I wake up planning to head straight over to Seeley’s for a complete and total post-date-with-Angie debriefing, but unfortunately Dad has other plans for me. Since we both have the day off, he wants to spend it together, which is fine, but he wants to spend it shopping for office supplies to fix up his spot in the living room. I’m dying to get to Seeley’s house, but I can’t tell Dad that when he’s looking at me with puppy dog eyes and asking if I want to drive to the Target two towns over.
“Should I go with the black one or the teal one?” We are standing in the middle of a brightly lit aisle, and Dad is holding up two plastic crates.
“What are you even going to use it for?”
“I don’t know, anything? Trust me, you’re going to want a few of these around yourself when you head to college next year.”
“Why?”
Dad looks at me like I stabbed him in the heart or something. “Everybody had milk crates when I went to college. You use them for everything. You can sit on them, you can put stuff in them. We used to have to steal them from—”
“Why are they called milk crates? Wait, did you just say you had to steal boxes to sit on? Did your college not have chairs?”
“They’re called milk crates because that’s what they are.” Dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes, we had chairs, but it was a different time and sometimes we had to improvise. We didn’t have superstores, you know, and Amazon wasn’t invented yet.”
“Sounds tragic.”
Dad gives me a little shove with his shoulder and drops the teal one into our cart before gesturing back to the shelves behind us. “Look, if people weren’t still using these, they wouldn’t be all over the store.”
“Touché.”
“What’s next on the list?” he asks.
“Nothing—milk crate was the last thing you wrote.”
He looks a little sad then, and as much as I want to rush off to Seeley’s, I also kind of don’t. “Do you want to get food somewhere?”
The way his face lights up tells me it was definitely the right call.
I know that in the real world, like when you live someplace where you don’t have to drive forty minutes to get to Target, Applebee’s isn’t considered a super nice restaurant or anything. But even so, when I walk in with my dad and we slide into a big booth by the window, it still feels special. We don’t come here much; it’s too far away to go to on a whim, but it’s perfect when you want to celebrate something special but not like cannoli-from-Bellini’s-level special. It’s our in-between place, and it’s just for me and him. I’ve never been here with anyone else, not even Seeley.
Dad makes a big show of flipping through the whole menu and making comments, but I know he’s going to end up getting a burger, and I’m going to end up with a house salad (hold the bacon) and fries. It’s what we always, always get. Sometimes, when we really want to live on the edge, we’ll start with chips and salsa too.
“Hey.” My dad nudges my foot under the booth. “Everything okay?”
I look up from the menu and sigh. “Yeah.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” he says just as our waitress comes to take our order. He waits until she’s out of earshot to go back to the conversation at hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say, because that seems easier.
“Elouise,” he says, and takes a sip of his soda.
“It just feels like everything is changing all at once, in a bad way.”
“Oh, Lou.” He says it with so much love, but somehow it makes me feel worse. “Is this about the park?”
“It’s about the park, yeah, and you keep talking about me leaving in a year, and that new postcard was messed up.” I groan, and wipe at my eyes. “I don’t know.”
Dad sighs, and I swear I just caught him rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry, hon. Your mother—”
“I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no point. What I do want to know is why you won’t at least help me try to figure out a way to save Magic Castle.”
“Honey, you can’t save the park. It’s not—”
“Don’t say that. That place is all we have left.”
“That is not true, Elouise. You have a lot more in your life than just that. We’ll always have each other,” he says, squeezing my hand again, and I squeeze back because I want to believe it. “And you have a lot of good friends who’ll always be there for you—”
“Yeah, well, historically ‘always’ hasn’t ever come through for me. People leave. It’s what they do. But places—”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, but it’s true. Think about it. When you married Mom, did you ever think she would take off? I mean, even our dog ran away. Nothing sticks around in our family, nothing! It’s like we’re cursed!”
The waitress arrives right then, dropping our food in front of us. I watch the cars whiz by through the window until she leaves, embarrassed by my outburst.
“We’re not cursed,” he says. “And by the way, I’m still not entirely convinced that thing you brought home was a dog and not a coyote with a dye job.”
I cross my arms. “Buster wasn’t that bad.”
“Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it, Lou. He ate through a wall! How does a dog even do that?”
