Second Chance Summer

“Where were you?” Nora asked, folding her arms across her chest. While she’d gotten slightly less grumpy recently, she certainly hadn’t become sunshine and light, by any stretch of the imagination.

“I was just taking a break,” I said, wondering why I was justifying myself to a twelve-year-old. “Do you guys want something?”

“Sprite,” they said in unison. “And barbeque chips,” Gelsey continued, “and frozen M&Ms.”

Nora peered into the darkness of the snack bar. “Is Lucy here?”

“She’s up on the grass,” I said, pointing. The girls’ adoration of Lucy had been cemented when, the day after the slumber party, they’d come to the beach and Lucy had taught them how to do round-offs.

Elliot filled the sodas and grabbed the snacks while I rang them up. I handed Gelsey back the change, and after a moment’s consideration, she magnanimously put a single quarter in the tip jar.

“Thanks,” I said. Nora took a sip of her soda and Gelsey opened the bag of chips, but neither of them made any effort to leave. “Was there something else?” I asked. We weren’t exactly besieged by customers, but apparently Fred didn’t like people just hanging out in front of the snack bar, as it discouraged the people who didn’t want to wait on line.

“Uh-huh,” Gelsey said, crunching down on a chip, then tilting the bag toward Nora, who pursed her lips and carefully selected one. “You need to pick up the dog from the groomer’s when you’re done with work.”

“You’re kidding.” I sighed. “Again?”

Both Gelsey and Nora nodded. “Again,” Nora confirmed. “Your brother has a problem.”

Last week, my mother, shocked at just how many squeaky toys Murphy had managed to accumulate in a very short time, had forbidden all of us (but specifically Warren, since he was the only one buying them) from getting the dog any more accessories. And so, Warren had been devising increasingly desperate and obvious excuses to go to Doggone It!, see Wendy the vet-in-training, and possibly get up the nerve to say more than hello. The first time he’d spilled something on the dog, we’d thought it was an accident. Warren claimed that he’d just been drinking some tomato juice when the dog had run into the kitchen. He took the dog to get groomed, and nobody thought anything of this until, two days later, Warren managed to spill grape juice on him. Back Murphy went to the groomer, and when I caught Warren stalking the dog with a bottle of ketchup (because the dog, no fool, had started to flee whenever he saw my brother approaching), I’d finally confronted him about it.

“You need to stop tormenting the dog,” I told Warren as I forcibly removed the ketchup from his hands and stuck it back in the fridge. “You’re going to give him some kind of skin rash or something. I don’t think dogs are supposed to be washed this often.”

“Want me to tell you about the dog that crossed over three thousand miles to get back to its family?” Warren asked, clearly choosing to change the subject, rather than own up to the fact that he’d been attempting to douse the dog with ketchup.

“No,” I said, automatically. “But want me to tell you about the guy who traumatized his dog because he couldn’t ask a girl for a date?” Normally, I never would have said something like this to my brother. Maybe it was because I was so much more aware of what was happening in his social life now, in a way that I hadn’t ever been in Stanwich.

Warren blushed bright red. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, crossing his arms and then uncrossing them again.

“Just ask her out,” I said, as I knelt down to look under the table. Murphy was cowering there, shaking slightly, but when he saw that I wasn’t Warren—or wielding a liquid to throw at him—he seemed to relax slightly. I gestured for him to come, but the dog stayed put, clearly not sure if I was on Warren’s side or not. I straightened up to find my brother looking uncharacteristically confused.

“And, um,” he said, clearing his throat and then opening and closing the fridge for no reason whatsoever, “how exactly should I do that?”

“How should you ask her out?” I echoed. “You know. Just—” I stopped short when I saw the look on my brother’s face and realized that he might not, in fact, know how to do this. “Just strike up a conversation,” I said. “And then steer it toward whatever you want the date to be.”

“Uh-huh,” my brother said, and he looked around the kitchen, his fingers resting on the legal pad we always kept by the phone. I had a feeling that he was on the verge of taking notes. “And can you give me an example of that?”

“Well,” I said. I had never asked anyone out directly, but I had certainly encouraged guys in the right direction. “Like, if you want to take her out to dinner, mention that you know a great pizza restaurant, or whatever. And then hopefully she’ll say she loves pizza, and then you ask if she wants to eat some with you.”

“Okay,” Warren said, nodding. He paused for a moment, then asked, “But what if she doesn’t like pizza?”

I let out a long breath. If I hadn’t known my brother had a near-genius level IQ, I certainly would never have believed it after this conversation. “That was just a hypothetical,” I said. “Pick anything you want. A movie, or miniature golf, or whatever.”

“Right,” Warren said, looking lost in thought. “Got it.” He headed out of the kitchen, then took a step back in and gave me a slightly embarrassed smile. “Thanks, Taylor.”

“Sure,” I’d said, and then tried to see if I could coax the dog out from under the table.

After that, the dog had gone unassaulted for a few days, so I assumed that Warren had taken my advice, or at least abandoned this particular strategy. But it seemed that Murphy had to once again suffer the ineptitude of my brother’s flirting techniques.

I looked over the counter at Gelsey and Nora, who were now passing the bag of frozen M&Ms between them. “What was it this time?” I asked.

“Syrup,” Gelsey said. “Mom was really pissed.”

“I bet,” I said, thinking what a sticky mess that must have created.

“So she isn’t letting Warren pick him up. She wants you to do it. And then pick up some corn for dinner.”