“I’m from LA. You?”
“Outside of Boston,” I said, because everything in Massachusetts was outside of Boston. “How long have you been coming here?”
Tyler was easy to talk to. I wouldn’t call our conversation scintillating, but hey, did I need a summer fling to have in-depth conversational skills? I had friends for those. Tyler was funny, and interested, andhere. He made me laugh. He made everyone laugh. Soon we hada whole group gathered, laughing and listening as Tyler told one outrageous story after another.
It felt good to have a guy pay attention to me. For his hand to occasionally touch mine. For his eyes to linger on me.
Noah didn’t look over at us again.
I had fun anyway. The other kids weren’t so bad once they weren’t talking about people they knew and gossip I didn’t. A conversation about blockbusters fueled us for half an hour; I brought up the three-cheese debate from earlier this summer, which went over equally well here.
Yet a slow anger simmered within me as the day wore on. Seriously, Noah wasn’t going to talk to meat all?Hehad invitedme. It was rude to invite someone somewhere and ignore them.
By the time we headed back home, late in the afternoon, I was thoroughly pissed off. I nursed a rosé as we sailed across the waters, keeping my gaze fixed on Tyler as he spun story after story. (Rosé was not as good as rum-and-coke, but better than beer.) As soon as we docked, I hopped out of the boat, planning to storm home and sulk.
Except Noah managed to be right in my path. “Hey.”
“Um, hi. Bye, I guess, I’m headed home.” I navigated around him, avoiding his gaze, because I didn’t want him to see the anger in my own.
“Want to get dinner?”
I looked up at him through narrowed eyes. “What?”
“I’m thinking sandwiches from Provisions.”
Tyler climbed off the boat and strolled over. “I could use something to eat.”
Noah transferred his gaze to Tyler, and his expression became distinctly unfriendly. “We’re going over some family stuff.”
“You’re related?” Tyler looked back and forth.
Noah blinked, looked at me, then back at Tyler. “Our grandparents were friends.”
“Ah.”
“Come on,” Noah said to me, picking up my beach bag. “Let’s go.”
For one recalcitrant moment, I considered digging in my heels and refusing. Instead, I sent Tyler a contrite smile. “See you later.”
“Yeah, you too.”
I caught up with Noah, and this time I didn’t bother hiding my irritation. “I didn’t say I’d get dinner with you.”
“What?” He shot me a distracted frown.
“Dinner. I didn’t agree. You just assumed I would.”
He stopped. “Do you not want to get dinner with me?”
I glared at him.No,I almost said, but it turned out, irritated as I was, all I really wanted to do was spend time with Noah Barbanel. “Fine. Let’s go.”
We picked up food at Provisions, a sandwich shop on the wharf, before hopping in Noah’s car and heading to the lighthouse at Sankaty Head. “They moved it back from the cliffs years ago,” Noah said as we parked and climbed out of the car. “Houses kept falling off the edge.”
I regarded the fence edging the windswept cliff with newfound appreciation. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. The island loses something like three feet a year from erosion.”
“And houses have fallenoff?”
