Chapter Seventeen
We arrive at the Montauket, and everyone is in front of the hotel and restaurant on the beach, enjoying drinks and listening to live music. A breeze comes off the ocean, and I smooth out my white sundress that lifts with a gust of wind.
“You got some color today.” Forest puts his arm around my shoulder, and we look at the crowd. He watches Raven walk across the sand to one of the outdoor bars.
“It’s been a great weekend.” I blow out a heavy breath, riddled with a million heady thoughts. “I like the escape that this place offers. I don’t want to face real life tomorrow.”
Keegan stands at the bar and Raven says something to him, and he nods. He looks across the sand to me. When he sees me staring in his direction, Keegan bobs his head but then looks away.
“It was pretty great of Keegan to invite us along,” Forest says. “He seems like he enjoyed himself.”
“Yeah. I think so.” I smooth out my hair, but let myself glance in Keegan’s direction.
Forest nudges me on the shoulder. “I always worry about him. His life feels so small sometimes. Like I’m all he has.”
I hold my hair out of my face as the ocean breeze circles me. “I don’t know. He seems okay to me.”
We watch as Raven walks our way. “That’s the thing about Keegan. You’d never know one way or another.”
“How beautiful is this?” Raven gestures toward everyone standing around, and then we all look toward the sun that is low in the sky. “This place is amazing. Do we have to go back tomorrow?”
“I’m not going to think about tomorrow yet.” I hold my plastic cup up and walk toward the ocean. “I’m going to dip my toes in the water.”
I’ve always been obsessed with the ocean. And living in Minnesota, I felt worlds away from one so it’s nice to live in New York and be able to drive a relatively short distance and smell the salt in the air and feel it against my skin.
A wave comes up, and I let it crash over my toes and bare legs. I shut my eyes for a moment and try to clear my mind of everything. But instead, it flashes to my childhood. I’m a twelve-year-old, watching eighteen-year-old Keegan pack up his bags, because he graduated high school, with an associate’s degree already in his back pocket, thanks to this thing called postsecondary education, and now will be starting Harvard as a Junior due to all of his transfer credits.
His jeans are three inches too short and tight on his thin frame. His baggy sweatshirt looks like it’s a hundred years old, and his baby face is almost completely hidden by his oversized glasses held together with black tape. I remember thinking that the world is cruel to people like Keegan. He always seemed too big for Cherry, as if staying there would hold him back and force him to stay small.
My mind starts playing the film again, and this time, I’m seeing Keegan at his graduation from Harvard. The entire family went to Boston, and I was fourteen and way more impressed to get to see such a historic school than I was to see Keegan. He was still a tall, thin man, but I admit, his clothes fit him more. He had a girlfriend, and I remember thinking it didn’t seem possible that a girl would like him. What do fourteen-year-olds know?
The last time I saw Keegan before this summer was at his medical school graduation. He was twenty-four, and I was eighteen. He had a different girlfriend this time. But instead of spending time with her that evening, Forest and I helped him pack boxes at his small Boston apartment because the next day, he was driving to New York City to get ready for his residency program. He and Forest let me drink, and I remember being tipsy, verbose, and drunk on the possibilities of adulthood. Forest passed out, and Keegan and I stayed up all night talking.
Our six-year age difference seemed to disappear that night. We liked some of the same music and were interested in similar things. Hell, I was about to start studying medicine, just like him. It occurred to me that evening how much age loses relevance the older we get. That night, we talked for hours, and for the first time in my life, I felt like Keegan and I were developing a relationship outside of Forest or my parents.
I left Boston, feeling like we’d become friends. And then so much time passed. I went to college and studied pre-med. He did a residency. I attended medical school. He did a fellowship. We kept up with email the best that busy people can do, but our lives couldn’t have been going in more different directions.
I catch sight of Keegan walking toward me. He emerges from the dazzling rays of the setting sun, his entire being bathed in the warm glow of the dusk. The colors of the sky seem to saturate him with an otherworldly aura, and I can’t help but stare. It’s as though he’s walking out of the sun itself, and for a moment, I’m transfixed, unable to move or look away.
“Hey,” his low voice rings out. He puts his phone in his back pocket and gazes at me.
“Care for a drink?” I go to hand him my tepid, flat beer in a plastic cup.
“No, thanks.” Keegan holds his hand up to me. “I don’t drink beer out of plastic cups.”
“Of course, you don’t.” I shake my head. “I can’t see an ocean and not dip my toes in it.”
Keegan rubs his hand along his jawline, and it tenses under his touch. “You were the same way with lakes back home.”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “I remember.”
“About earlier.” Keegan reaches his hand out and gently touches my elbow. “It’s all—”
“Keegan Baldwin.” I pull my arm back. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
His grip tightens on my arm. “Luna Oliver. Please.”
I’m scared about what he wants to say because I don’t know what I want to hear. But whatever he says, things will shift between us, even more than they already have, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.
“Where have you guys been all night?” Forest stumbles up to us and puts one arm around Keegan and one around me. “I think I may be a little tipsy.”
