I made a noise of disdain, backed out of the room, yanked the door shut.
And my crush on Tyler Nelson was utterly doused. I had too much pride to waste away over someone who didn’t like me, who’d laughed in my face when I told him I loved him, who hooked up with my cousin’sgirlfriend, of all people. He might look good on the surface, but scratch it, and he was pyrite, fool’s gold.
And hadn’t I been such a fool.
When I returned the next summer—last summer—I was finally free of my obsessive crush. Tyler Nelson was no prince charming, just a boy who wasn’t worth my time. So I wasn’t going to let him have any of it ever again.
CHAPTER THREE
And now Tyler Nelson and I would be spending the night in my house, alone.
We faced each other, me in the doorway, him a step down on the porch. Snow swirled in glittering eddies around his feet. Wisps of hair flew out from under his hat, and the cold pinkened his cheeks. Had his eyes always been so bright? So uncomfortable to meet? “Come in.”
“Thanks.” He heaved his bag over the step, bringing a shower of snow into the foyer. He took in the cream-colored walls, the polished wooden floor, the curved staircase leading up to the second floor. A painting of the sea by my grandfather hung across from the door. A vase filled with dried lavender rested on the table below it.
I ignored him and sat on the entry bench to unlace my boots. When was the last time I’d been alone with someone besidesfamily or Olivia? I didn’t have close friends; I’d spent most of my childhood either playing piano or ice-skating, and I had the fuzzy impression everyone else had formed their tight-knit friendships while I’d been at practice. Sure, people invited me to parties and wanted me at their lunch table, but mostly because my family was well known. Or because they read my demeanor as aloof and cool—at least according to one girl I’d overheard in the school bathroom—when really I was just awkward and silent.
And here I was with Tyler, who had a million friends, who was the life of the party. He was warm and friendly and popular, and I was cold and prickly and closed off. I had no idea how to behave alone with him.
Boots off, I jumped up, keeping my coat on since the heating hadn’t yet beat back the chill. Tyler did the same, though he tossed his beanie atop his suitcase. His hair flew about, staticky and fine. “Do you have a towel I can dry my shoes with?”
I glanced at his shoes, which, in their defense, looked very expensive. “Maybe you shouldn’t have worn four-hundred-dollar shoes in a blizzard.”
“Six hundred.”
I rolled my eyes, throwing a tea towel from the coat closet at him. “Here.”
Carefully—almost lovingly—he polished the damp from his shoes, then looked up at me with a smile I had to brace myself against. Too much charm, this boy. “So what’s the plan?”
“No plan.” I brushed away the crusts of snow clinging to my jeans. Wet dark spots stained the fabric. “We can make tea to warm up, I guess.”
“Cool.”
He followed me deeper into the house, silence pressing in on us. The mansion sprawled, having expanded through the centuries. It felt weird to be in Golden Doors without cousins rushing around, without parents and aunts and uncles and Grandpa and Grandma at the steady center of it all. I was used to being alone in New York, but I’d never been alone here. Tyler’s presence relieved me the smallest bit. Well, not Tyler’s, specifically. But I was glad not to be alone.
Still, even empty, Golden Doors had an air of magic. I loved this house and felt at home here more than I ever had in Manhattan. It felt like Golden Doorsbelongedto me. Silly, maybe. But it’d always been a house for Barbanel women: the gardens designed and maintained by women, the blueprints drawn up by a woman. And I was the eldest granddaughter in the current generation of Barbanels. Golden Doors and I fit each other, a key and a lock.
I led him to the great room, where my family spent most of our time, a space that was equally living room and dining room and kitchen. Large windows and French doors took up one wall, beyond which the lawn spread toward gardens before falling in dramatic cliffs toward the sea. Usually, we could see a line of blue from here, but today the storm blurred out everything. Thoughonly four in the afternoon, the sun had disappeared, plunging the world into a bluish haze. The snow continued to fall, the mounds outside shaped by tempestuous wind.
I switched on the light, outshining the outside world. Now instead of snow and darkness, we saw my grandmother’s impeccable decorating: clusters of soft seating, small coffee tables, a large table for informal dining, a marble island counter separating the kitchen from the rest. I padded across the room, my thick winter socks slipping once on the smooth floor, and entered the pantry at the far end. Tyler kept at my back, his footsteps silent, his presence palpable.
“You can have whatever.” I opened the cabinet where the tea lived: herbal Celestial for Grandma, Lipton boxes for Grandpa, Mom’s Bigelow, and tins of loose-leaf tea. I pulled out orange spice and cinnamon, my comfort pick. Tyler studied the choices like I’d asked him to do open-heart surgery, running his fingers along the fine-grained wooden cabinets, then sniffing several options. After that, he picked up an embossed box and turned it in his hands. Finally he filled a metal ball with a scoop of Earl Grey.
If only I’d been trapped alone for a night withIsaac. I could imagine exactly how it’d go: He’d be polite and charming and kind. We would cook dinner together (never mind that I rarely cooked). We’d light the menorah, our hands over each other’s, our voices mingling. We’d sit on the couch and talk all night. He’d put his arm around me and, then, somehow, we would be kissing...
I peeked at Tyler, flushing. I couldn’t be daydreaming about making out with someone else next to him. Stomping back into the great room, I set the kettle on to boil and brought two mugs over to the kitchen island. We dropped into barstools across from each other. “This doesn’t mean we’re friends or anything.”
He placed his tea infuser in his cup. “God forbid. No.”
“I just don’t want you to freeze to death.”
“We have that in common.” He grinned at me. “I, too, don’t want to freeze to death.”
How could he be so easygoing while active discomfort pulled at every corner of my body? But then, he’d always been relaxed and confident, where I felt stiff with most people outside my family. How could I survive the night trapped alone with him? “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
“Nah. Movies are boring.”
Tyler had a way of making almost everything he said sound reasonable, and I almost wanted to nod in agreement. I shook it off. “The entire point of movies is tonotbe boring.”