And okay, he has a point. Buster was not . . . ideal. Maybe someday I’ll tell my dad the truth—although he probably already suspects—that Buster wasn’t actually a lovable stray that followed me home like I said, but was in fact a half-feral dog that Seeley and I came across in the woods one day. It took nearly two months of bribing him with food before I could get him to follow me to my house—against Seeley’s better advice, naturally. She just didn’t get it, you know; she has two cats and tons of people that love her unconditionally. I have my dad, her, and for a minute, a dog from the woods.
Buster only ended up living with us for a grand total of about three weeks anyway, most of which he spent hiding under my bed and/or peeing on my clothes, which, okay. One day, we came home to find out that he had chewed through the kitchen wall and escaped through the garage. Dad was furious but eventually went through the motions of helping me look and posting flyers. We never saw Buster again, though.
I take a deep breath. “Sorry, today was supposed to be fun, and I’m being all cranky and dramatic.”
“You? Never.” He smiles, giving me one last squeeze before letting go. “But, Elouise, if you feel—”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I wince. “Okay? I’m sorry. But can we just talk about something else. Something better?”
Dad takes a bite of his burger, staring at me like he’s appraising the situation. Please, let him drop it. I don’t even know why I decided to stir all of this up.
“Sure, Lou,” he says. He takes another bite and swallows it with a smile. “What do you think we should put in our milk crate?”
I ball up my napkin and throw it at him—I can’t help it—and then we’re both laughing and talking, and it feels amazing.
But then my phone is buzzing, and we’re both staring down at it.
“Who’s that?”
I slide my finger across and flick open the message. “It’s Seeley. I guess Mr. P is letting us swim later. Everybody’s meeting there tonight.”
My dad nods. Mr. P does that sometimes, especially on really hot nights. He says those are the nights kids usually find ways to get themselves into trouble, and he’d rather have us all swimming at the park, safe. Sometimes he even keeps the popcorn poppers on for us. It’s pretty awesome, actually.
“Who’s everybody?” Dad asks.
“I don’t know. Seeley, me, the dive crew, probably Seb—”
“Which one is Seb again?”
“The rabbit costume one.” Dad gives me a blank look. “Sebastian Porter—he helped me out with French homework last year,” I grumble.
Because yeah, I’d definitely like to forget all about my little foray into advanced French. I only took it so I could sit next to Malia Berkus and figure out how to woo her. Joke’s on me, though—Malia ended up being the worst girlfriend ever, and then I had to spend the rest of the year dodging her while trying not to fail out of a class I was in no way qualified for.
“Sharon Porter’s kid?”
“Yeah.” I roll my eyes. Sometimes it’s weird living in a town so small that you can say a kid’s name and your dad can immediately name their parent and probably their parent’s whole life story.
“I didn’t know you hung out with him much outside of school.”
I shrug. “He’s always around. He’s friends with everybody and we both work at the park.”
My dad makes a little humming sound and drags a chip through some salsa. “Do you like him?”
“He’s okay. Why?”
“Just making conversation,” he says, but I swear his cheeks get a little pink.
“What am I missing here?”
“You’re not missing anything, Lou, don’t worry about it.” But the sheepish way he bites into his burger tells me otherwise. “But tell Sharon I said hello if you happen to ever see her.”
“Okay.” I chuckle, stabbing my salad with my fork, and then it hits me. “Wait, do you . . . do you have a thing for Seb’s mom?” It sounds impossible, but I have to ask.
I don’t have a problem with it if he does, don’t get me wrong. Seb’s mom is pretty cool, and she’s been divorced nearly as long as my parents have. Seb’s lucky, though—his dad stuck around and both his parents get along.
But anyway, yeah, I’d love for my dad to find his happily ever after, but the closest I’ve ever seen him get to a date is drinking beer and reading through mom’s old postcards. The idea that he might have a crush on someone, a crush I didn’t even know about, seems slightly bananas.
“What? No, of course not.”
I narrow my eyes. “Then why are you suddenly being so weird?”
“Sharon is an old friend, that’s all,” Dad says, wiping his face with a napkin. “I ran into her in the grocery store the other day, nothing more scandalous than that. Scout’s honor. Now, what should we do with that milk crate?”
