17. Lana
CHAPTER 17
LANA
W e were down by the beach club, Alice and me, with our feet up on our shabby deckchairs. We’d dragged them down here for one reason alone: the birch beer float stand outside the beach club. I sipped my float and savored its sweetness, the fizz of the bubbles tickling my nose.
“Whatever they serve up there can’t be better than this.”
“Where, the beach club?” Alice craned to see. There wasn’t much to see from our lowly vantage, but we could hear kids shrieking and splashing in the pool. “I kind of feel bad for them, behind their fence. It’s all concrete up there, no actual beach. Why even bother coming all the way out here if we’re not going to get into that kiss?”
“Well, I think— what?” I blinked at the sudden change in direction. Alice smacked my arm.
“You and Brad! I’ve been waiting all week for this, so come on. Details!”
I felt my cheeks color. “Did everyone see?”
“No. The first hot dogs got done around then. Most people were eating, or waiting to eat. But I saw. I saw.” She nudged me in the ribs. “Don’t try to tell me it was just some impulse. You’re together now, right?”
I looked down at the sand. “I— I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? Haven’t you talked? You literally live together, so what have you been doing?”
What had we been doing? The same things we always did. Getting up early to beat the work crew. Going out jogging, or to the beach. Planning my relaunch into the night. It had been three days since the run, since our kiss. It hadn’t happened again, but there’d been this tension, this electrical tingle when we passed in the hall. He’d turn one way, I’d turn the other, and there’d be this moment where it all felt right there : he could reach for me. I could tilt my chin up. Then it would be like it had on the beach, that moment when the whole world was me and Brad…
Alice snapped her fingers. “Hey. Earth to Lana.”
“We’ve talked,” I said. “Just not about that.”
“What else is there to talk about? Work stuff? The weather?”
I laughed, because yeah. We’d been keeping it light. I had tried a time or two to edge up on the kiss, but whenever I did, I felt the ground tremble. What if, for Brad, once had been enough? What if it hadn’t been? If he wanted more? I couldn’t leave the shop for him, but what about his life? He’d have to get back to it… or, could he stay? He had plenty of work here, but was it enough? Would I be enough for him, to start a new life here?
“The kiss was, uh…”
“Yeah?” Alice leaned forward.
I couldn’t stop myself smiling. “It was perfect. A movie kiss. And not any movie, but, like, a magic one, where the prince kisses the princess and the whole sky lights up, and there’s twinkles and fireworks and— and?—”
“Violins?”
I sighed. “A whole orchestra. I heard music, I swear.”
“Buuuut… you don’t know if he felt the same way?”
I bit my lip, thinking. Remembering Brad’s face. He’d pulled back, lips parted, eyes dreamy and soft. “He did in the moment. He felt it too. But he has a whole life out there. We had one kiss. And he hasn’t said anything about staying past summer. He’d have said something, right, about extending his lease?”
Alice laughed. “First of all, you don’t have a lease. He’s month-to-month. And second, what if he’s waiting for you to speak up?”
A shiver ran through me — excitement, then dread. I saw the path fork ahead of me, two futures calling, one where Brad stayed with me, one where he didn’t. As long as I didn’t ask, both could be real. Both were still waiting, still equally mine.
“Don’t you think it’s too soon?” I said. “It was only one kiss. I can’t ask him to upend his life for one kiss.”
Alice huffed laughter. “You’re so all or nothing.”
I scowled at her. “What does that mean?”
“It means, you don’t have to decide your whole future, or even discuss it. At least, not now. Why don’t you just ask him out on a date?”
I goggled. “A date?”
“Yeah, you know, at a restaurant? Or, hey, the fair’s coming. You could go to that.”
I’d almost forgotten about the fair. It came once a year and lit up the beach, rides, cotton candy, carnival booths. The summer folks loved it, but I’d missed the last few. I’d been in college, then Mom had got sick, and I’d halfway forgotten it was still a thing.
“When is it, do you know?”
Alice winked. “It starts Friday.”
“So, yeah, I could ask him, just casual, just?—”
“No!” Alice sat up so sharply she spilled half her drink. I stared at her.
“No?”
“Don’t send mixed signals. Let him know it’s a date. That’s the whole point of this, to see where it goes. Go on a date or two, see how it feels, and if you still feel the magic, that’s when you talk.”
“But, what if…” I trailed off. Alice was right. The pressure was off now, with our fun run success. What better time to go on a real date?
My phone chirped, as if on cue: a text from Gareth. The plumber was done, just the walls left to patch. He’d be out of my hair Friday night at the latest.
Alice leaned over. “Good news?”
I ignored her. I called Brad instead, my heart beating fast. He picked up and I smiled, and I gathered my courage, and before I could think too hard, I was asking him out. The words tumbled out of me, and I held my breath. At first, Brad said nothing, and I squirmed in the silence. Then, he was laughing.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Alice covered her giggles with a sip of her drink. I rolled my eyes at her and tried again slower.
“They’re finishing Friday with the renovations. Want to go out and celebrate? To the fair?”
“Definitely,” said Brad. “Wait, is this a date?”
My face went hot, but I’d come this far. “Definitely. You in?”
“I can’t wait.”
Alice whooped, and I shushed her, but Brad had heard.
“Tell Alice hello,” he said. “But she can’t come on our date.”
