8. Then
B efore I met Danny, I dreamed of a different kind of life for myself.
I hoped that maybe I could end up doing something I really love, that maybe I could fly rather than just land .
That Luke liked my song has me hoping for it again.
And wondering why I stopped thinking it was possible in the first place.
I’m not sure why I ignore all the negative shit he implied about me and Danny but listen to this.
I just do. I hum that unfinished song under my breath when I work at the diner and when I help Donna with dinner.
It’s a puzzle I’m missing a piece to, but Luke’s words have made it feel like finding that piece matters.
I hum it all day, every day—searching, searching.
Wishing I could just get some time to myself to try to fix it, knowing it won’t happen.
Danny’s got two friends from school visiting this week, and it’s only made our days fuller.
Every spare moment I’m not helping Donna, I’m being rushed off to some party I don’t want to go to because one of them is meeting a girl.
They reach the house Saturday afternoon after a full day of surfing just as I’m biking in from a double shift at the diner.
They’re upstairs while Donna and I get dinner on the table, and they’re upstairs again while Donna and I clean up.
It’s a full half hour of scrubbing pans, loading the dishwasher, and sweeping the floor, while upstairs, the four boys laugh like naughty kids cutting class.
I silently fume, sick of…everything. Of fighting for a minute alone, of this weird tension between me and Luke.
I get upstairs just as Danny is exiting the bathroom, freshly showered. “Hurry, okay?” he pleads. “There’s a party at the beach and Nev is freaking out about getting there.”
I take a breath as I nod, inhaling my frustration.
I wasn’t even able to get a shower last night, with them hogging the hall bath, but now I have to rush.
I wouldn’t have to hurry if you’d just help me.
If I go away to school for nine months, will I, too, get the luxury of sitting on my ass all night and surfing all day?
I’ll never say it aloud. Danny wants to please his parents, and me, and his friends. It’s not his fault that he’s consistently failing at one of those things.
“I should probably finish my book for school,” I tell him.
“Babe, come on,” he says, crestfallen, and Luke’s right over his shoulder, looking at me like I’m a fucking liar. “I haven’t seen you all day.”
My teeth grind as I agree to go. I love Danny, but I also owe Danny. It’s sometimes hard for me to tell which fact is motivating me to give in to him when I do.
I rush into my bedroom, grab a towel and a change of clothes, and walk out to discover someone else has beaten me into the bathroom and the shower is running once more.
I slam my palm to the door. “Are you kidding me?”
The door opens suddenly, and Luke stands there with a towel hanging low on his waist while the water continues to run.
He smirks. “Is there a problem?”
It’s the smirk that sets me off. If Danny had heard what I just said, he’d have been concerned. He’d have said, “What’s the matter? How can I fix this?” But Luke thinks he’s won something by making me lose my shit and…fuck it. I don’t need to impress him. I don’t care what he thinks anymore.
“You’re using up all the hot water,” I hiss. “And now it’s running and you’re not even in there! You guys have had the whole day to yourselves. Is it so much to ask that I just get five goddamn minutes to shower after an entire day at work?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “No. It isn’t. But you’re incapable of standing up for yourself, so I wouldn’t bank on you ever getting it.”
The truth of this hits me. How is anything about my life going to change given the way I am now? I feel a sob in my throat, but rage follows right on its heels and something in me just snaps . Why does Luke have to make everything so much fucking worse?
I act before I’ve even thought it through, shoving him with all my might.
He barely budges, of course. It’s like hitting a wall.
But his hands wrap around my wrists to stop me, pinning them to his chest…
and the towel he was holding falls. My gaze drops reflexively and I stare for a moment in shock.
He’s hard . And if I didn’t understand why those girls fight over him at night before, I definitely do now.
“Is that what you wanted, Juliet?” He makes no move to pick up the towel. “Go ahead, if you want to look so bad.”
I shrug off his grip, horrified, and recognize for the first time what he seems to have already known: I want something I’m not supposed to want.
I stumble backward, blinking away tears. “Fuck you, Luke.”
I expect him to gloat. But instead, his shoulders sag and there’s something bleak and pained in his eyes. As if he isn’t enjoying this at all. As if, perhaps, he’s hated this summer as much as I have.
I want to rage at him for what just happened, for what’s been happening, but there’s this ache in my chest for both of us that I can’t begin to understand. I turn and walk straight to my room, slamming the door behind me.
Absolutely nothing makes sense anymore.
After finally getting my—cold—shower, I ride with Danny to the beach, never mentioning what happened with Luke.
Danny’s friends are already there, gathered around one of several small fires.
I do my best to ignore Luke, his gaze on me darker than ever.
It feels like the end of everything, and it’s all his fault, so I don’t know why I’m still thinking about the feel of his bare chest beneath my hands and everything I saw when the towel fell.