“Anything, apparently. I hear they’re very versatile.” I laugh and take another bite of my salad. It’s not that I don’t notice he’s changing the subject, it’s just that I decide to go with it. I mean, I don’t really want to talk to him about my crush either.
Seeley’s hair is dyed dark, dark purple when I pull up to get her. This isn’t good. It hasn’t been this dark since Sara dumped her. I frown when she climbs into my car and starts to buckle without even saying hi.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m great.” She plugs her phone into my car and turns on one of her favorite songs. It’s loud and angry and a little bit annoying; basically, the exact opposite of how I want this night to go.
“Wait, are you mad?”
“A little.” She huffs.
I flick my eyes over to her as I drive. “Not at me, right?”
Seeley drops her head back against the seat and groans. “No, Lou, I’m not pissed at you. I’m pissed at me. I shouldn’t have gone along with this whole dating thing. I wasn’t ready.”
“I think the fact that you agreed to go meant you actually were ready, honestly.”
Seeley snaps her head up. “Doubtful. I kissed one of the coolest girls I know last night, and it felt like nothing. Nothing! I think I’m broken, Lou. Sara ruined me for all other girls.”
“Oh my god, now who’s the dramatic one?”
“It’s true. What if for the rest of my life, whenever I kiss my girlfriend, I compare it to kissing someone else?”
“You won’t.” I ruffle her hair with my hand, amazed by how soft it is despite how much she dyes it. “But even if you do that for a little while, someone will come along to blow any kiss you ever had with Sara right out of the water.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I know you’re wrong.”
Seeley rolls her eyes and goes back to looking out the window.
It turns out Seeley texting that “everyone” was going tonight was kind of a misrepresentation. It’s pretty much just me and Seeley, a few of the pirate guys that I don’t really know, plus Nick and then Marcus. The guys have been practicing their flips on the trampoline next to the pool most of the night—they said they wanted to work up a sweat before they swam—so we’ve just been sitting on the edge of the platform, dangling our feet into the cool water below.
I tried to get Seeley’s mind off her so-called disaster date a few times by talking about how we absolutely positively cannot let the park close, but that just seemed to somehow annoy her even more. So it’s kind of a relief when Nick comes charging up behind us, fresh from the trampoline, all sweaty and out of breath.
“Hey.” Nick drops a pile of towels beside us. “Why do you guys look so bummed?”
“Because I can’t stop thinking about how this is our last summer to swim here,” I blurt out, because apparently the filter on my mouth has completely stopped working. Nick shrugs and peels off his T-shirt. I try not to stare.
“I get that. It blows. But it’s still here now.” He tosses his shirt behind him and reties the little strings on his board shorts. “What’s the point of sitting here being sad about the future when we could be enjoying what we have while we have it?”
I open my mouth and then snap it shut because he sort of has a point.
Nick grins, nudging me with his knee as he steps to the edge of the pool. “Last one in’s a rotten egg.” He gives me a little smile and then dives in, the water swallowing him whole and leaving tiny little ripples in his wake.
“You heard the man,” Seeley says, standing up to kick off her clothes. My eyes slide up her body, marveling at how put-together she always manages to look. She’s wearing her favorite white bikini underneath it all, which stands in stark contrast to the sleek purple hair on top of her head. “Come on.” She laughs.
Seeley jumps into the pool, a giant cannonball that sends a wave splashing up all over my legs. A couple of the pirate guys follow suit, whooping and hollering as they backflip into the pool. I stand on the side, watching them having fun and trying not to feel self-conscious about the fact that they all have athletes’ bodies and I . . . don’t.
“You coming in?” Marcus asks. I forgot he was here.
I could say no. I could go back to sitting at the edge of the pool, beg off for some excuse or another, and just let my insecurities swallow me whole. But everyone is laughing and having fun, and even Marcus, who never swims because he hates to get his hair wet, looks like he’s about to jump in too.
I yank my shirt over my head and add it to the pile, kicking off my flip-flops and tugging down my shorts. A bead of sweat trails down my spine, dipping beneath the top of my tankini only to get sucked up in the waistband of my bottoms. I slide my thumbs under the elastic, tugging it back into place, and do my best not to compare my curves and sliding lines to everyone else’s hard edges.
