Eight years ago...
I didn’t see Grayson for three days after the party but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about him nearly every minute of every day. I thought about his eyes. I thought about his hair. I thought about his strong arms wrapped around me as he carried me through the woods and delivered me to my front porch.
But most of all, I thought about the way he looked when my sister answered the door.
Like someone had frozen time.
Like the earth had stopped spinning.
Like the mountains had been moved.
For a moment, I thought he might drop me. His arms stiffened around the backsides of my legs. His heart pounded beneath his T-shirt. His breath caught in his chest.
I felt all of it.
Because I was right there. Crushed against him.
I was right there. Helpless to stop it.
I was right there. When he first laid eyes on Alex Smart.
And that’s when I knew that those thundering heartbeats, those hiccups of stolen breath, weren’t for me. Would never be for me.
I was just the helpless child who needed to be rescued.
Who ventured out at night alone and couldn’t fend for herself.
Three days later he came wandering up the beach in front of our house. Alex and I were stretched out on lounge chairs, soaking up the last rays of summer before school started in a week.
Alex’s body shimmered in her turquoise bikini and spray-on tanning oil. I, on the other hand, looked like an imp. With my baggy basketball shorts that fell below my knees, saggy T-shirt, and a bandaged ankle that required the use of crutches.
I was drawing a particularly gruesome battle scene in my sketchbook while Alex was on the phone, lamenting about how much she was dreading the start of senior year and how uninspired she was by the selection of boys at Eastbrook High.
“I mean, I’ve been in the same class with all of these losers since kindergarten,” she whined into the phone. “It’s a bad sign when you’re seventeen and you’ve already seen every single penis in your entire class.”
I glanced up from my drawing and she smiled conspiratorially at me and then mouthed, “Just you wait.”
The muffled voice of Jamie, Alex’s best friend, came sifting through the speaker as Alex picked at her fingernail, looking incredibly bored.
“Yup,” she said, “seen his too. It’s curves to the right.”
I found it confusing that Alex seemed to know so much about penises when she was still a virgin. And I knew this because she had confided in me at the beginning of May when she swore she would lose her virginity this summer. But apparently, the pickings were just too slim.
She did have a point, however.
About the selection of boys, I mean. Not the penises.
Like I would have known anything about that.
When you grow up in a town as small as Eastbrook, your crop of eligible bachelors is pretty much decided by the second grade. The class sizes are miniscule, and by the time everyone has hit puberty, you pretty much know everything there is to know about everyone.
The mystery of dating is completely removed from the equation.
Hardly anyone moves in or out of this place. It’s just that kind of town.
Which, I knew, was one of the big reasons Alex had decided to go to NYU next year. She was all too eager to trade her pool of forty for forty thousand.
“So unless a new penis just happens to walk into my life, I guess I’m doomed to go off to college a virgin.”
And right then, on cue, as if being summoned by the penis gods, Grayson Walker appeared over the top of the sandy knoll.
He looked like he’d been jogging. His bare chest was glistening with sweat. His shorts were tugged down low to reveal two perfect hip bones and adjacent dimples.
Alex responded by unceremoniously hanging up on Jamie.
“Hey,” Grayson said as he approached, shielding his eyes from the sun, “how’s my favorite superhero?”
I set my sketchpad down and shielded my eyes to look up at him, trying to fight the idiotic grin that threatened to hijack my entire face. I felt a small flicker of smugness that he had chosen to address me before Alex. “The crutches suck ass, but I guess I’m okay.”
He laughed and tilted his head to steal a peek at my drawing, grimacing at the macabre I had almost finished depicting. “Yikes. That looks bloody.”
I shrugged. “How else is someone supposed to prove their worth?”
He pointed at me. “You, Miss Lia, are dangerous. I can tell. In fact, I’m going to have to start calling you, Lil’ Killer.”
My heart sunk slightly as the nickname was bestowed. The killer part was flattering but did he have to qualify it with the word “Lil’?”
Meanwhile, Alex’s face flashed with annoyance at being so obviously left out of the exchange.
“So,” Grayson said, sitting down on the bottom of my lounger, “let’s have it out. Right here. Right now. Superman. Most definitely not a—”
But he never got to finish the thought. Because Alex had apparently reached her threshold and decided at that moment to officially insert herself into the conversation. “I don’t think I got the opportunity to thank you,” she began. “For saving my poor, little sister the other night. You’re a regular knight in shining armor, aren’t you?” She narrowed her gaze on his glossy bare chest. “Or rather, no armor at all.”
And there it was again.
A locking of eyes. A shortness of breath. A fluttering of hearts.
Two kindred souls trapped inside a timeless world.
And I was watching it all from the outside.
Grayson was the first to break the fragile silence. “You’re welcome. But I don’t think I got the chance to introduce myself.”
“Oh right. Sorry about slamming the door on you,” Alex went on in that light, flirty voice she reserved for cute boys. “My parents had just gotten home. I couldn’t risk you blowing my cover.”
“And what cover would that be?” His coy smirk was intoxicating.
Alex flipped her hair casually over her shoulder. “The usual. At home studying on a Saturday night. So terribly boring.”
“Terribly,” he agreed.
“Well, now is as good a time as any.” She pushed her sunglasses onto her head.
Grayson tilted his head inquisitively.
“To introduce yourself,” she prompted, her eyes twinkling.
His grin broadened. “Grayson Walker. My mom and I just moved to town.”
“A rare commodity,” Alex commented without missing a beat.
“Like beans that grow into magic beanstalks?”
“Even rarer.”
Grayson glanced back at me for the first time since the nauseating exchange had begun. “Is she always like this?” he asked me with a wink.
I forced a tight smile. “She’s usually worse.”
Alex stood up, tossing her sarong onto the chair. “It’s really hot out here. I’m going in.”
I never blamed Grayson for looking. It was impossible not to look at Alex. Her figure was enviable. What I blamed him for was everything that happened from that moment on.
Or maybe I blamed Alex for swooping in like a hawk and stealing the first person I’d ever felt anything for.
Or maybe I blamed myself for not guarding him like the rare commodity that he was. For not fighting for him.
“You never told me your name!” he called after her.
“Alex,” she tossed back over her shoulder.
She waded into the ocean, giggling slightly when the waves splashed up around her knees, waiting until the water was around her stomach before turning around. “You look hot, too,” she called out casually. Effortlessly. Alex-ly. “Maybe you should join me.”
And just like that, the game was over.
There was nothing that could be done except admit defeat. Alex was victorious. Just like she always is.
Grayson was already hers.