Chapter 6. Cait #3
Before Cait could respond, the garage door lifted, and Luke appeared. Cait lowered the window and waved. He smiled and waved back as he headed down the driveway. In rolled-up chinos, a plaid flannel shirt, and untied snow boots, he was even more gorgeous than she remembered him being in London.
“This is a surprise—” he said, then stopped when he spotted Maggie.
Maggie angled toward the passenger-side window. “Hi, Luke,” she said.
Poppy poked her head between the two front seats.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said.
His voice sounded sugary and contrived, and Cait cringed.
“How’s it going?” she asked. Why are you going to the city when I just got into town?!
Luke glanced back at the house. “Uh, well. It’s awful.”
Awful. Right. Packing up his childhood home.
What was she thinking? My God, he was even more beautiful when sad.
How could she be upset with him? Of course he didn’t want to be there alone on Thanksgiving!
She wished she could send Poppy back to her parents with Maggie and spend the weekend with him.
“I’m so sorry about your mom,” Maggie said.
Luke lowered his face to the window. Cait could smell the booze on his breath. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d invite you guys in, but—”
Cait cut him off. “It’s okay. We have to get going anyway. We just stopped by to see if you’re around to join us for dinner tomorrow.” She felt Maggie tense beside her, but she continued. “We’re having it catered. Oyster bar and all. Father Kelly will be there and I’m sure he’d love to see you.”
“Sure,” Luke said, without seeming to give it a second thought. “Yeah, I’d love to. I was supposed to see a friend, but—”
“The more, the merrier.”
“We need to get going,” Maggie said. She was trying to be polite, but her voice was tight.
Luke straightened. “Right,” he said, then paused. Cait worried he’d back out, but then he said, “I’ll bring a Hammerschlagen game. There are some extra tree logs out back.”
Maggie shifted the car into drive.
“Sounds great,” Cait said. “Swing by around two.”
They said goodbye, and Maggie drove off.
“What the actual fuck?” Maggie said as soon as Cait rolled up her window.
From the back seat, Poppy gasped. “You said—”
“Don’t you dare!” Cait said, knowing Poppy would be thrilled to use this as an opportunity to repeat the word herself.
Poppy pouted and slumped back into her seat.
“Sorry,” Maggie said, glancing at Poppy in the rearview mirror. She turned to Cait. “What just happened there?”
“You saw how upset he was,” Cait said. “What were we supposed to do?”
“No, no,” Maggie said. “Don’t make this about we . That was all you.” Then she said, “I didn’t even know you two were in touch.”
Cait winked at Poppy, but Poppy, still indignant, stuck out her bottom lip and held her chin high.
Cait raised the volume on the radio, then leaned across the console, and in a voice low enough that she hoped Poppy couldn’t hear, she said, “I met up with him in London in September and we’ve been talking ever since. ”
Maggie stopped the car in the middle of the road. “What?”
“Why’d we stop?” Poppy asked.
“What do you mean talking ?”
Cait hesitated. “I’m not sure, actually.”
Maggie looked back at Poppy again. “Fine,” she said to Cait, taking her foot off the brake. “But you need to give me the scoop later.” Then she said, “It’s never not going to be weird to see him.”
Cait knew this was true but hated hearing it.
“And what’s a Hammerschlagen game?” Maggie asked.
“I have no idea,” Cait said distractedly. She was remembering the last time she was at the Larkins’ house when she was seventeen. It didn’t feel nearly as long ago as she would have imagined.
Cait and her friends were huddled around a bonfire at the beach club when a rainstorm moved in.
Everyone called it a night, but Cait and Luke hunkered down in a cabana with Topher and his new sidekick, Marcus, a local dealer who sold them sketchy weed and claimed to be on his way to the marines.
Cait couldn’t stand Marcus, but Topher hung out with him more and more lately.
They were always getting into some kind of trouble.
Topher had skipped so much school his senior year, he almost didn’t graduate, and she’d heard rumors he was messing around with more serious drugs like coke, which he’d only halfheartedly denied.
When Topher asked if they wanted a ride home, Luke peeked his head out from the cabana’s cabinet, where he was searching for snacks, and said, “Don’t go yet.”
