Chapter 45
Lucy
Olivia picks up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hi,” I say, breathless as I bike away from Erica’s house. Her voice is sweet, almost melodic in my earbuds. “Are you at home?”
Olivia pauses and for a moment, but then says, “Yeah. What’s up?”
There’s so much I could say: I think your uncle might be dangerous. Where was he the night of Billy’s death? But there’s only one question I can ask that will allow me to get to all of the other ones.
“Can I come over for a bit?”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I say, turning down French Moor Drive. “I’m around the corner.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. Olivia rattles off the code to get through their gate, and pretty soon, I’m on the Godwin property, the enormous brick house rising up from the earth with views of the water flanking either side.
I hop off my bike and walk it the rest of the way, but the path from the driveway to the pool house is longer than I remember, and I count my steps, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other to get there.
I don’t dare look back at the main house, where Mr. Godwin may be inside.
When I reach the door, I raise my hand to knock, but it swings open before my fist makes contact.
“Hey!” Olivia says brightly. Instead of welcoming me inside, she steps out into the night and looks up. “I forgot how amazing the sky is here,” she says tilting her head back. “I’ve barely looked up since I’ve been here. A tragedy, really.”
“It is,” I say, but I keep my focus on what I’m here for.
Answers. Information. Nothing else. Except it’s hard to focus.
Olivia looks more relaxed than she has all summer, wearing a sleeveless top and jean shorts, and her long hair is wavy, falling down her shoulders.
No makeup, no hair accessories, just a thin gold chain around her neck, and up close like this, I can see she’s got a handful of freckles sprinkled on her shoulders.
“Wanna go to the beach?” she asks. “See if we can find a shooting star or something equally cringe?” Olivia grabs a blanket from an Adirondack chair.
“Perfect.”
The night breeze makes my curls swirl around my face as we walk in silence down the narrow pathway. I kick off my sandals, my toes sinking into the sand. The Godwins’ stretch of waterfront is wider than ours, with a dock jutting out from the land, a tender tied to one of the posts in the water.
Olivia lays out the blanket, and together we secure its corners with rocks and pieces of driftwood.
It’s a small square of fabric, and she drops down first, patting the space beside her even though it’s tiny.
My stomach leaps into my throat, but I stretch my body out next to hers, so close that our flanks touch, our bare thighs, the outsides of our knees all connected in one line.
I’m thinking about how to phrase what’s in my head, how to say Did your uncle kill his son? But that’s when she speaks.
“You can say what’s on your mind, you know.”
I glance sideways at her but decide to keep looking up at the sky. It’s easier this way. “Do you have any idea who killed Billy?”
Olivia flutters her lips. “No,” she says. “No clue.”
“You don’t have any theories? You were at that party. It sounded like things got intense.”
She rolls to one side and tucks her elbow up under her arm. “I left before any of the fighting started. Didn’t even see Justin wail on him. Didn’t even know about Erica.”
“You slept through all of that?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Tossed and turned for a while, but basically.”
“Huh,” I say. “Can I ask you something that might sound terrible?”
“Now I’m interested.”
“Do you think your uncle could have hurt Billy?”
“Uncle Reid?”
“Erica said he spends a lot of nights on that boat. Maybe he was there. Maybe something happened.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know,” she says. “He was home that night. I couldn’t sleep much after the party and saw him taking a walk around the property in the middle of the night. Guess he was wide-awake, too.”
“He still could have been out there on the boat,” I say. The police were never able to pin down an exact time of death because Billy’s body had been so damaged by the water.
“Maybe, but he was in pajamas. He definitely didn’t look like he had been on a boat.” She shrugs. “Besides, he waved at me through the window. Smiled. Not something you’d do if you killed your kid.”
“True,” I say, hesitant. “I didn’t realize you two were close.”
“We’re not. But my parents are dipshits right now. Gotta hang on to the family that’s there for you.”
I nod like I can relate, but there’s no way in hell I would ever call my parents dipshits even when I’m at my most furious.
“You know, I’m thinking about going to Wesleyan in the fall,” she says.
“Really?” I glance sideways at her. “You were able to figure out the tuition?”
“Yep,” she says, sitting up with her knees tucked under her chin. The wind picks up a few strands of her hair that tickle my shoulder.
“What changed?”
She shakes her head so her hair falls in her face, obscuring her eyes. “It’s messed up.”
“What is?”
“Remember how I told you my grandparents set up trusts for Billy and me?” she says. “And how my parents drained mine?”
“Of course.”
She pauses, sipping air through her barely parted lips. “There was a clause that said if something happened to one of us, the other would get their shares when they turned eighteen.”
“Holy shit,” I say, realizing what she’s saying. “So you get Billy’s? Because he’s gone?”
Olivia winces. “It’s fucked up, right? That I get to go to school because he’s not here.”
I don’t know what to do with that information, because on the one hand, yes, it is messed up. He dies, and she gets what she wants. But it’s not like that was Olivia’s fault.