“Do you think?” I shake out of Forest’s grip. “What’d you do? Have all the alcohol at the bar?”
“Oh, Luna.” Forest pinches my cheeks. “You’re so cute when you try to mother me.”
“Please.” I swat Forest’s stomach.
“And you.” Forest turns to Keegan and pokes his arm. “What are we going to do with you? I just want you to be happy.”
Raven walks out of the crowd, and her face lights up when she sees us. “There you guys are. Myles and Jules took a car back to the house, and I couldn’t find you three anywhere.”
Forest points to me and then to Keegan. “I was about to ask Keegan about his dating life.”
Keegan’s head darts in Forest’s direction. “It’s non-existent at the moment. That’s all you need to know.”
Raven studies the three of us. “Okay, there’s something I’ve been dying to know.”
She steps closer to us to speak over the music. She glances at me first, and then Keegan. “Have you two ever—”
“No,” Forest says, putting his hand over Raven’s laughing mouth, not letting her finish. “Do not say it. Don’t even think it.” He then starts singing nonsense and covering his ears.
But Raven can’t get enough of it and throws her head back and laughs. “I think I hit a trigger point. What would be so bad about Keegan and Luna—”
“No. No.” Forest cuts her off again, and I look down at the sand, avoiding any eye contact with Keegan. My face boils.
“I don’t think you fully get it.” Forest puts his arm around me again. “Keegan grew up with us. Like, he pretty much lived with our family. And the pact that we have. Right, Luna?”
“Whatever, Forest.” My face somehow gets hotter. I look anywhere but at Keegan. “We were kids when we made that stupid pact.”
“You see, Raven,” Forest says. “I kind of hooked up with Luna’s college roommate. And then she kind of hooked up with my medical school friend.”
Raven’s eyes grow large.
“To be clear,” I say. “Your friend kissed me at midnight on New Year’s. You slept with my roommate in your childhood bedroom, knowing she was obsessed with you and knowing that you weren’t interested in anything more than a one-night stand.”
“Wait,” Keegan says, looking at me. “You only kissed Forest’s friend at midnight? Nothing else happened?” Keegan looks at Forest. “Sorry, bro, that is different.”
“See,” I say. “I told you.”
“I don’t know about that,” Forest says. “But yes. I wasn’t very sensitive to your roommate’s feelings. I thought we were just having a good time.”
“Back to this pact though,” Raven says. “Are you both serious?”
“I didn’t mean the pact literally at all,” I say. “I just meant don’t be mindless about hooking up with each other’s friends. He knew Kelsie was obsessed with him, and that it would be nothing more than sex. That’s what bothered me.”
“So, wait?” Raven presses on. “I’m confused. Can you date each other’s friends or not?”
Forest and I look at each other, and I shrug. “If he actually liked my friend and wasn’t leading her on, I’d have no issues with it.”
“Luna can date my friends if we discuss it first,” Forest says. “But going back to your earlier comment, Raven. Keegan doesn’t count in any of this. He’s family.”
“That’s too bad for Luna.” Raven laughs but then turns her attention to Keegan. “Because you seem so perfect.”
“Keegan? Perfect?” I shake my head. “No. Definitely not.”
“Wow, Luna,” Keegan says, narrowing his eyes. “You sure didn’t hesitate.”
“I want to hear all the ways he’s not perfect,” Raven adds. “Because I have yet to find a flaw.”
“Hmm,” I say, thinking, and then look toward Keegan, unable to think of anything off the top of my head. He tilts his head, studying me. Waiting.
“He’s not very spontaneous,” I finally say. “And he worries too much.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, Luna.” Raven goes and stands by Keegan and places her hand on his shoulder.
“What about when you accidentally sexted me when I was in college?”
Forest backhands Keegan’s arm. “You sexted my sister? Why am I only hearing about this now?”
“It was meant for Stella,” Keegan says. His eyes glance at me, and then he looks at the sand.
“Huh.” Forest scratches his chin. “Stella doesn’t seem like someone who would have been receptive to that. She was your most boring girlfriend to date.”
“Wait.” I put my hand up, a memory coming to me. “Is that the girl you called missionary?”
“The one and only.” Forest grabs his stomach as he laughs, looking at me. “But let’s not even start on you. How many boyfriends did you go through in college?”
I grab Forest around the shoulders and squeeze him, but he’s too strong, puts me in a headlock, and starts messing up my hair. Keegan tries to step in to help me, but Forest pushes him back and I somehow end up flat on my back in the sand. My dress flies up but I quickly adjust it until it’s back in place.
Raven laughs so hard, and we all turn to her. She puts her hand on her side like it’s aching with our humiliation. “You three crack me up. Seriously.”
Forest and Keegan reach out to me and pull me up. I smooth out my hair.
“We should go.” Keegan’s words cut through this new silence. “And I’ll drive. The rest of you are straight losing your minds.”
When we arrive back at the house, I pour myself a tall glass of water and head to my bedroom. Keegan steps out of the bathroom and glances at me. We pause, my hand on the doorknob and his on his doorframe. He takes a deep breath, then goes into his room, and shuts the door.