2. Serena
SERENA
I love being an independent woman, I just wish it came with rewards points.
I mean, seriously, even Starbucks gives you a free coffee
if you spend enough time and money there.
—Serena’s Secret Thoughts
Ifucking hate journaling.
Even when I was young, I was never a Dear Diary kind of girl.
But when I started seeing Octavia after the panic attacks set in before my twenty-third birthday, she basically insisted on it.
Exposure therapy or something like that.
If my memories were going to be what wreaked havoc on my nervous system, confronting them was the best weapon I could wield in the war.
I’m paraphrasing, of course. Back then, the attacks were all soccer-related.
What I wouldn’t give for that to be the case now.
I’m loath to admit it, but her recommendations typically work.
And that means journaling about a memory.
Not just any memory. A Hendrix memory. A vivid one.
One that makes me taste the salt air.
With my favorite heavy polka-dot pen in hand, I get lost in the memories.
Summer After Senior Year In High School
“Heads up—” Sand flew at my feet as six-feet-something of golden-tanned skin and pure chaos crashes in front of us, a football tucked against his ribs and a cocky grin on his gorgeous face.
“That’s why you play hockey, not football, Sinclair,” Jamie Murphy yelled while the man at my feet laughed.
It was low and deep and slid beneath my skin, warming my already-heated blood.
Hendrix pushed up, dusting the sand from his board shorts and not bothering to right the backward navy-blue Kroydon Hills Prep hat that had been basically glued to his head since sophomore year. The same hat that always hid dark hair in need of a good trim, even if he never bothered to trim it.
He liked it unruly, and so did I.
Not that I’d told him that.
Some secrets were meant to be taken to the grave.
And my fantasies about this man were absolutely one of them.
Okay—or maybe more than one . . .
Nope.
Not going there either.
So why, sweet baby Jesus in a manger, when this man turned and smiled at us, did my stomach somersault?
“Sorry, ladies.” His baby-blue eyes shone as bright as the sun hitting the ocean waves behind him as he winked, and my stomach flipped.
“Dude, I seriously hope you’re better with a puck,” Olivia grumbled from the lounge chair next to mine, already bored with life while Saylor, Aurora, and I smothered our laughter.
“What?” Liv asked as Hendrix jogged back to the edge of the water, where the hard sand met the rising tide, and tossed his ball back to one of my cousins.
“My social battery is dead. I’ve been nice all day. Can we be done now?”
“No,” Saylor and Aurora answered in unison.
I pushed my sunglasses into my hair and grinned at Liv. “It’s one weekend, Olivia. It won’t hurt you to spend one more day of it soaking up the sun with us.”
“It actually might,” she groaned. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
Skin cancer is real, ladies. Some of us don’t bronze.
We burn, unlike you two bitches.” She fixed the brim of her black sun hat and glared at me over her oversized glasses.
“The fact I’m not back at the house, in the air conditioning and reading a book, instead of down here where my skin is crisping up like bacon as we speak, is a serious testament to how much I love you brats. ”
“Really?” Saylor leaned over me and swatted Liv’s arm with a magazine. “We have two more nights before Serena disappears. Stop being a big baby.”
I snickered, and Aurora leveled her glare at me. “And you—”
Oh shit.
“You’re gorgeous and smart and athletic. If you want to go on a date with the man, why the fuck don’t you just ask him out already? What’s with the waiting for him to do the asking thing?”
Olivia cackled like it was the best thing she’d ever heard, and I sunk further into my chair.
Well, hell . . . “I just got out of a relationship.”
“Months ago,” Saylor added.
Aurora adjusted her bikini and sat up. “Time to move up and move on.”
“Because she doesn’t want to ruin the friendship,” Olivia mocked me like she’d heard it a million times, and I guess maybe she had.
“Seriously, Serena. You’ve got solid C cups and arguably the best body of any of us.
Take the long sleeves off and shake what your momma gave you.
” Liv reached for the hem of the long-sleeved white tee covering my bikini top, and I smacked her hand away. “It’s called flirting.”
“I flirt,” I argued.
“Nuh-uh. You breathe in his general direction,” Olivia argued, and Saylor and Aurora snorted.
My cousins are traitors. All of them.
“What’s the point?” I grumbled and dug my toes into the soft sand, burying the pretty purple polish. “I leave for school next week.”
“It’s not like it’s that far,” Aurora pointed out, not for the first time, as she pulled sunscreen from her bag. “North Carolina is what—a six-hour drive from Kroydon Hills?”
“It’s going to be hard enough balancing UNC and the National team.
