Second Chance Summer

“Mmm,” my father said, apparently still engrossed in the paper. After a moment, though, he looked up and smiled at me. “Like I said,” he said, “he seems like a nice boy.”

I felt my cheeks flame again. “Laptop,” I said, in my briskest voice, as I headed inside to the sound of my dad chuckling. But even after I’d retrieved his laptop from where it had been charging on the couch, I found that I couldn’t quite stop smiling.

Chapter twenty-eight

“YOU’LL BE FINE,” LUCY SAID, REASSURINGLY. SHE TURNED TO Elliot, who was shuffling his ever-present deck of cards and, when he didn’t agree, whacked him hard on the arm. “Won’t she?”

“Ow!” Elliot yelped. “I mean… um, yeah. Totally. You’ll do great. Way better than last time. Which I’m not… supposed to mention,” he said, noticing that Lucy was giving him a death glare. He gave me a big smile and a thumbs-up, and I felt my stomach clench. Movies Under the Stars had arrived again, and neither of my coworkers were letting me out of doing the introduction. Lucy had just read the self-help book of a former reality TV star, and this woman was apparently big on “confronting your demons.” I’d seen some of this woman’s show, and it appeared that she was big on confronting everything, but this argument made no headway with Lucy. And once Lucy took a stand with something, I knew Elliot would never disagree with her. I had, however, gotten him to promise to rescue me if I crashed and burned again.

The days leading up to the movie had passed in a blur of what had become the normal routine—breakfast and questions with my father, work with Lucy and Elliot, nights eating dinner with my family on the screened-in porch. But now thrown into the mix was Henry. It turned out that we reported to our respective jobs at the same time, and the day after our dock talk, he’d caught up with me as I was attempting to simultaneously bike and drink coffee from my to-go mug. Though we hadn’t talked much on the ride (I was still getting into biking shape, and found that I needed my breath for other things, like getting to the top of Devil’s Dip) it had been nicely companionable. The next morning, I’d caught up with him, and we’d been biking into work together ever since. We hadn’t had any more long talks on the dock, though I found myself checking it several times before I went to bed every night—just to make sure nobody was out there. And even though I knew she’d be interested, I hadn’t told Lucy about it. For one thing, he had a girlfriend. And I didn’t want it getting back to him that I had any interest in him again. Which I wasn’t even positive that I did, so there was no point in pursuing it.

There was also the fact that every time I found myself staring into space at work, and starting to think about Henry, something inside my head would snap to attention and remind me of what really mattered. What was happening with my dad was what was really important, and I shouldn’t let myself forget that, even if my father had developed the annoying habit of asking me far too many pointed questions about Henry, always with a knowing smile. But none of that seemed as pressing at the moment as the fact that I was possibly about to humiliate myself in front of fifty people for the second time.

“You know,” Elliot said with fake nonchalance, “if we had gone with one of my movies, I’d have no trouble talking about it. We should think about that for the next one.”

“No,” Lucy and I said in unison. She turned to me as Elliot started his shuffle again, muttering about people with no cinematic taste. “You’ll be fine,” she said, giving me an encouraging smile. “And if you’re not, I’ll start doing cartwheels in front of you, okay?”

I couldn’t help laughing at that. “Luce, you’re wearing a skirt.”

She smiled wider. “All the more effective, then, right?”

The cards flew everywhere as Elliot lost control of the deck. Red-faced, he bent to pick them up as Lucy rolled her eyes. I took the opportunity to check out the crowd and possibly throw up or faint, if need be. The sun was huge and low in the sky, having begun the process of setting, reflecting its oranges and reds onto the lake. I looked at the clock and saw that it was getting close to eight thirty, the start time that Fred had scheduled for tonight’s show.

“Taylor!” I turned at the sound of this distraught voice to see my brother, wearing his usual uniform of khakis and a polo shirt, holding a bouquet of flowers with a death grip, and looking like he might be close to fainting himself.

“Hey,” I said. I scanned the towels and blankets—I hadn’t seen my family arrive. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

“There,” Warren pointed, and sure enough, I saw our blanket spread out on the sand. My father had his arm around my mother’s shoulders, and she was laughing. For some reason, there was a beach chair just to the side of our blanket, but it was sitting empty. Next to our blanket, I saw that the Gardner family had set up theirs, with Nora and Gelsey leaning over the space between them, talking. “But listen,” he said, and I turned back to my brother, who looked even more anxious than he had before taking the SATs for the third time, in pursuit of the elusive perfect score (he’d achieved it). “Do I look okay? Or do I look stupid? Gelsey said I looked fine. What is that supposed to mean?”

Somehow, in my own panic about public speaking, my brother and his romantic travails had slipped my mind. Which wasn’t good, because this was pretty much my doing, and if things went horribly wrong, I had a feeling I would be blamed in perpetuity. “You look great,” I assured him. “Just… um… breathe. And if you can help it, maybe don’t tell her how anything was invented. Just on the first date.”

“Right,” Warren said, nodding for much longer than people usually nodded. “Okay.” I looked up toward the entrance, where I saw Wendy, her hair out of her normal braids and hanging long over the white sundress she was wearing.

“Your date’s here,” I said, pointing. Wendy saw me and waved, and I waved back. Warren, on the other hand, just stared, his mouth opening and closing a few times.

“Go,” I said, poking him in the back. “Breathe.”

“Right,” Warren said in a voice that indicated he wasn’t doing much of that, but he did start walking toward the entrance. Wanting to give him a little bit of privacy, I scanned the beach again.