Piper
The best thing about Sugar Bay Luxury Towers is the pool.
It sits in the courtyard between the east and west towers, and it’s huge and extravagant and rarely in use, especially this late at night. With the exception of Sugar Bay Marine Conservation Park, it’s my favorite hideaway.
I’ve brought a handful of cotton balls, nail polish remover, and a bottle of polish with me.
Tati hates when I give myself manicures in the apartment because she feels like she’s going to asphyxiate, so I’ve taken to doing my nails poolside.
It’s kind of nice, particularly after we’ve argued.
The fresh air helps purge her anal-retentive negativity from my system.
I’m sitting on the paved deck with my legs dangling in the cool water, stripping my nails of their baby-pink polish, when a boy around my age intrudes on my solitude.
He chooses a chair across the pool from where I’m sitting, one beneath a tall solar-powered lamppost. He glances my way for half a second before opening the book he’s brought.
Interesting. When I was blond, I held guys’ unabashed attention.
My curiosity is piqued, but I go on painting my nails with two coats of teal polish, allowing myself an occasional peek.
He’s got his nose buried deep in that book, a massive tome with a title I can’t make out.
His hair is wavy and chestnut, his brows thick, his jaw square.
He’s wearing a white T-shirt with black athletic shorts and Pumas.
He squints as he reads in the crap light, carving a horizontal line of concentration across his forehead.
My nails have dried just enough when he glances up, his gaze connecting with mine.
I look away. Then back again.
Smooth, Piper.
He raises his hand in a wave, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
Holy balls—his smile is familiar.
A memory blinks into my head: my first kiss was with a tall chestnut-haired boy.
Except, this boy can’t be that boy.
I wave back, feeling silly for entertaining the idea that a ghost from my past has suddenly reappeared. I feel even sillier when a gust of warm wind lifts my half dozen spare cotton balls and drops them into the pool.
I scowl at the mess. I could leave them, but littering sucks.
Sighing, I haul myself up to grab a net, careful not to ding my manicure.
Stewing about my argument with Tati and my run-in with Gabi and what a bummer this day has been—minus my hair, which I really do love—I carefully fish all but one of the cotton balls from the pool.
It’s the last, bobbing close to the edge and requiring no real effort, that takes me under.
It’s the boy’s fault. As I’m crouching, reaching into the water with decent balance and a capable hand, he catches my eye again. I grow flustered, wobbly.
I yelp, shattering the pool’s placid surface with my flailing body.
Thank god my phone’s upstairs on my bed, not in my pocket.
I’ve plummeted into only a few feet of water, but I stay under for several seconds, scolding myself for the squeal I let out as I fell, worrying the splash I created was enormous, hoping I’m not screwing up my manicure and my fresh hair color with this unfortunate dip, and praying—praying—that when I surface, the boy will have disappeared into the night.
He has not.
He’s standing on the deck, right above me.
He’s doubled over with laughter.
He regains his composure long enough to reach out a hand.
What a gentleman.
Honestly, I’m reluctant to accept his help, but let’s be real: I could use it.
I let him assist as I drag myself out of the pool, the traitorous cotton ball in my fist. When I’m on dry land, he lets me go so I can wipe the stream of water from my eyes. He only has a tenuous handle on his laughter when he asks, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, mortified, studying my feet and the puddle expanding around them.
I shake it off—the embarrassment and the water—and with feigned confidence that borders on insolence, I look up.
It is him.
It’s been three years; he’s gained six inches and a solid fifty pounds, and his hair is shorter—no more boy-band shag.
His once-round face is now strong lines and sharp angles, a dignified cleft marking his chin.
His braces are gone, leaving his teeth so perfect I can’t even be mad that he’s laughing in my face.
Henry.
All grown up.
That night returns in a rush: Tati screeching with disappointment over a failed summer school test, followed by crushing loneliness and grief, which I hadn’t yet learned to compartmentalize.
I retreated to the pool and sat at the water’s edge, sobbing with a hysteria that scared me.
A boy came out of nowhere. He sat down next to me, sinking his feet into the pool, putting a paperback copy of The Outsiders on the deck beside him.
He didn’t try to console me; for the longest time, he didn’t talk at all.
But he was there, a comforting presence who knew nothing and asked for nothing and expected nothing.
Eventually, he spoke, a soliloquy about how saltwater pools aren’t really different from chlorine pools because, thanks to this process called electrolysis, the salt transforms naturally into chlorine. It was so utterly random that I was distracted from my tears and unexpectedly charmed.
We hung out until dawn—the first of many times I’d stay out past curfew—walking along the beach, exhausting subjects not important enough to recall.
I didn’t tell him about my dead parents or my mean sister or the world geography class she’d insisted I retake over the summer even though I’d passed with a C+ the first time around.
He didn’t tell me anything personal either, though he talked almost constantly about the tide and the constellations and the novel he was reading.
He was the brightest person I’d ever met.
Just before sunrise, under a lavender sky, we shared a kiss that felt like a beginning.
I was sure it was. So sure that I didn’t ask for his last name, phone number, email address, or apartment number. I knew I’d see him again later at the pool.
I did not. Not that night, or the one after, or the one after that.
For weeks, I was heartbroken.
And then I wasn’t.
He’d been what I’d needed that night: a comrade, a comfort, a kiss. He became the boy to whom I compared all others.
Henry has put a lid on his laughter, but now I’m giddy thanks to his reappearance, this boy I’ve spent the last three years romanticizing. I shock myself by catching a fit of giggles so intense that I’m short of breath by the time they subside.
“Hell of an entry,” he says, grinning. “Ten points for the splash alone.”
He’s taller than me by several inches and has the physique of someone who cares about fitness. Three years ago, he was all limbs. He’s got his book tucked under his arm, which is in keeping with my memory.
“I’ve been practicing, obviously,” I say with a blasé shrug.
I toss the offending cotton ball into the pile I’ve made of its friends, then check my nails.
Miraculously, my manicure has survived. Hopefully my witch hair will too, if I give it a good rinse when I get upstairs.
“I haven’t laughed that hard in forever,” I admit.
Lately, I haven’t laughed much at all.
“Me neither,” he says in a melancholy tone that hints at tough times.
Where did you disappear to? I think, gazing up at him.
His voice is lighter when he says, “Thanks for the show.”
“Thanks for setting it in motion.”
He extends a hand again, this time like Nice to meet you.
I lose a breath to disappointment—he doesn’t remember.
But why would he? I was a blip on the radar of his life.
A sad girl, a sweet kiss, an abridged romance.
I bet he’s met hundreds—thousands—of people between then and now. I bet he’s captivated them all.
The truth of it is that I idealized a stranger, let one night become of astronomical importance in my mind. I wove an entire fantasy from the threads of a boy I knew for a few hours.
But now, here he is.
His hand is still outstretched, and the vibe between us is becoming awkward.
I can play this off. We’ll simply meet again, for the first time.
I slide my palm into his.
You’re a stranger to him, I remind myself.
Except now he’s holding on to my hand like a lost friend found.
He says, “How’ve you been, Piper?”