A warm feeling swept through me: our date . Me and him. Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
Brad had slipped out when I went to get ready, calling out as he went that he’d just be five minutes. Now it’d been twenty and my makeup was done, my hair curled as pretty as it could be. I fluffed it up one more time and frowned at my reflection. Where had Brad got to? Had he panicked and run? I hadn’t heard his truck start up, but I hadn’t been listening.
I went to the window, but the street was deserted, blue twilight shadows stretching out long. His truck was still there, but no sign of Brad. Had something come up? Some emergency? But, no, he’d have texted. He?—
A knock at the door sent me spinning, half-shrieking. I’d been spiraling so hard, I hadn’t heard the stairs creak.
“Coming,” I called, and stepped into my shoes, and skittered off-balance to answer the door. When I did, it was Brad, and he had roses, nine red, three white. A mismatched bouquet.
“I asked for twelve red ones, but the florist was out.”
“They’re gorgeous,” I said. “You got these for me?”
“It’s our first date. You deserve all the trimmings.”
My heart skipped a beat as I took the roses. They smelled fresh and lovely, and I breathed them in deep. Brad found a vase and we got them in water, and I set them out near the kitchen window. The sun would catch them there and bring out their scent.
We walked hand in hand through the woods to the beach, and I gasped at the sight of a lone lightning bug.
“Fireflies.” Brad grinned, wide and delighted. “I haven’t seen these since I was a kid.”
“It’s been a while for me, too.” I watched the pale light blink out, then it appeared again high in the trees. More of them sparked up, a glimmering swarm. Brad held his hand out, and one lit on his knuckle.
“That’s lucky,” I said. “You get a wish.”
“What is this, three now?” He closed his eyes. I watched him and wondered what he had wished for, and if it had to do with our date. Then the lightning bug took off and joined with its friends. My hand found Brad’s, and we twined our fingers together.
“It’s peaceful out here,” he said, but the fair made a lie of that, carnival music striking up from the beach. We both laughed at that, and Brad squeezed my hand. “Shall we?”
We left the fireflies behind and headed into a brighter blaze, lights circling the Ferris wheel, the chairoplanes, the teacups. Games had been set up all down the beach, huge stuffed-toy prizes hanging like grapes. Kids ran around, some waving sparklers, some with their faces daubed in sparkly paint. One kid had bought or won a whole pack of glow sticks, and looped them like bracelets all up his arms. He ran by in a whirl of windmilling neon, and Brad turned to watch him.
“That would’ve been me.”
I smiled, intrigued. “What, as a kid?”
“Yeah, I’d get going and I just wouldn’t stop. Dad used to say, ‘who put a quarter in him?’”
“That’s a sign of a smart kid, one who can’t sit still.”
The kid’s friends caught up to him, and he pulled off his glow sticks. He tossed them like Frisbees, and his friends ran to grab them. They ran down to the ocean where the lights didn’t reach, and all we could see of them were their whirling glow sticks. Brad scanned the beach.
“Their parents around?”
“Right there,” I said, and pointed to a group of adults, watching the kids as they raced through the shallows.
Brad smiled as the glow stick kid started a water fight, splashing his friends so they’d splash him back. “Do you want a big family?”
A strange feeling coursed through me, half excitement, half nerves. Brad wanted to know how I saw my future, my dreams, what I wanted. If they lined up with his. But what if they didn’t? If he didn’t want kids? Or if he did, but he wanted like… ten of them? Or he’d send them to boarding school, like his folks did with him?
I swallowed my nerves. “Sort of. Big- ish? I always wished I had brothers or sisters, so I’d want two or three kids. But not nine or ten.”
Brad burst out laughing. “Nine or ten? That’d be almost a hockey team. But, yeah, two or three.” His knuckles brushed mine. “I’m an only child, too. Always thought it’d be cool to have, y’know, allies. To balance it out when Mom and Dad teamed against me.”
“Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of that. Kids forming alliances!”
“Outvoting us every time, three to two.”
The kids ran back past us to line up for the teacups, and Brad bought us both corndogs, and a couple of glow sticks. We tried a few games and flamed out on the ring toss, but Brad won me a backpack at the balloon darts. Next, we went in on the water gun race, but Brad kept squirting me instead of the targets. I squirted him back, and we both got in trouble, and hurried off laughing to try out the rides. We did a spin on the teacups, then on the Ferris wheel, then I got us some funnel cakes and we walked down the beach. The stars were all out by then, the moon high in the sky, and we both took our shoes off to splash in the ocean.
“Let’s sit,” said Brad, when we’d walked a while, when the fair lay behind us in a warm smear of light. We found a flat rock looking out on the ocean, and both perched on top of it, his shoulder to mine. It was easy to talk to him there in the dark, without worrying what he’d think of me, or what would come next. We talked about everything, our parents, our friends. Our little-kid dreams that wore off with age. I’d once had singing dreams. Brad dreamed of NASA. He tried to needle me, to get me to sing for him, and I told him I would if he’d take me to space.
“Our whole planet’s technically already in space.”
“Then you’ve technically heard me singing through the shower door.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Neither does your thing.”
Brad had turned to face me, and he was so close, the light from the fair glinting in his blue eyes.
“I’ve had a beautiful night,” he said.
My heart leaped. “Me, too.”
Then he kissed me again, just our second kiss ever, and I melted into the graze of his lips. The fair was too far, but I swore I heard fireworks, and sensed their bright trails streaking the sky. Brad’s hand came up to cradle my head, and I felt held by him, wanted and claimed by him. Like with that one simple gesture, he’d embraced all that I was, and pulled it to him. Laid claim to our future.