Some asshole vandalized our chalkboard last night. We usually bring it inside the store after closing up, but last night was Friday and the boardwalk had a live band playing so the place was more packed than usual. I’d had the genius idea to leave the sign outside near our store overnight so that all the people that were there seeing the band would walk past our sign and see that we sell books now. The best case scenario was that people who rarely come to the boardwalk would see the sign and remember our store and come back to buy books. I figured the worst thing that would happen is that people would just walk right by it, lost in their own world, and never see the sign.

I was wrong. The actual worst thing that could have happened would be the giant penis that now covers the board.

I heave a sigh and kneel down in front of it with a bottle of alcohol and some cotton balls. Luckily, I’m here early enough and it’s Saturday morning so people like to sleep in. Maybe I can fix this before anyone sees it.

The penis is drawn in silver Sharpie, by the looks of it, and it spans the entire three foot tall chalkboard. I cover a cotton ball in alcohol and begin scrubbing at the lines. They come off with only a little effort, but when I’m finished, the alcohol has left a streak of perfectly clean black all over the board.

So the penis is still there in a way. I can’t help but laugh a little at how stupid this is, and then I start scrubbing the entire thing until it’s perfectly clean. I’m drenched in sweat by the time the board is finished, and the sun has risen and warmed up the beach.

I glance at the time on my cell phone and realize it’s taken me two whole hours to clean off some asshole’s idea of a funny joke. I wish we had a security camera on the store so I could find whoever did this and draw penises all over everything they love.

I head inside and find Mom behind the counter, playing on the computer. “All done?” she says, lifting an eyebrow at my appearance. I probably look like shit since I’m covered in sweat and I reek of rubbing alcohol.

I nod. “Where’s the chalk markers?” She hands them to me and I go back outside, but not before chugging a cold bottle of water.

Mom has better decorative handwriting than I do, but I do my best to replace the words on the sign. I add an arrow at the bottom of it to point toward the store.

The boardwalk has filled up with people now, mostly beach goers by the smell of the sunscreen in the air and the fact that people walk right past all the stores on their way to the ocean. I’m nearly finished with my sign when I hear a girl say, “Seriously, Jonah?”

My head whips up. Across the way, near the hot dog stand, is the petite girl from Jonah’s lunch table. She’s wearing cut off shorts and a black bikini top with no coverup so that her boobs are on display. And her hands are on her hips while she stares at Jonah.

My heart skips a beat. Seeing him outside of school is weirder than weird. He’s wearing board shorts and flip flops. And, well, I’m not going to say that the sight of his surprisingly muscular bare chest sends me falling to my ass on the boardwalk, but I do have to reach over and grab the wall to steady myself. Maybe I’ve just been kneeling too long in front of this stupid sign and maybe that’s why my knees are suddenly weak.

I’m partially hidden by the sign, and there’s other people around so I’m pretty sure they have no idea I’m here watching their private conversation. Which is good because I couldn’t look away now, even if I wanted to.

Jonah’s hair is either wet or gelled, because it’s slicked to the side like usual, only it’s a little messier than when he’s in school. I try not to stare at his chest, but damn. I had no idea he was packing such a hot body underneath those nerd outfits he wears every day.

Here at the beach, he looks like a normal guy. With tanned skin and board shorts hanging low on his hips, I would swoon my ass off if a guy like him ever came into the store. It’s amazing how different he looks, and I’m feeling like the worst person on earth right about now for judging him based on appearance.

Jonah called me pretty and I called him a nerd.

I cap the chalk marker in my hand. I should go back inside. But that girl’s got her hand on her hip now as they move forward in line at the hot dog cart and she looks annoyed with Jonah. He says something I can’t hear and then they order their food. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wallet, handing some cash to Thamir, who owns the hot dog stand.

Watching him pay for her meal is all it takes to know they’re a couple and that my fantasy of them being just friends is now just that—fiction.

Now I go inside. Watching them any longer just feels creepy and wrong.

Like how I’m happy Jonah has a girlfriend.

And how I never liked him anyway.

And how both of those statements are a lie even though I won’t admit it to myself.

The Magpie gets quite a lot of shoppers today, and although many of them are just browsing, many more purchase something. We sell enough books to make me think this might actually be a profitable venture, and I distract myself from thinking of Jonah by looking up new books to buy for the store.

It doesn’t help much.

I’m not a superstitious person, and I don’t believe in signs. Like one time sophomore year, my friend Tabby was asked to prom by this gorgeous senior guy. Only, two seconds after she’d said yes, some idiot threw a football in the hallway and it smacked her right in the face. She’d taken that as some kind of cosmic sign that she shouldn’t go to prom. So she didn’t.

I’m not the kind of person who believes in things like that, but when I look over at the clock on the computer at our front desk, it says the time is 11:11. I think back to being a kid and always making at wish at that time. They never came true. But I always wished anyway. Just like I do now.

I want to be friends with Jonah again.

And then, as if it’s some kind of actual cosmic sign, I look out the window of the store and see Jonah’s girlfriend storming down the boardwalk toward the parking lot. Even from here she looks pissed, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. I wait a few beats, but I don’t see Jonah following behind her. Did he leave first? Or is he still on the beach?

