Chapter Eleven
Chapter
Eleven
Ninth grade.
Ramona had said it so matter-of-factly, so firmly. In the next five seconds, a million thoughts had flooded into Dylan’s mind.
First— Of course, yes, right, ninth grade, how could I forget, wink-wink.
Second— The summer before ninth grade.
Third— The summer. Before. Ninth grade.
Her schooling had always been a little all over the place. She changed schools constantly and spent either seventh or eighth grade with tutors—she could honestly never remember which one.
But ninth grade, she remembered.
Dylan sent the ball down the lane with as much force as she could.
Ninth grade was when her father bought that giant house in Hollywood Hills in order to appease the social worker assigned to the Monroe family, and her aunt Hallie had lived with them from August to December, forsaking her own job in Athens, Georgia, for a semester, all to ensure Dylan went to school and ate more than canned pork and beans for dinner. Ninth grade was when she shot her first commercial, some teen-centric deodorant that smelled like strawberries and caused a rash to erupt in her armpits. Ninth grade was when she got cast in her second movie, Glass House , where she played a troubled child of two parents who couldn’t keep it in their pants. And ninth grade was when she was knew, without a doubt, that she liked girls.
And the summer before ninth grade…that summer was how she knew.
Because of Cherry.
The name popped into her mind. She’d thought of it before, of course, the fake name of the first girl she’d ever kissed, that cherry-print shirt and fireworks on Clover Lake’s shore, and—
Hello, Dolly .
She watched her ball obliterate the pins, the song filtering through her mind. Of course she remembered the song too…but…
She turned, looked at Ramona. Watched as she leaned into Rogan—Logan, Hogan, whatever the hell his name was—her dark hair falling across her freckled face, one thick thigh tucked under the other on the orange chair. April showed up, squeezing her alien’s ass in between the two of them, plastic cups filled to the brim with fluorescent green margaritas splashing onto the shiny tiled floor. Some bro country all about trucks and beer played over the sound system. Ramona laughed at April, then licked a bit of salt from her cup.
Dolly .
Hello, Dolly .
No.
It couldn’t be.
Cherry was a vacationer. A summer visitor just like Dylan and Hallie. She was—
Dylan blinked at Ramona, trying to picture this zaftig beauty as a skinny girl in the moonlight, tears shining on her face, a silly song on her lips.
Impossible.
Except was it?
Surely, Dylan would recognize the first girl she—
“Dylan?”
April’s voice.
Dylan shook her head, the room coming into focus, as well as the realization she’d been staring at Ramona for a good minute or two.
“You okay?” April asked.
“Dylan…” Rogan-Logan said, then snapped his fingers. “That’s why you look familiar. You’re Dylan Monroe, holy shit.”
“Well, fuck,” April said.
“Nice going,” Ramona said.
Dylan tilted her head at Ramona, trying to find Cherry in her features, find anything that would give her a clue about—
Ramona smiled at Dylan.
A sort of wince-smile, but it was enough.
A shock, like lightning flashing on a familiar scene, but with such intensity, you noticed all these little details you didn’t notice before—the way a tree leaned to the left or how the mailbox’s flag was a little rusty.
Because right there, on the left side of Ramona’s face, was a dimple.
A dimple she’d noticed when they met in Clover Moon, but at the same time hadn’t noticed at all.
A dimple she’d pressed her finger to eighteen years ago.
Her throat closed up, air refusing to fill her lungs.
“Dylan, it’s okay,” Ramona said, standing and coming toward her. “Logan won’t make a big deal, will you?” She reached Dylan, placed a hand on her arm, then looked back at Logan.
“Nah,” he said, taking another sip of his beer.
Quite the articulator, this guy, and while she knew it was rude— she didn’t even know Logan—the derisive thought was enough to distract her and open up her lungs a bit. She sucked in a breath slowly, nodded as Ramona squeezed her shoulder.
Dylan couldn’t look at her.
Not in the face, or the eyes.
Not anywhere, really, because if she started looking now that she knew , she’d never stop.
Cherry.
The name was a firework in her chest.