I turn around just in time for Marcus to yank me into the pool after him. It was meant to be playful and fun, but he caught me off guard and I’m left choking and sputtering in the water, chlorine burning my nose as the panic sets in.
Two big arms wrap around me and tug me back toward the side, holding me up until I can stop coughing long enough to grab on myself. I assume it’s Marcus, and open my mouth to apologize for being such a colossal doof, but it’s not. It’s Nick swimming in front of me, looking worried.
“You good?” he asks, and his eyebrows crinkle together a little while he waits for my answer.
“Yeah, perfect. I mean, nobody’s ever actually died from embarrassment, right? So, I think I’m pretty safe.”
Nick laughs and splashes a little water at me. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I literally almost drowned trying to get into a pool.” Saying that triggers another coughing fit, and I bury my face against my arms with a groan. “Please swim away now.”
“What if I don’t want to?” he asks, and I lift my head to look at him—which is the exact moment Seeley swims up in a panic trying to make sure I’m not dead.
She thwaps me hard on the back and spins me around to face her. “Oh thank god. If Marcus drowned my best friend, I would have had to kill him.”
“Hold that thought,” I say, and look back at Nick, but he’s gone off to the other side of the pool and seems to be having a very intense conversation with the other guys.
Seeley hoists herself up onto the platform and holds her hand out, which I take, slipping twice and scraping my thigh in the process. Awesome. Seeley tosses me a towel and we wrap ourselves up, walking over to the trampoline to sit where it’s dry.
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Seeley says, bumping her shoulder against mine.
“Me too.” I glance back at Nick once more. “I can’t believe he saved me,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah, well, he’s CPR certified, so doesn’t he have to?”
“Marcus is too, and he was closer.”
“Well, then Marcus is a jerk, and you should be pissed.”
“But Nick saved me,” I squeak, biting my lip.
“You should aim higher than someone helping you not die,” Seeley says. “That’s sort of setting the bar pretty low, you know? Most people would try to help someone not die, if they had the chance.”
I scrunch up my shoulders. “I think you really overestimate mankind.”
“Well, I think you really underestimate your self-worth.”
“Whatever,” I laugh.
“No, not whatever,” she says, and she looks kind of serious. “Stop selling yourself short. There are people who would die for a chance with you, and you’re too busy mooning over a guy with a girlfriend.”
I frown. “Nobody is dying to get with me, trust me. I’m the weird girl who always says the wrong thing and ends up puking in the breakroom on opening day. But this isn’t about me, this is about you. Can we just move on to phase two of getting you a girlfriend?” I wrap the towel tighter around me and huddle in. “So, okay, Angie didn’t work out. Who else do we have to consider?”
“Oh my god, Lou. Why won’t you let this go? Why do you get to be all woe-is-me about dating, and I don’t?”
“Because you’re the one that actually has a chance!”
“Lou,” she says, but I hold up my hand.
“Whatever you’re gonna say, just don’t. Just let me do this. Let me make this the best summer of your life, while I’m still figuring out how to make it the best one of mine too. Please?”
Seeley looks away, but I can tell by the way her lip quirks up that I’ve won her over. “Well, when you put it like that—”
“Perfect.” I grin. “Now, all we have to do is find a girl that’s willing to say ‘I love you, Seeley. You’re the most important person in the universe to me. And also I am single and would like to date you exclusively. For all times. But most importantly, I love you and you are my everything.’”
“Awww, Elouise.” Seeley laughs all dramatic and fake-breathless-like. “I love you too.”
“Oh,” Nick says, and I didn’t even know he was there. “Wow.”
I turn around, getting ten shades of red because of course he would walk up when we were being such total dorks. “Hey, Nick.”
“I thought you were hooking up with Angie now,” he says, narrowing his eyes at Seeley before looking back to me.
“It didn’t work out between them,” I say.
“Oh,” he says again, and then he looks down for a second.
I bite the edge of my thumbnail. “You win some, you lose some, right?” And yeah, okay, if I could maybe just be a little less awkward, that would be swell.
Nick scrunches up his face; he looks sort of sad. “I guess.”
Wait, what? I look at Seeley but she just shrugs.
“I didn’t know you guys were a thing all of a sudden,” he says, and his tone seems a little off. “Seems really fast to me.”
