14. Chapter 14
Chapter 14
T hey walked back up to the group, the sun completing its dip behind the horizon in the couple minutes it took to get back. Luke went to throw their plates away, and Jane walked over to Haley.
“Hey,” Haley said. “The parents are going up to the house. Gumby needs to get back inside. We’re going to walk down and listen to the music.”
A band had started playing at the pavilion down the beach, about a hundred yards away. “Oh, okay,” Jane said. “Sounds great.”
Haley looked at her with some curiosity. “Everything good?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
Did she interrupt anything? Jane wondered. Maybe. Probably not. Define interrupt. Define something.
Blake came up behind Haley then. He grabbed her by the waist and she squealed, swatting at him with her hand. “You scared me!”
“She always says that,” Blake said to Jane. “I could be two feet away, there the whole time, and she’ll be like, stop scaring me!”
“Well, quit it then,” Jane said with a smile.
Luke came up next to her and she turned her attention back to him. “You want to go listen to some music?” she said.
He pretended to consider. “I think,” he said, “listening to some music sounds like an excellent plan.”
“Good answer!” Haley said. “Let’s go.”
Jane hooked her sandals around her fingers and followed the group down the beach to the pavilion. Maddie and Ian were a bit ahead of them, side by side, steady as ever. Next to them, Cody had his arm slung around Ashley’s shoulders, lifting and twirling the ends of her hair here and there. Jane wasn’t even sure Ashley noticed he was doing it, but she thought it was sweet.
Tommy was over to the side, walking next to Bree, but she hardly let herself acknowledge it. She let her gaze skim over him, like a bird on water, leaving barely a ripple in its wake.
It’s fine , she thought, and she mostly meant it.
The band played an array of all-time favorites, songs that never would have seemed to go together on a perfectly curated playlist but somehow, on this starry summer night, made total sense. There seemed to be something for everyone, no matter the age, no matter the mood. Some people started dancing, and before long there was a good group jumping up and down and swaying to classic cover songs. Jane stood on the edges with Luke, sometimes dancing, sometimes singing along, mostly talking and laughing.
The band launched into the opening notes of an old song, a girl group staple Blake’s great-grandma Gumby would have liked. Even though it was probably from before all of them—literally, all of them, everyone on the entire beach—had been born, they all knew it. They linked arms, jumped up and down and shouted along in unison with the chorus.
“Where’s Gumby when you need her?” Jane heard Haley cry out. “She would love this!”
The moonlight found Haley like a spotlight, her gaze turned up to Blake’s, her smile rocketing across her whole face. She radiated joy, the song and the crowd providing the soundtrack to her own personal love story. Jane felt like she would remember this moment for a long time, maybe forever.
Oh, Haley , she thought. I’m so happy for you.
She was. She was truly, truly so happy for her.
The song ended, shaking Jane out of the moment but not out of the feeling. They came back to the 21st century with an alt rock cover on the next song, and then a boy band medley, and then the band started playing a scaled-down cover of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” Haley took it literally, pulling Blake out to the middle of the crowd, then Ashley and Cody followed.
Luke looked at Jane. “You want to dance?” he said, holding out his hand. “We can practice for the wedding.”
She laughed. “All right.”
She let her sandals drop to the ground and followed him out to where the others were dancing. It was a slowed-down version, folksy, still upbeat but laced with a thread of faint longing in the chorus.
The sand was soft on Jane’s feet, her hand held loosely by his as they swayed back and forth in the sand. “Are you having fun?” he asked.
“I am,” she said, surprising herself a little with the answer. “What about you?”
“Definitely,” he said, and then smiled. The lines around his eyes were like little hugs, she thought, wrapping themselves around whatever he was looking at.
She laughed a little to herself as she imagined it. “What?” he said.
She wasn’t sure if she should say it, and then decided why not. “You know you have a famous smile, don’t you?”
His smile stretched wider, even as he said, “I do not.”
“Have a famous smile or know you have one?”
“Either?” he said.
“Well,” she said, “you do.”
He tipped his head back and laughed now, a hearty, contagious laugh that made a couple people glance and smile in their direction. “So, tell me more about that.”
“There’s not that much to tell ,” she said. “It sort of speaks for itself.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“I do.”
He waited a beat, and then another. “I don’t think it’s speaking for itself very loudly, though,” he said. “You might have to help it out.”
“Luke Sanderson,” she said. “I am not the spokesperson of your smize .”
He laughed again. “My what?”
She ducked her head. “Don’t make me regret bringing it up.”
He took his hand off her waist for a second, holding it up in a sign of surrender. “I would never.” He paused. “I do feel like I need to find out more about this, though. To be continued?”
She shook her head and laughed. “Maybe.”
“I hope so.” The song was in the chorus, and they listened for a minute. “This band is pretty good, huh?” he said.
She nodded. “Really good. Fun.”
“I do appreciate a good cover song,” he said.
She looked up at him. “How come? Because they’re familiar?”
“Because …” He thought about it. “Because it takes something you thought you knew and flips it on its head.” He paused. “If it’s a good one, anyway.”
Are we still talking about music , she thought. It was a wild thought, and she shook it off.
“So,” she said out loud, “what about this one?”
“This cover?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a good one,” he said. “A real good one.”
“You think so?”
His hand oh-so-lightly pressed on her back, bringing her oh-so-barely closer to him. “Yeah.”
“Me too,” she said. It didn’t matter what they were talking about, she decided. Right now she was just going to enjoy the song and the perfect smize of the person she was dancing with. “I think so, too.”