“I…I’m not feeling so great, actually,” she said.
“Oh,” Ramona said. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a headache,” Dylan said, keeping her eyes averted. “Would you mind if we called it a night?”
“No, that’s fine,” Ramona said. “Let me text Olive and Marley.” She got out her phone, wandered back to Logan, far enough away that Dylan could watch the two of them together. He leaned closer to her, like a moon in her orbit. Said something that made her laugh and made April roll her eyes.
Soon, Olive and Marley joined them, Logan disappeared, and they all piled into Ramona’s car again, though Dylan insisted on April sitting in the front.
“More room for your ass,” she’d said, making April laugh, but really, she just couldn’t sit near Ramona. Not right now. She needed to think, to remember, to figure out how the hell she’d missed it these last two days.
Ramona was Cherry.
Her Cherry.
The girl she’d thought about a million times over the last eighteen years, her literal happy thought when shit went sideways, when her parents disappeared for days, when they got divorced then got back together, when Blair gave her shit on the set of Spellbound , when…when…when…
As Ramona pulled up in front of Dylan’s small bungalow on the east side of town, the lake mere steps away, Dylan barely got out a thanks and good night before she was hurrying to her front door, ripping off her blond bob just as the tears started to swell into her eyes.
Inside, she pressed her back against the door. She could feel her pulse thrumming in her neck and tried to take a deep breath. But before her lungs fully settled, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Laurel flashed across her screen.
“Hey,” Dylan said into the phone, grateful to have something to distract her from her heart, which currently felt as though it had claws and was scraping away at her rib cage.
“Hey yourself,” Laurel said. “How’s it going?”
Dylan sighed, slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. “Ask me tomorrow.”
“That bad, huh?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. First day on set didn’t go as I planned.”
“I heard.”
Dylan thunked her head against the door. “Great.”
“Look,” Laurel said. “You’re just in your head. Find a way to get out of it. Go out and do something fun. Lay on the beach. Play Frisbee.”
“Frisbee.”
Laurel laughed. “I don’t know, what the hell do people do in a small town on summer vacation?”
“They go bowling.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s not so bad,” Dylan said, running her hands over the skirt of her dress. “Pretty fun, actually.”
“Wait, you went bowling?” Laurel asked.
“I did. And it only fucked up my head even more.”
On the other end, a pregnant pause before Laurel spoke again. “Okay, either something else happened, or I’ve been bowling the wrong way.”
“You’ve been bowling at all?” Dylan asked.
“Fair point.” Another pause. “What’s going on, Dylan?”
Dylan pressed her fingers into her eyes, Ramona’s pretty face flashing in her mind. It all sounded so silly now that she thought about it.
And maybe it was. Maybe that’s what she needed to hear.
“I met someone here,” she said.
“Did you, now?” Laurel asked, her tone suddenly playful.
“No, not like that,” Dylan said. “A woman who lives here…I used to know her. Ramona. We met when we were kids.” Laurel said nothing, so Dylan told her the whole story—that summer her parents were truly incapable of caring for her, coming here with her aunt, the cottage, the beach, the cove.
Cherry and Lolli and Dolly.
The kiss.
“Holy shit,” Laurel said when Dylan was finished. “That’s a pretty amazing story. That you ran into her again.”
Dylan nodded, but Laurel’s assessment didn’t feel right— ran into her . It didn’t feel like that.
It felt bigger.
Like…fate.
Stars aligning.
“So what’s the problem?” Laurel asked.
Dylan closed her eyes, let herself go back to that night on the beach eighteen years ago. The mineral smell of the lake, the fireworks. The pretty girl. It was a good night. Maybe the best of her life.
And suddenly, Dylan did feel silly. Silly for not remembering as soon as she’d laid eyes on Ramona. But also silly for stressing about remembering at all. Ramona was her first kiss, the girl who made a horrible time in her life feel like light and laughter, if only for an hour or two. There was nothing bad about seeing Cherry again. No problem at all. It was just…surprising. Like Laurel said—amazing.
Now if only she had a clue what to do about it.