Chapter 37
Luckily, people were too busy with Christmas prepar-ations to spend more than three days discussing Stacy Black’s helicopter visit.
Lily managed to fend off questions with evasion and distraction.
Some surmised that Stacy was in the market for another beach house, and this explanation satisfied most. However, Bob-with-One-Dog correctly identified Stacy Black as a player behind the failed film location offer and became quite vocal about how he had single-handedly saved Pippi from becoming an international filming destination.
Much worse, Wilson, who was now working in pre- production on that very film, either knew or guessed the real reason behind Stacy’s visit to Pippi.
Unhappily for Lily, he came to lunch especially to tell everyone else.
“Omigod, it’s so great to be back, you guys!
You have not changed,” he gushed while running his hand through his new haircut and flexing his newly pumped, tanned, and tattooed biceps.
(Wilson had found solace in the gym after he and Nicola had broken up a couple of months ago when she moved on to another production company in London.) Lily attempted to keep the conversation light and well away from Dorian Khan and Stacy Black, but of course it was impossible.
“I’m so sorry,” Wilson went on unapologetically.
“You must have wondered where I’ve been all year—there was so much to do in the LA office and then when I got here last month I wanted to visit, but Stacy was so down on even the mention of Pippi Beach and you know how it is with her.
Then when she asked me to book the chopper I was like, wow, this is triple-shot-Frappuccino serious.
I don’t know what you did to Dorian, Lily, but you have to stop. Seriously.”
“What?” snapped Lydia.
“It’s nothing, Mum.”
“Is that why she came?”
“No,” said Juliet.
“Yes,” said Wilson.
“Does it matter?” begged Lily.
“You know what we always say: the only thing that matters is what matters to Stacy.”
“I do not matter to her.”
“Well, duh, but Dorian does and that helicopter cost two grand. All jokes aside, Lily, you have to stay out of Dorian’s grille.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” crowed Lydia. “That woman paid two thousand dollars to tell Lily to stay away from Dorian Khan?” She burst into laughter. “Tell her I’d do it for half! And Lily would do it for free!”
Lily squirmed.
“It’s nothing to laugh at,” Wilson claimed, a little miffed that everyone seemed to think it was so funny.
“Lily hates Dorian,” Rosie explained.
“Always has,” Lydia guffawed. “That’s so hilarious. Like paying a shark to swim! Ha ha!”
“Remember that time?” Juliet smiled, turning to Lily. “You said you wouldn’t even walk to the end of the jetty with him.”
Lily nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“But then you did. I saw you,” Rosie added. “You should have pushed him in.”
“I wanted to at the time,” Lily had to admit.
As soon as she could, she made her excuses and escaped for a solitary walk at the north end of the beach. How humiliating to have her own words and feelings flung back at her like that, now that everything had changed.
Time sped up as the weeks rushed toward the end of the year. Juliet started spending most of her time up at Pippi, and preparations were underway for a big family Christmas.
“It’s going to be a good one,” Lily asserted firmly to Juliet. “The whole family all together, like when we were little. And your parents will be here for a whole week!” Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Fitz were notoriously difficult to pin down. “No backpackers, no movie stars.”
Juliet smiled. “What movie stars? I don’t know any movie stars,” she joked, and Lily regretted even mentioning them.
Lily and her mother opened up the back pavilion and cleaned it together, excited about the prospect of another summer.
“You’ll never guess what I heard,” said Lydia.
“What?”
“Guess which two boys are coming back to the cliff house!”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Definitely?”
“Ever so.”
Lily turned away and stuck her head in a cupboard to hide her flushed face.
“Wow. Wouldn’t have thought that,” she said loudly to a pile of beach towels.
“Maybe somebody likes somebody after all.”
Lily pulled her head out of the cupboard in alarm.
“Who told you that?”
Lydia stopped dusting, surprised at Lily’s tone.
“You did.”
“I did not.”
“Yes you did. You say it all the time. You think Casey loves Juliet and Juliet loves Casey. What’s your problem?”
“Oh. Oh, of course.”
“Who did you think I was talking about?”
“Nobody.”
“Dorian Khan?”
Lydia put on a surprisingly accurate fake English accent.
“Darling, I would love you, but my heart is a very tiny little piece of stone, shaped like a luxury yacht. Also, if I kissed you, it might ruin my hair.”
