Chapter 18 Playlist As Calm as a Hurricane
GREGORY AND I GET water for the cats while my mom calls the vet. They still have plenty of food to get them by until tomorrow if either of them decides to eat, and my money’s on Waffles to devour it all. My mom’s just ending the call when we come back in.
“Dr. Valentine’s about to close up, and she said she’ll stop by to take a look on her way home.” I can tell by her tone that she’s annoyed, but it’s more exasperation than anger.
“Oh good,” I say, relieved. “Thank you so much, Mom.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Madden,” Gregory says.
“Well.” She offers a small grin. “You named one of the cats after my mother, so really, what was I supposed to do?”
“That was all Amelia,” Gregory says. “I was responsible for the other one.”
“And?” my mom prompts.
“We call her Waffles.”
My mom laughs at that. “I like it.”
“Me too,” I say. I turn to face him. “Should we… clothe you?”
“Probably a good idea,” my mom answers for him. She stands and holds out her hand. “Why don’t I throw the dirty one into the wash?”
“Oh, you don’t have to—” Gregory starts, but my mom snatches it out of his hand. He laughs. “What I meant to say was thank you.”
I point toward the stairs. “My room’s up there.”
He follows me, and we start heading up.
“Keep the door open,” my mom calls out, and I die.
Is there any chance Gregory didn’t catch that? I keep climbing and say nothing.
“Keep the door open, huh?” Gregory repeats. He comes up beside me, leans in close, and whispers, “What does she think we’re gonna do up here?”
I want to laugh or snort or roll my eyes, but I lose every train of thought except the one directing my entire awareness to the tiny sliver of skin on my earlobe that his lower lip just brushed. And then he winks—winks!—at me and hops up onto the landing as if he didn’t just short-circuit my brain.
He looks nice from the back without a shirt too. Dammit.
Gregory enters my room before I do. When I step inside, he’s in the middle, by the foot of my bed, just sort of looking around.
“Wow. It’s almost giving hoarder,” he teases.
“It is not,” I counter. I may have a lot of things in here, but it’s clean and all in order. “You know when we were walking on the beach the other day and you said that when you were a kid, you collected rocks?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I collect memories.”
He nods and starts a slow drift around the perimeter. “I see that.” He pauses for a long while at the wall collage of photos. I click on the string lights to give him the full experience.
“I like this one.”
I step closer to get a look at the one he’s pointing at. It’s a selfie of Kat and me, a close-up of our faces, with a bright orange sunset behind us. I always thought I looked pretty in that photo.
“I used to too.”
He looks over at me, and I realize then how close we’re standing.
I slide back a little. “It used to make me happy, but now when I see it, I just feel sad.” I should probably stop there, but something in his expression makes me feel like I can keep talking.
“How does that happen? When Kat was around, it was a good memory. It was Fourth of July two years ago right before the show, and there’s nothing better than watching fireworks over the ocean.
But now that she’s gone, it just feels totally different. ”
Gregory’s gaze is soft and direct on mine. He takes a deep breath. “Every memory of my dad is like that.”
Oh. My lungs deflate as I breathe out, my heart squeezing on his behalf. I have the urge to hug him, but I’m not sure he’d want me to, so I don’t. I wish I knew what to say when he brings up his dad.
He faces the wall again. “My mom says someday they might turn happy again, but I’m not sure I believe her.”
I swallow, my throat tight. “I hope she’s right.”
“Me too.”
He continues his tour of my room, asking about certain things, and his tone turns back to playful.
I’m leaning against my dresser, watching him with a half smile on my face.
He holds up a name badge hanging from a lanyard, citing me as a volunteer for the shark education program at a local conservation organization. “You would.”
I’m not offended because he sounds strangely affectionate when he says it, and also because yes, I would. And I did. And I’ll do it again next year.
He gingerly picks up a paper crane, which sits with a collection of origami creations. A frog, a turtle, a butterfly. He cocks one eyebrow and looks at me quizzically.
“Kat made them,” I explain. “She used to spend the night every Friday night, but she’s an early riser and I like to sleep in.
I got tired of waking up to her all pissed off that she was bored just waiting for me to get up, so one day when I saw an origami kit at the bookstore, I bought it for her.
Every Saturday morning after that she had something to do, and I’d wake up to her perfecting a new animal. She always left me the best ones.”
