea to me right now.
I followed Jackson down his sandy yard until we were away from the house. “So, Abby, Kiersten, and Carson look nothing like you,” I commented.
“No, they don’t,” Jackson replied, looking down at the ground. “If I tell you a secret, do you promise to keep it to yourself?”
“Of course.”
“Nora and Phoebe are my only full biological sisters,” Jackson said. “Kiersten, Carson, and Abby all have different fathers.”
“Oh, are they older than Nora?” I asked. I was surprised that I hadn’t made the connection myself; it certainly explained the difference in their looks.
“No, they’re younger than Nora, but older than me,” Jackson replied. “My mom cheated on my dad.” Before I could say anything in response, he quickly explained, “It was a long time ago, and my mom’s actually kept it a secret for all of these years. Only Phoebe and Nora know the truth. They’re the ones who told me. The rest of my sisters don’t know. My dad doesn’t even know.”
“Wow,” I murmured. Jackson got quiet, and I got the feeling that he didn’t really want to talk about it anymore, so I changed the subject. “I haven’t met Phoebe yet. Where is she?”
“She’s not home right now,” Jackson replied. “I don’t know when she will be. You’ll meet her eventually. If you stick around.”
“Well, I have a few hours before I need to go home,” I began to say, but Jackson interrupted me with a laugh.
“I don’t mean if you stick around tonight. I mean if you stick around.”
This time, I understood what he meant: if I stuck around for the long haul . . . if I didn’t just disappear like Tyler had done to me.
Jackson stopped walking and turned to look at me, waiting for an answer. His blue eyes penetrated through mine, and it felt like my heart was going to beat through my chest.
“I plan to stick around,” I whispered quietly. Jackson moved closer to me; his face was so close to mine that I could feel the warmth of his breath against my neck, and I breathed in the scent of his musky cologne.
“I’d like that,” Jackson whispered back. He wrapped his arms around my waist, and I allowed my tense body to relax at his grip. His arms were strong and muscular, and I felt protected.
When his eyes locked with mine, I felt captivated by them. It was as though they were the ocean tide, pulling me into the sea.
I tilted my chin slightly and closed my eyes, just as I felt his lips lock with mine. His lips were warm against my own and, when he bit down lightly on my bottom lip, I tried to contain the feeling of ecstasy that washed over me. I had never known that a first kiss was supposed to be this good.
When Jackson pulled away from me after a few moments, I glanced at him. One look in his eyes told me that the kiss was just as good for him as it had been for me.
“I’m falling for you, Felicia,” Jackson whispered.
“I’m falling for you, too,” I whispered back. As soon as the words left my lips, I immediately realized what they meant . . . and I wished that I could take them back. “I just remembered something,” I said. “I have to go.”
“Now? I thought you said you were staying for a few more hours,” Jackson called to me as I turned away from him.
“I forgot,” I replied as though it were self-explanatory. I hoped he thought I was talking about some sort of family emergency, when really I had forgotten that I wasn’t supposed to fall for anyone because there was a chance that I could kill them.
“Wait!” Jackson called after me. “Was it the kiss? Can we talk about this?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, and I saw the pain that had crossed over his face. It made me feel guilty, so I stopped running from him. “It’s not you, I promise. And it wasn’t the kiss. The kiss was amazing,” I said breathlessly, remembering how it had made me feel all over again. “We can talk later. I just have to figure something out.”
“Okay,” Jackson replied; the look on his face told me that he wasn’t fully convinced. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
I nodded before running again. I didn’t stop until I ran halfway across town to Angelica’s house. I pounded on the door, but there was no answer. I rang the doorbell four times and waited for ten minutes. No one was home.
I was going to have to figure this all out on my own.
*
When I got back to Gram’s house, she was sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea and reading a book.
“Hi, Bumblebee,” she said when I came into the room.
“Gram, I need your advice,” I told her, sitting down across from her.
She pulled her reading glasses off and looked up at me. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
“Did you ever have feelings for someone, even though you weren’t supposed to?” I asked.
A look of recollection flashed through Gram’s eyes. “Before I met your grandfather, there was this boy. His name was Joseph Levy, and he was stunning. He had the biggest blue eyes you’d ever seen! All of the girls in town wanted to date him. One summer, when I was working at my father’s deli, he asked me on a date. So, I said yes.
“I told all of my friends about the date that Joseph was planning for me, and everyone seemed really excited for me—even my parents. Mom just wanted to see me settle down, and she was happy to hear that I had been asked out by such a fine young gentleman. My father was a little hesitant at first, but he came around to the idea . . . Until Joseph showed up on our front doorstep the night of our date, carrying a bouquet of roses.”
Gram paused and looked up at me. “You know, Spinelli’s?”
“That really good deli on the boardwalk?” I asked. “I love their pickles.”
Gram nodded and smiled. “That’s the one. Well, when Joseph came to fetch me for our date, my father threw a fit. It turned out that Joseph was Robert Spinelli’s grandson. Robert Spinelli was the owner of Spinelli’s, which was our biggest rival. My father forbade us from seeing each other ever again.”
“So, what happened after that?” I asked.
“Joseph and I continued to see each other behind my parents’ backs,” Gram replied, and my eyes widened. It surprised me that she had done something to disobey her parents; it was easy for me to forget that my grandmother had been a teenager at one point, too. “We talked about running off and getting married. We hated that my parents were so against us seeing each other. Eventually, it just became too difficult for us to date, and I had to end it. It was a good thing, because I met your grandfather shortly after that.”
“Oh,” I replied. I was kind of sad that there hadn’t been a happy ending for my grandmother and Joseph. Of course, it was hard to imagine her with anyone except for my grandfather, but I wondered how differently her life would have turned out if she’d ended up with Joseph instead.
Since there wasn’t a happy ending for Gram and Joseph, did that mean there wouldn’t be a happy ending for me and Jackson? The idea that I might not be able to stick around like I’d told him I would made me feel sad. I understood why Angelica thought I shouldn’t date, but what made her a relationship expert? She was only marrying George for his money, not because she actually cared about him.
“The moral of the story is that Joseph and I weren’t meant to be,” Gram continued, meeting my eyes. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re not meant to be with whoever you think you shouldn’t be falling for. You just need to let your heart guide you.” She paused before asking, “Is there something you want to talk about?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m fine. I think you helped me solve the problem. Thanks for your advice, Gram.”
“Anytime, Bumblebee.”