Lily laughed tightly, pinched with regret at having ever shared such an opinion. Lydia found herself funny enough not to notice.
That afternoon on the deck, Lily carefully packaged the news for Juliet, who took it with surprising equanimity.
“Casey’s coming back! Wow. Great!” She smiled. “It’ll be so nice to see him again. I mean, he might not want to see us at all, which is totally fine. If they come here with that yacht thing, he won’t even need to pass by our house.”
At that very moment the ferry tooted as it backed away from the jetty, leaving two tall men with backpacks.
“Surely not!”
“Oh my God!”
Each of them felt a pang of panic—I am so NOT READY.
And then each mentally cursed herself for feeling self-conscious about an encounter that would at most be a casual wave from afar to a boy she really didn’t know that well anymore and hadn’t seen in months, who most likely didn’t care about her.
For Lily, the feeling was most uncomfortable because it was so unfamiliar.
But she knew exactly what it was, as though she were finally following a part written for her years ago.
This is what they’ve been talking about and acting out in novels and movies and TV my whole life, she thought.
This is what it is to have a crush on someone!
It was just like being out of control in the surf.
She was riding a surge of need that she had seen so often in her mother’s face.
She cringed as Lydia hurtled out of the house and dangled over the deck railings as though the two young men were not just walking by on the only possible path but had come to see her especially.
Oh God, why had they come here at all? For Juliet.
Of course, for Juliet. Lily shot a look at her cousin, whose face was frozen in a kind of half-expectant smile of surprise.
How conspicuous or weird would it be if she just slipped inside now? Too late.
“Ahoy!” Lydia called out.
“Ahoy!” Casey shouted back.
“So you couldn’t keep away!”
Casey practically jogged up to the deck and smothered all three of them with hugs while Dorian hung back.
“It’s so great to see you all! So great!” he repeated, looking only at Juliet. “So glad you’re here. I was worried … I dunno … I thought maybe you wouldn’t be.”
Pause. Casey and Juliet looked into each other’s smiling faces and eleven and a half months disappeared for them, along with Lydia, Lily, and Dorian, who were stranded outside their bubble.
“You want dinner?” Lydia asked eventually. “It’s almost six—you can’t have any food in those bags.” She flung a look over her shoulder at Dorian. “I guess you can stay too.” She turned to Lily and winked. “If you’re allowed.”
Lily crumpled a little inside. Luckily Dorian didn’t seem to have heard that last remark.
He and Casey readily accepted the invitation and took seats at the table, surrounded on all sides by the aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Casey was delighted by everyone and everything; Dorian was quiet but not grave.
Over glasses of wine, big bowls of pasta, and Casey’s exuberant monologue about the entire year’s activities, everyone relaxed and Dorian escaped much notice.
But not Lily’s. She was painfully aware of every glance, every expression, every gesture.
What was he thinking? Why was he here? Would she ever get to talk to him alone?
When would her mother say something ridiculous?
Luckily, Lydia was too charmed by Casey to be very embarrassing.
Everyone could see his open delight at being there again.
Juliet blossomed in his presence. When darkness fell and Dorian retreated to the cliff house alone, Juliet and Casey walked on the beach in the moonlight, where the hope and promise of New Year’s Eve was finally sealed with murmured declarations and a kiss.
“Can you believe it?” Juliet said to Lily later. “The messages I sent to Casey through Cecilia never got through! Things got all mixed up. She’s got too many social media accounts. He thought I had his number all along and I was the one deliberately avoiding him! Isn’t that weird?”
Weird—or a deliberate plan, Lily thought ruefully. But at least whatever roadblocks Dorian and Cecilia had built were now gone. The way ahead for the cutest couple ever was clear.
“And guess what? He’s actually asked me to join him on the Gold Coast next year! For, like, six months!” Juliet gushed.
“Are you going to go?”
“No, I have uni,” said Juliet indignantly. “I’m not going to sit around and just be a girlfriend.”
“That is not a thing people do anymore,” Lily agreed.
“Not full-time.”
“Weekends only.”
“Absolutely.”
They turned out the light and Juliet whispered to Lily that she had never ever been so happy to be alive.
No matter what happened in the future, and whatever had happened in the past, she would always have this day—when she embraced and was embraced by a person who made the rest of the world fall away.