“Kat’s origami collection,” he murmurs. “Interesting.” He moves on and touches the corner of a school play program I have pinned to a corkboard. “Were you in this?”
“Yup,” I say proudly. “Townsperson number three.”
He gives me a look. “Ensemble? That was worth keeping the program for?”
“The ensemble makes the performance!” I cry, indignant.
“Sure. Keep telling yourself that.” He gingerly taps a dried rose petal from a corsage. “School dance?”
I nod. “It was, um… memorable.”
His brown eyes meet mine. “Why?”
I immediately realize my misstep, and my cheeks flush.
Gregory grins. “Ooh, what is it? Something good happened at this dance, huh?” He adds flair to the way he says “good,” like I did something obscene.
“I had my first kiss that night, okay?”
“Mmm,” he murmurs. “First kiss, huh?” His gaze flickers to my mouth, and my heart takes off at a sprint. I’m suddenly extra aware that his entire upper half is bare, all that smooth, lightly freckled skin taking up space in my room. “It was a good one, then. For you to want to remember it.”
“Yeah,” I manage, my face hotter than the sun. “It was.”
He nods, expression thoughtful. “I wish mine had been like that.”
“It wasn’t?” I don’t know why I’m so surprised.
I suppose it’s possible Gregory’s first kiss was awkward or fumbling, because lots of them are.
But I’d bet my entire summer’s worth of tip money that he mastered the art pretty quickly.
I’ve spent a lot of time with him lately, and I know he’s a fast learner.
He’s also a guy who watches, listens, and pays attention.
He knows when to move slow and with intention, and having someone like that kiss you…
“It was my best friend, Wren,” he finally says. “And it was a mistake because we didn’t really like each other like that. I think we both just wanted to get the first one over with. It wasn’t bad, but it was super weird and we never did it again.”
I’m immediately jealous of Wren—only because he’d probably never describe me as his best friend. It’s not the kiss thing. Nope.
“Are you still friends?”
“Yeah. I think she’s the reason my mom’s letting me go back for the school year. I put Wren on speaker, and she told my mom she wouldn’t survive junior year without me. I keep hoping she’ll come visit before the summer’s over, but her parents aren’t going for it. Yet.”
“That’s cool.” I reach out to flip the switch that controls the ceiling fan. I don’t really want to talk about Gregory leaving at the end of the summer.
He turns to continue his inspection of my room, then suddenly freezes. I go on high alert. What is it? Did I leave a bra out? My secret stash of romance novels? Did my notebook fall open to an old page where Kat and I listed requirements for our future husbands?
“Amelia Madden.”
“What?” I squeak.
He reaches into my bookcase, and when I see what he pulls out, relief washes over me.
“You’re into vinyl?” he accuses.
“Why do you sound mad?”
“Because! If I’d known that before, I—I’d have…
” He trails off, shaking his head. He crouches down and sifts through the albums I started collecting last year.
Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Lana Del Rey. And the most recent, a remastered version of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
My parents have a turntable setup downstairs, but when I started saving for my own, I moved my records up here.
Maybe I thought it would keep me on track with saving my money, or something.
Remind me what I was working toward. “And such good taste, too,” he says, almost to himself.
I go back to whatever he didn’t say. “What are you talking about? If you’d known, you’d have what?”
He rises and thinks for a minute. “I’d have decided you were cool. Really cool. A lot sooner than I did.”
On the one hand, his approval of my taste in music—while expected, because my taste is top-tier—is the highest form of flattery. On the other, is he saying there was a time when he didn’t think I was cool?
I cross my arms. “Says the guy who desperately wanted me to stay at the party the first night we met.”
“That’s true. There were very few people there worth talking to.”
I snort. “Everyone wanted to talk to Kat, that’s for sure.”
“Not me. I knew right away she wasn’t my type.”
I blink. “Your type? Your type for what?” Also, I can say on good authority that Kat seems to be everyone’s type. It’s me who people usually need to warm up to.
He doesn’t reply right away. Just looks at me with those brown eyes, a slight pinch between his brows like he’s considering how to respond.
His gaze drops to my lips again, just for a split second, but it’s enough to send my stomach into a somersault.
He lifts one hand and rubs it across his mouth, then sighs.
“I just mean my type for, like, friends,” he says.
“Oh.” I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved. But I do know I can feel my heart beating in my chest.
We stand there staring at each other for a long moment, and I remember he’s still shirtless. Shirtless and in my room and barely two feet away from me.