I can’t help my curiosity. I tell Mom I’m going to go grab us smoothies from the shop down the way and she eagerly hands me some cash because the smoothies are the greatest drink ever.

Then I’m out the door, heart pounding with curiosity. I walk slowly, scanning the area for the unusually sexy guy who comes off as such a nerd at school. He’s not on the boardwalk though, at least not where I can see. I venture a little further, down past the shops and to where the boardwalk ends and the beach begins.

And then I see him.

He’s sitting on a large granite rock that separates the private part of the beach were people own beach houses and the public part. He’s just staring off at the water, his toes in the sand.

I walk over to him. At first, I’m going to do this fake, “Oh hey! I didn’t see you there! What a coincidence!” thing as I walk by, but the second I get close and he looks up and our eyes meet, I chicken out. I’ve never been a good actress.

“Hey,” I say, walking over to the large boulder of granite he’s using as a chair. It’s about four feet tall and just as wide, cut into a jagged square shape by the industrial equipment that cut and hauled all of these to the beach years ago.

He doesn’t say anything, but he gives me a half-hearted smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I saw your girlfriend leave,” I say, staring at a streak of black in the rock instead of looking at him.

“What?”

I cringe a little. Way to out yourself as a creepy stalker, Natalie. “I’m at work,” I say, trying to explain. “I saw you guys walk by earlier, and then I just saw her leave alone. She looked kind of pissed.”

He stares at me, his eyes flitting from my left eye to my right one. He doesn’t say anything so I get flustered and keep talking. “I’m not a stalker. I just—well the store—we have like no customers most of the time. My mom owns The Magpie in case you didn’t know?” I point back toward the boardwalk. Sweat drips down my neck and it’s not from the heat. “It’s a gift shop,” I explain, trying to remember if I ever told him about this. I think I did. He’s still just looking at me though, not saying anything, and I can’t stop talking. “It’s a store and it’s never busy so I was just sitting there bored staring out the window and I saw you guys.”

I take a deep breath and stare out at the ocean. “Then I saw her leave and well—actually no, I wasn’t, like, stalking you or anything. I was going to get smoothies for me and my mom and I saw her.”

“Where’s your smoothie?” he asks, squinting a little as he looks at me because the sun is so bright.

“I, uh, well I haven’t gotten it yet. Um, I—” I stare down at my flip flops, now covered in sand. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“She must have looked really pissed,” Jonah says, still watching me. For the first time since I’ve met him, he’s actually staring at me, not glancing over and then looking away shyly. His stare feels like it’s penetrating into my soul, like maybe he’s trying to decide to forgive me or not.

I swallow. “What happened?”

He gives a little shrug and looks down at my hand, which is resting on the rock next to his.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I say, feeling like a total idiot for coming out here. “I guess I just wanted to find you and tell you I’m sorry for the other day. And well, I’m sorry for everything. I wouldn’t have been all stupidly flirting and messing with you during tutorials if I knew you had a girlfriend. I was just mad that I even had to do tutorials in the first place, so I tried to make it into a joke.”

As the confession pours out of me, I realize it’s all true. “Anyhow, I’m sorry, Jonah. I didn’t know you have a girlfriend. I’ll be nothing but professional at tutoring from now on.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he says. A gust of warm wind sends a strand of his hair falling into his face. “I have an ex-girlfriend, which is who you saw.”

“Did you just break up?”

He shakes his head. “I broke up with her a couple months ago. She was just kind of a horrible person. Selfish. Rude.” He shrugs and inhales a deep breath. “She ignored me for like a month and then she started texting and calling and saying she wanted to get back together.”

I’m dying to know more. I want every single dirty detail, but I know better than to ask. Jonah shuts down easily and I should be grateful I’ve been told this much.

“That sounds hard,” I say stupidly, just for something to say.

A tiny little bug lands on top of my finger on the rock and Jonah shoos it away. “I was open to trying to get back together, but I told her things had to be different. She couldn’t be so rude all the time. She acted like she agreed with me, but every time we hang out, it’s the same old stuff.”

He kicks his foot and sends a wave of hand skittering across the shore. “Last week she makes this big deal about telling all our friends that we’re not dating officially and that we’re just hanging out. She doesn’t want me to hold her hand but she wants to be doted on. And then we come here and I don’t immediately offer to buy her food and she gets pissed. Call me crazy, but if we aren’t officially dating, why should I buy her food?”

“You shouldn’t,” I say.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, which only makes more of it flip over to the side. I bite the inside of my lip because right now the boy looks like a freaking cologne model about to do a beach themed photoshoot.

“I don’t even know what the hell she got pissed about just now,” he says. “But she got mad and stormed off. She wants me to chase after her because she thinks that kind of drama is romantic or some shit.”

“No, that kind of drama is screwed up,” I say.

He grins. “Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that. I just want a real relationship that’s not based on these fucking games.”

He looks up at me again, and this time there’s a sadness in his eyes. “I can’t do that.”

“What? Why?”

“Because, Natalie,” he says, saying my name like I’m a child. “Guys like me have to take what we can get. It’s not like there’s a line of girls waiting around to date a pathetic nerd. You of all people should know that.”