“I wish I had known! No, this is no way to spend your birthday!” Scout said, in a serious tone.
I was grateful for this.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“You’re supposed to be chaperoning,” Cheddar said.
“Really. You’re nineteen, diaper baby. Do you still need a babysitter, Mr. Party Poopy-Pants?”
Cheddar shot us both dirty looks.
“I am not going anywhere with you,” I said.
“What? Are you mad at me? Are you breaking up with me?” I was surprised he was talking like this in front of Cheddar.
“What about Janice?”
“Janice? Is that what this is about? She’s just … Janice. We’ve known each other forever … I got the invitation for the wedding before we met, and I needed a plus one, and she mentioned she was going to be up here anyway. It never occurred to me to tell you because it wasn’t any kind of date. And I didn’t expect you to go to some boring old wedding for someone you didn’t even know.” Now that he mentioned it, I felt weird that I had gone.
“And I couldn’t un-invite her, that would have been really rude.”
That was true.
“Cheddar, man, what the frig are you doing to the keg?” some boy said, pushing his way into the kitchen and then stumbling over to me.
“Hey, you’re new,” he said and elbowed his way between me and Scout. His sweatshirt was damp and orange with cheesy dust. He filled the space between us with the stench of beer, Cheetos, and his stinky armpits.
Scout pushed the guy out of the way and wrapped an arm around me.
“Scram,” he said, and the guy left. “But what the frig are you doing to that keg, Ched?”
“Breaking it. This party is out of control. You should have gotten the half-keg like we asked,” he said to Scout. “These kids are shitfaced.”
“These kids are shitfaced. Buzzkill.” Scout mocked. “Let’s get you out of here, birthday girl.” He opened a cupboard and grabbed two champagne flutes from the top shelf.
As we slipped out the kitchen door to the garage, Cheddar whacked the tap with a crab mallet, breaking it for good.
Scout handed me the flutes and lifted a tarp to reveal an old refrigerator hidden among the Toohey fleet of bicycles, which included everything from minuscule tricycles to a bicycle built for two. The fridge was draped in a chain and secured with a bicycle combination lock. Scout flicked the dial quickly and opened the door wide enough to extract two bottles of champagne.
“The Toohey wine cellar,” he joked. “Come on, we can’t have you turning magical eighteen in this mess,” he whispered.
“Where are we going? The lighthouse?” I asked. Even though I wanted to stay mad at him, I could feel all traces of the anger melt away.
“Nah, can’t get in there anymore … and we can’t really go far … I would have taken you out to dinner had I known, but I am supposed to be chaperoning this shindig … I know.” He took my hand, kissed it, and held it as he led me out of the garage and through the side yard, where the mop-headed hydrangeas and towering rhododendrons muffled the sounds of the party. It must’ve been glorious when those rhododendrons bloomed in spring. I had to make sure to notice next year.
We walked along the footpath that traced the compound, and the noise of the party was replaced by the normal sounds of a summer night on the point—the rolling of the waves, the crickets and night birds, and the gentle swish of pitch pine branches in the breeze.
An archway had been cut into a thicket of beach roses and, bending low to avoid the nasty thorns, we stepped through and found ourselves in Pixie’s yard, right in front of her reading house.
He tried the doors to her little hideaway, and they were unlocked.
“Perfect,” he said. He dropped my hand to open both double doors, and the full moon filled the little house with a delicious silvery glow. He put one champagne bottle down on the floor and popped the other open, sending the cork out the door and over the gardens.
“Whoops!” he said. Little moths started to gather at the light on the roof.
“It goes on when the door opens. That’s how Pixie’s mother knows to send her lunch down.” I chided myself for knowing that answer. It made us sound like babies playing with dolls.
“Huh” was all he said, and he closed the doors to see if the light would go out. It didn’t.
“Huh,” he said again. “Oh, well. Lunch, you said? They won’t be bothering us with any cucumber sandwiches if they are up in Quebec.”
“Pixie won’t like us being here,”
“Little miss Pixie is shitfaced, and last I saw, she was cleaning out the tonsils of some pencil-neck geek who is as dorky as her old man. Tell me she doesn’t have daddy issues,” he said.
I was shocked he spoke that way about family.
I was thirsty, mostly from being nervous at that crazy party, and I drank my champagne down faster than I wanted to. The last time I drank too much champagne, I woke up in Canada. I felt dizzy and sat down on the chaise. He refilled my glass.
“A toast” he said, “to the beautiful Claire. On a beautiful night. Now, she’s finally eighteen,” and we clinked glasses.
“That looks comfy,” he said and sat down next to me on the chaise.
“Look at all these books. Do you think that’s what she does in here?” he asked, kissing my face.
“I know it is.” I laughed.
“And you are eighteen and going off to college and will forget all about me.”
“I will not, and of course we can see each other.”
“Yes of course … but let’s not talk about the fall right now. Right now, it’s just you and me,” he said, caressing my face and kissing me, sliding his hand down my leg and moving my dress up over my hips just as the doors flew open and the beams of half a dozen flashlights poured in.