At first, Cait thought he was talking to Topher, but then he pulled a bag of weed from his back pocket and pointed it at her. “Smoke a joint with me, then I’ll walk you back home.”
When Topher and Marcus left, the rain turned to a mist, and Cait sat on the picnic table under the cabana’s covered deck to watch Luke roll the joint, paying close attention, because his were always tight and hers were always coming loose.
He lit the joint, and they passed it as they talked about his plans to leave for Boston College in two days.
Cait would be a senior that September at Saint Mary’s and was already looking at schools.
She was considering Boston herself but didn’t mention this because she didn’t want him to know that he was part of the reason.
Luke had moved from Connecticut to Port Haven three years earlier, when his parents divorced and yanked him out of Deerfield Academy.
He lived in a small house with his mom and brother now, a few streets away from the Folly.
Cait didn’t know much about his dad, except that he lived in Arizona with a woman who was only eight years older than Luke.
He spoiled Luke and Daniel with fancy gifts—most recently, a Boston Whaler for Luke’s eighteenth birthday—and took them on exotic trips to places like the Galápagos Islands.
When Luke first moved to Port Haven, Cait barely noticed him.
He was always fly fishing on the seawall behind their house with Topher, but beyond the boarding-school allure, there was nothing particularly special about him.
Then, last summer, he did an Outward Bound trip in the Pacific Northwest, and when he returned, he’d chopped off his shaggy hair so you could see his blue eyes and gotten into shape.
Overnight, he became the hottest senior at the school, and Cait told her friends he would be her boyfriend by the end of the year.
Her plan hadn’t exactly worked out, but they’d hooked up a few times, mostly at parties when Topher wasn’t around.
Each time, Luke would find Cait at school or the beach club the next day and stumble through an apology, saying he’d made a mistake.
They should just be friends. Or—and this was the one that annoyed her the most—it was too weird with Topher being his best friend.
And each time, she’d laugh and say she’d been drunk anyway, then spend weeks afterward sick to her stomach with a longing that brought her almost as much pleasure as it did misery.
In that longing, everything felt more real.
More alive. Plus, she knew that in a few weeks they’d make eye contact at some party, and he’d pull her into another room, and they’d be right back at it again.
The high from the joint came on gently, and they watched the small black waves roll onto the shore.
Cait was thinking about how much next year would suck, with Topher and Luke away at school, when Luke leaned over and his lips found hers.
His mouth tasted like weed and Bazooka gum.
There was a sweetness about the kiss, a lingering that hadn’t been there before, and his breath tickled her ear as he whispered, “Do you want to come over?”
It was after ten, and her curfew wasn’t until midnight, but she wasn’t exactly sure what he was asking.
To hook up? To watch a movie? She’d be thrilled to do either, though the only times they’d been together were at other people’s houses or the beach—drunken make-outs that usually ended shortly after they started. This felt like something different.
“What about your mom?” she asked.
“She goes to bed early.” He played with the Saint Jude pendant around her neck, then looked up at her with half-cast eyes and smiled.
When they entered the house, Luke took her hand and led them through the dark foyer. She’d been to the Larkins’ only a few times, to watch old horror movies in the finished basement with Topher and their other friends.
She stopped halfway up the stairs. “Are you sure your mom isn’t going to wake up?”
Luke pressed his finger to her lips. He’d gone clamming with Topher earlier that afternoon, and she could smell the brine on his skin. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said quietly.
Even in the darkness of the stairway, she could see the scar on his lip, his hair wet and messy from the rain. He’s leaving for college in two days , she thought, where he’ll meet tons of girls and forget all about you.
“I want to,” she said.
He reached for her hand again as they tiptoed up the stairs. The hallway was even darker, except for a band of light under Daniel’s door. She worried Mrs. Larkin might wake up and find them but was relieved to see Luke’s room was over the garage, away from the rest of the house.
He closed the door behind him and gestured across the room as if to say, Here it is.
Like Topher, most of his stuff was packed in boxes for college, but several Joy Division posters covered the walls, and his desk was filled with ribbons from the high school debate team.
His bed looked like it hadn’t been made in weeks, and when she sat down, his gingham sheets smelled musty, like scalp.
She wasn’t sure if she liked it. He slipped a CD into the stereo, and a familiar song came on that might have been the Rolling Stones or the Who, then he sat next to her.