Danny’s roommates produce a case of cheap beer. The more they drink, the more they seem to focus on…me and Danny. “Daniel Allen,” says Nev. “You’re a good man. You know why? Because if I had little Juliet living in my home, I guarantee I wouldn’t let any of you assholes come visit.”
Danny laughs. Luke does not. The girl he’s with, Rain, is tiny and cute, and the more he ignores her, the more she tries to get his attention. So does her friend Summer, sitting beside them.
I wonder which of the two he’ll wander off with tonight. For a moment, I let myself picture being the one he chooses. Is he gentle? Is he rough? A little of both?
I think he’d be a little of both.
“I don’t know how you guys ever make it out of bed,” Nev continues.
Danny laughs again, but it’s cut off by the sound of Luke’s voice, low, with an edge to it. “Watch it, Nev,” he warns, though I’m not sure what he’s objecting to.
The part I personally object to is Danny. The way he’s laughing and going along with it, not correcting them. If waiting for marriage matters so much to him, fine , but he should be willing to say it aloud. I refuse to pretend we’re sleeping together just so his friends will think he’s cool.
Caleb pulls out a guitar and starts to play a really crappy version of “Sweet Home Alabama”.
“Let Juliet play,” Luke says when it ends, his voice ringing with authority. I gawk at him, and his gaze meets mine, unrepentant, issuing a challenge. “I heard her the other night. She’s good.”
I can’t believe he’s ratting me out like this, not just in front of Danny but in front of everyone .
Caleb holds the guitar out and I take it unwillingly, my stomach in knots, but there’s something reassuring about the feel of it, too, as I settle the guitar in my lap. As if it’s shielding me, though it’s really doing the opposite.
“Play the song I heard,” Luke says. “The one about coming home.”
I glare at him. “That’s not ready.”
“It was absolutely fucking ready,” says Luke. “But if you don’t want to play it, just play something else.”
I glance from him to Danny, who gives me a tepid smile and a small nod.
I get the feeling he’d rather I didn’t play, and it’s this, more than anything else, that has me settling in and attempting a few chords to get a sense for how the guitar has been tuned.
Luke shouldn’t have called me out, but I also shouldn’t feel bad about wanting to do this either.
I start with an acoustic version of “Umbrella ” . I have every intention of stopping when the song concludes, but I just can’t. I know, now, what it is I see on Luke’s face when he surfs. It’s not happiness. I’m better than happy. I’m fucking full .
This is my wave. This is me figuring out where to put my voice next to a chord, finding one sweet spot and then the next.
The song ends but I don’t want to stop. I’ve slid down the face of the wave and now I want to enter the barrel.
I want to drag my hand along the wall to slow myself and make this last. The transition is uneven, bumpy, and I have a moment of wondering if I should ditch out, but I keep going.
I morph into “Wild Horses” by the Stones.
It was always a wistful song, but it sounds even more so tonight.
I channel every ounce of the longing inside me and even I’m surprised by it—by how much I want from the world, how much I mourn that I won’t be getting it.
The song ends and for a moment I can’t even hear anyone breathing. I wait with my stomach in knots, unsure if I’ve succeeded or if I’ve shown myself and ruined everything.
“Holy shit,” whispers Caleb. “You play like that and you sing like that and you sat there listening to me fuck around on the guitar without saying a word?”
“That was amazing,” says Rain. She’s so genuine I find her slightly less easy to hate.
“Dude, you should be in Hollywood,” says Beck. It’s three more words than I’ve ever heard him say.
Luke just leans back, arms folded across his chest, eyes on me as if he can’t bring himself to look away. And I look back at him, for just a moment too long.
Maybe, just maybe, he was trying to help me.
My heart starts drumming in my chest, my lungs expanding…and I force myself to look away.
Whatever door I just opened needs to be shut again, and locked up tight. Luke was not trying to help me . He wasn’t .
And I wouldn’t be thinking or feeling any of the insane things I am if Danny and I were just…more. If he wasn’t treating me like a little kid, if we had a relationship half as adult as the ones Luke has with girls he barely knows.
I wait until Danny and I are alone by the fire, after every single one of his friends has wandered off to hook up with someone or chase after a girl at another one of the bonfires.
I reach for his hand. “Danny,” I whisper, staring at the sand at our feet, “I don’t actually want to wait for marriage.”
He looks around us as if even the discussion of this topic is forbidden, though we’re the only ones here. “I thought you agreed with me,” he says. “I thought you wanted it to be special.”
“It can probably be special whether we’re married or not.
” In the distance a girl laughs, and I wonder if it’s the girl Luke is with right now.
If his hand is sliding from her back to her ass.
If she’s letting her body curve against his to remind him she’s female and willing, just in case he forgot.
“I think you’re spending too much time around Luke,” he concludes.
And even though he’s got it all wrong…he’s also right. I’m definitely spending too much time around Luke.