” I grabbed it from her, smiling as I pictured the next four years.
I’d worked damn hard for this, and I wasn’t going to let anything or anyone stand in my way.
“Half my life is going to be practices, airports, tournaments, and classes . . . There’s no room to add anything else to that.
” Not for a boyfriend. Not for a life. Not when everything I’d worked my whole life for was within my reach if I just worked a little bit harder.
Even if some foolish part of me wished there were. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Aurora toed a soccer ball, then effortlessly juggled it between her feet.
The summer before, she couldn’t do that sitting down—few people could—and suddenly, I felt like a momma bird watching her baby fly.
“I still can’t believe Uncle Max is letting you go away to school.
I thought for sure he’d have your little ass locked up at Kroydon University, living at home and commuting. ”
“With a bodyguard and private chauffer,” Saylor giggled.
“Yeah.” I stood and stole the ball. “You and me both.”
“Oh, game on.” Aurora jumped to her feet, and I bolted.
“I hate you both,” Olivia groaned, and our laughter carried down the shoreline as Aurora chased me through the sand until we were both breathless and smiling.
One last weekend.
One last chance to pretend everything wasn’t about to change.
Less than an hour later, the tide rolled in, and Olivia reached her limit.
“I’m done.” She stood, folding her chair with a theatrical level of misery only she could manage. “I’m going back to the house. Want me to order dinner?”
Our cousin Ryker cocked his head, and Olivia shook hers. “Sorry. Forgot your hearing aids aren’t in. Want me to order dinner, or are we going out?” she asked and signed.
“Staying in,” Hendrix’s cousin Jamie answered.
“Agreed.” Ryker grinned as he spun a football in his hand before Jamie smacked it out.
“Works for me,” Hendrix added.
“Sounds good to me,” I agreed and looked at Saylor, who was asleep on her chair. “Guessing her too.”
“Bonfire tonight?” Jamie asked, and Ryker shook his head.
“Storm’s rolling in,” Hendrix said and signed.
Aurora perked up. “Cards?”
We all agreed, and Saylor opened an eye. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” Ryker’s older brother, Maverick teased her, but he wasn’t wrong.
Saylor rolled her eyes but smiled at her big cousin. “Fair enough.”
She threw her things in her bag as the guys picked up the coolers.
“I’ll be back in a bit.” I told them, leaning back in my chair. “This is my—”
“Favorite time on the beach,” Liv finished for me, rolling her eyes. “We know, beachy Barbie. The beach gets quiet, the lights get pretty, and you become one with whatever romance novel you’re reading. Heard it before.”
“It’s peaceful,” I argued without any force behind it. Olivia already knew how I felt. She just didn’t happen to agree.
“It’s weird,” she argued, not for the first time.
And I accepted that some things never change and pulled out my book. “It’s perfect.”
I wasn’t going to win this argument, but I didn’t need to. She was just teasing me because that was how we showed love. Then and now.
“Fine. Read your book. But if you fall asleep out here, I’m not coming to get you before the rain starts.”
“That was one time,” I laughed and settled in as a deep laugh rumbled nearby, raising the hair on the back of my neck.
I lifted my eyes to find Hendrix standing next to the surfboard he’d planted behind us. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t wash out to sea.”
“Whatever,” Olivia grumbled and handed Ryker her chair to carry up to the house. Within minutes, they were all walking toward Ryker’s parents’ house, arguing over Chinese food or pizza, and I’m pretty sure I heard Liv say something about sushi.
“Does Max know you’re not crashing at your own house?”
I shook my head as I lifted my gaze to Hendrix Sinclair.
Ryker and Maverick may be my cousins, but Jamie and Hendrix definitely were not, and Dad would have had a stroke if he knew we were all crashing in one house.
He was barely surviving the idea of UNC.
I swear the only reason he agreed was because I was going to be living in the soccer house and not a coed dorm.
It didn’t matter that my parents and Hendrix’s were good friends.
They still are.
The idea of a weekend spent in a house with him?
Absolutely not.
After a few minutes, our stretch of beach slowly emptied until we were the only people left. Golden hour. My favorite time.
The crowds disappeared.
The ocean exhaled.
And my mind calmed in a way it only ever does there.
It’s a kind of peace that’s always settled my soul.
I opened my book and stared at the words on the page.
Reading but unable to retain . . . Unable to focus.
Because I could feel it. Him. That same awareness that had hummed to life between us for years.
Through every girl he’d ever dated and the one idiot boyfriend Hendrix loved telling me I gave way too much time to.
He may have been happier than I was when we finally broke up.