22. Then
T he night before Luke and Danny are due to leave for training camp, we head to the beach to celebrate Luke’s win earlier in the day—a shortboard contest at Steamer Lane that finally got him the attention he deserves from potential sponsors.
When we arrive, Luke’s just getting out of the water and wearing nothing but a wet suit, peeled down and hanging off his waist. His body is a symphony, every muscle a separate instrument, coming together to make something so beautiful it hardly seems real.
As he takes a seat, I have to look away.
“Someone should call the police,” Grady says, on another of his rants, which are a regular occurrence. “It’s disgusting.”
He’s carping about “the gays” again—the guys who hang at a beach nearby, minding their own business. I’ve never seen them do anything but ogle the surfers and listen to music, but Grady insists it’s a hotbed of sexual depravity somehow. I wish Libby would tell him to stop, but she says nothing.
A joint is passed around. Danny demurs and I do, too, and from the other side of the fire, Luke lifts a beer bottle to his lips, watching me. “Hostage,” that look says. “Ask yourself if this is really what you want.”
I already know the answer to that question.
It isn’t what I want, not anymore. I don’t really have the money to leave now, but the bigger issue is I’ve assumed I’d end up with Danny for so long that it’s hard to seriously consider another outcome.
We’ve been together for nearly three years, a sixth of my life, and it’s the only relationship I’ve ever been in.
Not being with him, somehow, never occurred to me.
Ending this also seems so…ungrateful, after all they’ve done.
Thank you for sheltering me throughout high school.
I no longer need you and am moving on with my life .
But do I repay my debt by weathering something that isn’t serving any of us, or do I pay it by letting them hate me for walking away?
And for better or worse, the Allens are my family. The only family I have. There will be no one to spend holidays with if I leave. No one to worry if I’m home late, no one in the entire world who still cares.
“Luke will care , ” a voice says at the back of my head. But I dismiss it. Luke is off limits because I can’t do that to Danny, and Luke is never going to come find me in LA.
Danny’s telling anyone who will listen that he’s definitely going to be starting quarterback this year and describing his workouts in grueling detail.
Libby keeps trying to talk to me about a group she’d like to start at the church for teenagers, suggesting I can do it this coming year since I’m staying home.
I press my fingers to my temples. I don’t want to be out here tonight.
I don’t know how I’ll survive remaining in Rhodes at all without Luke.
I’d love to tell Donna I don’t want that internship, but she’s freaking out about some upcoming surgery for the pastor to fix a blocked artery.
It just doesn’t seem like the right time.
I’m beginning to wonder if it ever will.
Grady picks up his rant where it left off. “I’m sure it’s illegal,” he says. “Public indecency, at least. Who even knows what they’re doing down there?”
“Bro,” Caleb finally groans. “Enough already.”
“It’s in the Bible,” Grady counters. “Leviticus calls it a detestable sin, point blank.”
“Maybe Leviticus was fighting his own impulses,” says Ryan. “If not, he just didn’t know what he was missing.”
My eyes widen. I’ve never seen Ryan without a girl.
“So, you’re saying you’d…do that with one of them?” Grady sputters in disbelief.
Ryan grins, holding his arms out expansively. “Have and will continue to. I love all God’s children, of every gender, race, religion, or creed. I’d let any one of you suck my dick.”
Everyone but Grady laughs.
“Then I feel very sorry for you,” he says, “because you’ll spend eternity in hell.”
Ryan hitches a shoulder. “At least I’m making the most of the trip there. Can’t say the same for you. Speaking of which, it’s your last night here, Danny. Want us to turn around so you and Juliet can be alone?”
Everyone laughs, but Danny laughs the hardest. And then he changes the topic back to fucking football, and his workout regimen.
Luke swallows. The bob of his Adam’s apple makes me thirsty.
“I’m going to have a beer,” I tell Danny. It’s half apology and half defiance.
His head jerks back. “What?”
I sigh. “It’s just a beer, Danny. I didn’t say I was going to shoot up.”
He hitches a shoulder. “It just seems like a bad idea.”
“So does pretending we’re sleeping together,” I mutter, “but that doesn’t seem to stop you.”
I grab a beer from the cooler and walk away. Not far, not dramatically. Danny barely seems to notice.
I take a few deep breaths, staring at the stars, wondering how the hell to straighten myself out. I think of my brother. How the world started to crush him, and how trying to make it stop ended him entirely.
“Hey,” says a voice in the darkness, and Luke walks up beside me.
I force a smile. “It’s your celebration. What are you doing over here?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. “What are you doing over here?”
I glance up at him. This is the moment when I’d normally lie. If Danny had asked the question, I’d tell him I was looking at the stars because he wouldn’t want the truth. “Thinking about my brother.”
He steps closer. “You never talk about him.”
I stare at the sand between us. With anyone else, I’d lie about this too. But I know it’s safe, with him.
“These dealers were harassing him. I convinced him to go to the police and tell them the truth.” I laugh. “You probably expected me to be the last person who’d suggest telling the police the truth.”
“I guess it didn’t go well?”
“He was shot in the head on the way out of the station. One of the cops told. And they never even looked for the guys who did it. Broad fucking daylight and they claimed there were no cameras and no witnesses.”
“Having a shit life doesn’t make every bad thing that happens inside it your fault, Jules.”
I shrug. That may be true, but it sure doesn’t feel like it.
He squeezes my hand and nods upward. “Look.”
A star streaks through the sky. I close my eyes, but I want so many things from my life that I can’t pick one of them fast enough.
“What did you wish for?” I ask him. “You’ve already won Steamer Lane.”
He looks at me for one long moment. I think I might know what he wishes for, and I also know he’ll never say it aloud. His eyes fall to my mouth and my breath holds, wondering if he’s going to kiss me.
He wants to. I know he does.
“I’ll tell you what I should have wished for instead.” His voice is quieter than it was. “I should have wished that you get out of here. That you wind up doing what you love.”
My smile is muted. I don’t tell him why it won’t be happening anytime soon. That it mattered more to me that he winds up with what he loves instead.
“You’ll probably never be back here, after this weekend,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
“Jules.” His hand cups my face, forcing me to meet his eye. “I’ll be back.”
I shake my head. “By this time next year, you’d better be off on the pro tour, Luke Taylor. Don’t come back to Rhodes.”
I spin away and head toward the fire, choking back a sob.
Some people show love the way Donna does—by fretting and smoothing a hand over your hair, and by getting you an internship you don’t even want.
But me? I show mine in other, quieter ways the recipient will never be aware of.
It’s for the best. He’d never have accepted this love of mine if he knew what it cost me.
* * *
It’s late by the time we get back to the house. The boys pack their stuff and eventually, unable to stand the tension, I go to my room and cry.
I wish I wasn’t red-eyed when we get up to see them off.
Luke looks away, his jaw flexing, when Danny kisses me goodbye.
He shakes the pastor’s hand and hugs Donna.
I assume he will mostly ignore me, the way he did last summer.
Instead, he hesitates and then pulls me against him.
It lasts a second at most, but it’s enough.
I cry for the rest of the day. And when I wake up after twenty-four hours of Luke gone, I know I can’t live like this, that I can’t keep pretending.
I know, even when I told myself I belonged to Danny, it was Luke who kept my heart beating and my blood hot in my veins, and without him, nothing matters.
I’ve got to find a way to get out of here.