And okay, is it me or does he sound a little jealous? I can really, definitely, maybe build on this, I think. I mean, what would happen if—
“We—” Seeley says, but I cover her mouth with my hand.
“Haven’t been together long,” I say, at the exact moment she bites me and I jerk my hand away.
Nick’s eyes flash just enough to let me know I might be onto something here.
He looks away and scratches the back of his neck, but when he looks back, he has his usual smile plastered on his face. “I’m happy for you guys, really, you just caught me off guard. We should all go out sometime. Jessa loves double dates. But, good for you guys, seriously.”
“We’re not—” Seeley says, but I shoot her a look.
“—telling a lot of people yet,” I finish, and now it’s Seeley’s turn to look at me like I’m losing it.
“Oh, gotcha. Yeah, people can be real assholes about stuff like that.” He rubs a towel all over his head, which makes his hair stand up in a thousand different adorable directions. “I actually have to go pick up Jessa soon, so I gotta run.” He pauses for a second, biting the inside of his lip. “She mentioned wanting to hit up the movies tomorrow night. You guys wanna come?”
“Uhhhh,” Seeley says.
I hold back a smirk, but inside I’m grinning down to my toes. “Yeah, definitely.”
“Cool.” He grabs his clothes and starts walking barefoot toward the parking lot. “I’ll shoot you guys a text with the time and stuff.”
“Sounds good.” I smile, watching him walk off.
Seeley waits until he is totally, definitely, 100 percent out of sight to turn back toward me. “What the hell.” She grits her teeth.
“What?” I ask, trying to buy myself time.
“You told him we were together! What are you doing?”
“It’s not like I had time to think.”
“Right, of course not.” She pushes off the trampoline and picks her clothes up off the ground.
“Wait.” I chase after her, tugging on her wrist to keep her from walking away. “Are you seriously mad?”
“It depends: are you seriously asking me to do this?”
“What?”
“It doesn’t even make any sense, Lou. How is this going to help you guys end up together? He doesn’t seem like the kind of Neanderthal that would see two girls dating and suddenly have to have one of them.”
“Eww, gross. If he was like that, I wouldn’t want to be with him.”
“If you’re not doing it to get his attention, then why are you doing it?”
“You saw him. Didn’t he seem jealous to you? This could be my chance to figure out what’s really going on between us, all incognito-like.”
Seeley sighs. “I don’t know whether to be relieved that you’re not actually some tired stereotype or if I should just be worried that you are this delusional about Nick being in secret love with you.”
She gets a little shouty at the end there, and I take a step back. “Please,” I beg. “People have thought we were together before and you didn’t care. Like half the park assumes we’re dating at any given moment.”
“Yeah, but we always correct them.” She pulls her clothes on and looks at me. “Remember how annoyed you were last time? You said, and I quote, ‘Just because Seeley always dates girls and I mostly date girls doesn’t mean that we’re dating each other.’”
“That was because it was Gordo, and he was a being a perv about it.”
“Gordo is always a perv about everything.”
“That’s beside the point.” I sigh. “Come on, let’s just see what happens.”
“This is completely messed up. You get that, right? Maybe he is jealous and you’re right, but maybe he’s totally happy with Jessa and this is all in your head.” She hangs her head back and groans at the sky. “You’re just gonna end up hurting yourself, the way you always do whenever one of these schemes goes bad.”
I cross my arms. “I can take care of myself.”
Seeley raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t even have to say it; I know what she’s thinking.
“Okay, fine, I acknowledge there’s a certain degree of risk here, and historically my ideas don’t always work out the way I want them to. But sometimes they do!”
Seeley crosses her arms. “This is different.”
“I’m begging you here.”
Seeley shakes her head again. “I don’t know.”
“You know you wanna say yes.”
“I’ll think about it.” Seeley rubs her hands over her face. “I should go home. I’m gonna see if I can catch a ride with Marcus.”
“Come on, I can give you a ride. Don’t be like that.”
“No,” she says. “He’s practically my neighbor anyway. It makes more sense. Just text me later or whatever.”
“Okay,” I say. “If you’re sure.”
“I am,” she says, jogging away to catch up to him. And I wave as she disappears around the corner, because, hey, at least that wasn’t a no.