I must be looking at Caleb with as much apprehension as I’m feeling, because he finally stops touching my food, like it’s been electrified. I’m not sure it shouldn’t be—maybe that would teach him to keep his hands out of someone else’s basket.
“I’m sorry,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender. “My dad owns this grocery store.”
I let out a long whoosh of air and my shoulders feel like they drop about three feet. “Thank god.” Suddenly my personal-shopper experience is making a lot more sense. “I was starting to worry you were just overly aggressive about produce.”
“Guilty,” he says with a smile. “Sorry, I can see how that was probably weird. Apparently I get aggressively helpful when I’m nervous.”
AndIramble.
Hesoundsnervous now, and it makes something flutter inmy stomach, so I try to switch the subject. “How have I never seen you around here before? Sometimes I feel like my family’s designated grocery-getter.”
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his shorts and looks over at me. “Maybe you weren’t looking?”
I’ve been to this grocery store a million times. “Maybe,” I say, my voice skeptical.
Caleb smiles and his eyes crinkle in amusement. He’s smiling atme.“I usually spend summers with my mom in Tennessee.”
“Ah. It’s not nice to make people feel crazy.”
“Noted,” he says, taking a loaf of bread out of my basket and replacing it with another heavier loaf as we pass the bakery area. He holds his hands up like I have a gun pointed at him. “Last time, I swear.”
I’m still staring at his hands, which are now on my shopping basket—the only thing separating us—when Asher comes around the corner. “Hey,Sid—” Caleb looks at the same moment I do, and I can tell just from the obnoxious tone of Asher’s voice that this isn’t going to be good. “Are these the right ones?” Asher holds up a bright blue box of tampons, and looks past Caleb to me.
I bite my lip to keep from screaming, but if he thinks he’s embarrassing me withtampons,he’s seriously delusional. “Yeah, I think those are going to work for you,Ash.Though you should get a bigger box, because I hear they work great for nosebleeds. You know, in case someone were to punch you in the face at some point.” I pause dramatically. “Or something.”
I give him a sugary-sweet smile and Caleb chokes back a laugh. “Not unless provoked,” I say in my most demure tone, looking at him as innocently as I can muster, “of course.”
“Got it, Slugger,” Asher says, and I can tell he wants to smile, but he turns his face from mine to Caleb’s, andthenhe lets it loose—a toothy, blindingly white smile. “Careful with this one,” he says, and if I could growl, I would. Not that I would everactually hit Asher, but right now I’m seriously considering if I could leave him here, or make him chase my car.
Asher retreats back into the aisle he came from, and Caleb shakes his head, like he’s been in an Asher-induced fog, and can’t quite break out of it. He raises his eyebrows like he wants me to explain, and I just shrug. There is no explaining me and Asher.
“Kara said you’re coming to the party tomorrow night,” he says.
“Did she?” I’m still flustered, and I feel like I’ve lost some of my flirting mojo.Asher strikes again.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m… debating.” I walk toward the checkouts, hoping he follows. When he does, that flutter is back, tickling my ribs.
“I’llbe there,” he says, as he grabs a plastic bag from my basket and sets it on the black conveyor belt we’re now standing beside. I do the same, and piece by piece we unload the basket together. “You know, if you need something to throw into the pro column of your list.”
“How do you know I have a list?” I smile and he shrugs. There’s a moment of silence as the cashier hands me my bags and I take a step toward the doors. I give him a quick glance back. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Asher
When we got back from our shopping trip, my dad and Tom drove to the marina to get a new sensor for Tom’s boat, so I’m sitting on my deck, avoiding the girls-only rock-painting party that’s happening on the deck next door.
Sidney paints rocks. Literally, rocks you find on the ground. She collects them at the beach—I’ve never figured out a rhyme or reason to which ones she picks out, because they’re all different—but she sifts through the sand like she knows exactlywhat she’s looking for. And then she spends hours sitting on the deck or a blanket in the grass, painting them with little designs. Again, no rhyme or reason I can decipher. There are rocks with words on them, some with colorful flowers. One had a skull on it. It’s the only art I’ve ever seen Sidney do, and it’s so random I can’t help but be intrigued.
She can easily paint four or five in a day. Ten if they’re really simple and she’s committed to avoiding me the entire day. By the end of each summer she has to have painted at least a hundred, if not more. My mom always leaves with some, but are there just buckets and buckets of these things sitting in her room somewhere? Does she give them to her friends at home? I shouldn’t care about something so stupid, but I can’t help but wonder:What is she doing with all of these rocks?
Last summer, her mom started painting them sometimes, too, which means my mom also got involved, and now it’s like a little rock-painting sweatshop when the three of them go at it, like they are right now. My phone buzzes with a text and my eyes dart from the painting party next door to where my phone is lying on top of my book on the railing of our deck.
Yes.That’s the truth, but it’s not what I start to type. Because even though Sidney’s known Lindsay even longer than I have, she’s always sort of weird when she comes around. Lindsay is Nadine’s daughter, but I haven’t seen her around much the last few years. The first summer I was here, Lindsay seemed to be an almost permanent fixture on the beach. Her mom or dad would drop her off and she’d spend the day lying on the dock or on a towel spread across the grass on the hill. But after that first summer she didn’t come around as much. And last summer I didn’t see her once, despite the fact that her family built a house right behind ours. But still, radio silence. I’m debating what tosay when I hear footsteps behind me, and turn to find Lindsay standing on my deck.
“Hey.” I try not to sound startled, but I’m pretty sure I do. Because I am.
“I’m sorry, is it totally weird that I just showed up?” She looks embarrassed. “I was in the house and I saw you right after I texted, so I just…”
