Chapter 25. Cait #2
Topher whistled. “You’ve got it bad.”
“Shut up. Can you just give Daniel a ride?”
“It’s a stupid idea,” he said, tossing the balls again. “I’m telling you. Don’t do it. Spare yourself.”
Cait opened her mouth to challenge him, but before she could, a bunch of guys kicked off a game of spades on Luke’s boat and shouted to Topher to join them. She grudgingly found her girlfriends on a neighboring boat, lounging in their bikinis and flipping through the latest J.Crew catalogue.
By late afternoon, Cait and Luke had barely spoken beyond the brief exchanges earlier in the day.
When it got closer to four, she made her way to his boat, where the guys were now playing hacky sack and doing flips off the bow.
She cornered Topher to ask him one more time to head back early and take Daniel with him.
“The fireworks haven’t even started!” Topher laughed, his eyes barely open. He was stoned out of his mind.
Cait imagined him sitting in Marcus’s basement and weighing out little dime bags of bunk weed on a scale. She leaned in closer so no one could hear her. “Do me this one favor,” she said, “and I won’t tell Mom and Dad how you got the money to buy your boat.”
The disgust on Topher’s face made her regret the words immediately. He leaned back and shook his head. “That’s fucked up, kid.”
It was fucked up. She knew that. She’d just betrayed the most sacred rule of their siblinghood—to never snitch on one another—and she wasn’t proud of that, but she’d already gone too far to back down.
Besides, his response only confirmed what Luke had said last night about Topher dealing, and this emboldened her.
“Talk about fucked up,” she shot back. “I can’t believe you’re doing this shit. I should tell them anyway. What are you even selling?”
Topher ignored her question and hopped up. “Daniel,” he shouted over the heads of their friends.
Daniel was assembling a fishing rod, though Cait had heard Luke yell at him throughout the day to stow it away because there were too many people around. Topher waved him over.
“You’re riding back with me,” Topher said.
Daniel furrowed his brow. “Why?”
Topher snapped and pointed to Cait. “Ask the boss.”
Cait felt her cheeks redden. She watched Luke saying goodbye to their friends on another boat, then turned back to Daniel. “I just need to talk to your brother alone for a second,” she said.
Daniel rubbed his hands together conspiratorially. “What do I get out of it?”
Cait glanced at Topher, then back at Daniel. “He’ll let you drive,” she said.
Daniel’s eyes brightened. “Hell yeah.”
“Try hell no,” Topher said, and flicked his cigarette butt into the water.
“Come on,” Cait said. “It’s a couple hundred feet to the dock.” She squeezed Topher’s shoulder, but he jerked away.
When Luke came over, Topher refused to acknowledge her. Instead, he tossed Daniel the keys and said to Luke, “Cait’s going with you,” and he untied his boat from the rest of the party.
Luke looked back and forth between them. Cait hoped he wouldn’t ask why and silently begged their brothers not to sell her out, but Luke just turned to Daniel and said, “Don’t fuck around. We’re already late.”
Daniel saluted Luke with two fingers and flashed a dopey grin.
Suddenly, Cait realized he might not be okay to drive.
She looked at her brother and Luke, but neither seemed concerned, and, she supposed, it wasn’t like Topher was in better shape.
When Luke asked, “You coming?” she hopped onto his boat.
Next to them, Daniel reversed Topher’s boat and set off a bunch of waves that disturbed the other boats, knocking over beers and ruining a game of spades by sliding all the cards onto the wet floor.
“Dipshit,” Luke shouted as Daniel took off.
Luke and Cait led the way, navigating the boats near the lighthouse.
Cait stood next to him at the wheel, and as she watched him fiddle with his sailor’s bracelet, she remembered its slightly pungent smell from last night.
Her skin stung with a fresh sunburn. She waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, she wondered if this time she should be the one to say it had all been a mistake.
Let him see how it felt. But she’d never do that.
She couldn’t let go of the hope that it hadn’t been a mistake.
Finally, she said, “Last night was fun.”
Luke looked over her shoulder and frowned, and when she turned, she saw what was bothering him. Instead of following them and heading back to the dock, Topher and Daniel were doing loops around the lighthouse.
“Fucking Topher,” Cait said.
No doubt he was keeping Daniel out on the boat to annoy Luke and therefore punish her for threatening to rat him out to their parents.
Luke waved them off and turned back to her. “Last night was fun,” he said, but there was something in his tone, a seriousness that made her uneasy. Then he said, “You know, I’m leaving tomorrow, so—”
Cait forced a laugh. “No, of course.” She swallowed hard. “We’re friends. Same old.”
Luke nodded and smiled, his obvious relief upsetting her even more. “Exactly,” he said. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
It’s what she’d expected but also hoped he wouldn’t say.
His shoulders were sunburned and peeling, his wet hair pushed back, and his blue eyes shimmered against the bay’s light.
He’d never looked so beautiful. Her anger faded, this time back into the ache she always carried during these conversations.
She felt trapped on the boat with him now, worried she’d cry if she let her guard down for even a second.
When they approached the beach club, she spotted Maggie and her friends building sandcastles along the shore. She waved, but her youngest sister didn’t see her.
While Luke cut the engine and dropped the anchor, signaling to the dock attendant to pick them up, Cait watched Topher’s boat.
Just as it seemed they were finally heading to the dock, Daniel pulled another sharp turn and circled back toward the lighthouse.
She hoped a police boat wasn’t around to pull them over, amazed one hadn’t already.
“You could come visit me,” Luke said. “If you wanted to.”
He stood on the bow, waiting for the attendant to approach in his dinghy. His eyelashes were so thick and black, it was like he was wearing mascara. “Boston’s not that far,” he continued. “I think there’s a cheap bus from Chinatown or something.”
She didn’t even try to hide her excitement. “I would definitely do that.”
“Cool,” Luke said. Then he hopped off the bow and leaned over the steering wheel to kiss her. His lips were chapped and salty from swimming all day, but when he opened his mouth and their tongues met, she felt a dizzying, almost sickening longing for more.
The attendant pulled up and connected the boats with a hook. As he helped Luke transfer his cooler, fishing gear, and a garbage bag filled with empty beer cans from the afternoon, she checked again to see what was happening with Daniel and Topher.
They were being jerks, and Topher would definitely still be annoyed at her when they got back to the beach club, but she didn’t care anymore. Let them have their stupid fun. Luke had asked her to visit him in Boston. It had all worked out better than she’d expected.
Cait was reading in bed, the twins sound asleep next to her, when she heard the first thump.
But it wasn’t until the pine cone hit her window directly, rather than the side of the house, that she sat up and saw what was happening.
From the window, she waved at Luke, standing in the center of the driveway next to his Range Rover.
“Hey—” Luke half whispered when she opened the front door.
“What are you doing here?”
Luke smiled and tossed a handful of extra pine cones onto the snow-covered rose bushes by the front porch.
“You don’t have a phone,” he said. “I wanted to see if everything was okay. If you’re okay.” He paused. “And I didn’t want to leave things like that with you.”
She didn’t either.
“It’s not that late,” he said, checking his watch. “How about a glass of something at O’Reilly’s?”
Cait made sure the twins were still asleep as she grabbed her coat and lipstick. She popped into Maggie’s room to ask her to keep an ear out just in case the twins woke, and then snuck back down the stairs.
Luke lowered the music and turned up the heat when she climbed into the car.