“Lots of things about this are fucked up, but you being able to get an education isn’t one of them.”
She tilts her head up to the sky, the corners of her mouth turning upward. “You think?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I do. It’s not like you set up the parameters of some random trust fund a million years ago.”
She laughs. “That’s true.”
I turn so I can see Olivia’s face in profile, the ski slope of her nose, the sharp bones of her shoulders, her cartoonish eyelashes lengthening up to the sky.
“What?” Olivia asks, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I can feel you looking at me.”
“Sorry.” I look down at my feet, bury my toes in the sand as heat spreads in my cheeks. “Ethan and I broke up.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“I think everyone does.”
“It happened like two days ago.”
Olivia bursts out laughing, the skin around her eyes crinkling as she rests a hand on her chest. “No one keeps secrets here. You should know that.”
“Nuh-uh. I didn’t know about that stupid postcard for years.”
I sneak a glance at her to see her head tilting straight up, but then she licks her lips and says, “Is that why? Because of the postcard?”
“No,” I say. “Well. Yes…and no. It’s complicated.”
“Everything is.”
We’re both quiet, and for a moment I worry I’ve said too much, but then she speaks. “You can say it, you know. For real. We can stop tiptoeing around it.”
My mouth is dry, and I force myself not to look at her, because if I do, I might give in to the magnetic pull toward her.
There’s a force pushing through the surface of my chest, like it wants to elbow its way through my ribs.
I wonder if this is an admission that she feels it, too.
I could play dumb, but I don’t want to do things like that anymore.
I want to be honest and open and accept whatever feelings are tangled in my stomach—and then act on them.
I’m sick of doing what I’m supposed to do, worrying about everyone else’s feelings.
I only want to worry about mine.
But before I can speak, she lies back down and rolls over to one side so she’s resting her head in her hand, propped up on her elbow.
Her eyes are on me, traveling my body, but I force myself to stay still, to not make eye contact for fear of doing something without warning, for fear of my body—my want—taking over. Though maybe that’s not a bad thing.
“I think I still have feelings for you.” There’s a hitch in her voice, a softening.
Slowly, I roll over to face her, and my breath catches when I see her front teeth resting on her bottom lip, a desperation in her eye as she looks right at me.
Our noses are only a few centimeters apart, and I force myself not to move, to try to remember this moment and how my chest aches so acutely it might break open right here on this beach.
All the questions about Billy and Mr. Godwin slip out of my head like they were never there at all. The moment is weighty, heavy, and there’s heat between my thighs I can’t ignore.
“I think I do, too.” The words come out fast and slippery, but once I see her eyes blink wide, I can’t stop them.
I don’t want to. I want to tell her everything, lay myself bare, because for the first time all summer, I feel like I can trust her, like whatever I say in front of her will be the right thing.
“I never stopped wondering what happened to us.” I press my lips together, the words hanging between us. “I loved Ethan. I did. I do…but you were a question mark.” I shake my head. “I’m not saying it right. I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
Olivia’s chest rises and falls, each breath bringing us closer, and her fingers reach for mine, hold them tightly. My limbs are made of live wires, like every touch is a spark, an explosion.
“Here we are,” Olivia says. “Back on Pelican Island, back on the beach.”
“Here we are,” I say, repeating her words.
Olivia’s eyes drop to my lips, and a thrill rumbles through my core. Heat blooms in my chest, at my very center. I want to taste her, to slide my fingers through her hair and feel how soft it is.
Together, we’re quiet for a moment, taking each other in. I focus on the apples of her cheeks, the smooth expanse of her neck, the bare pink skin along her shoulders. Blood pulses in my stomach, my wrists, my need growing with every thump.
“I want to kiss you,” I whisper, the words slipping out into the night.
Olivia raises her hand and places it on my cheek.
Her fingers are cold, but I don’t flinch.
I want them to travel over me, and like she reads my mind, Olivia palms my neck, the top of my chest, where goose pimples rise under her touch.
And still, I want more. I want her fingers to roam, to find the very center of me and press.
I inch closer to her, moving my face toward hers, and finally, Olivia hovers her mouth above mine, and then we meet—a kiss, a flower, a rolling wave of seawater, salty and delicious and wholly new yet just as I remember.
Kissing her is like finding my favorite T-shirt, hidden in my closet, like eating a warm bagel from the good place on Main, like diving into the ocean headfirst at the beginning of the summer.
A familiar revelation. A wakened memory.
I rest my hand on Olivia’s thigh, my fingers slipping under the fold of her shorts, grazing her skin, all of it so much, so unbelievable, so charged, that in that moment, I forget I’ve ever kissed anyone else before, that there are mouths that belong to other people, other bodies.
All the desire that had come before was nothing compared to what I’m experiencing in this exact moment, and based on the way Olivia kisses me back—the hunger, the need, the tender little noises slipping between my lips—Olivia feels the same.
“Whoa,” Olivia says, blinking open her eyes. There is nothing else to say. Only another kiss, another flame, another rolling wave that has nowhere to go but back to shore.