Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (25 page)

“So what'd you think?” Henry asked on our way up the stairs to his room. “You've been awfully quiet.”

“Tom seems nice.”

“You're quiet because you're thinking about Tom?” Henry
nudged me. “I hope I shouldn't be worried.” But I knew if anybody should be worried it was me.

When we reached Henry's room we both kind of stood there, trying to decide what to do next.

“So, I guess this is when you tell me where you want to sleep.”

I was feeling better since we left Tom, but it was always better when Henry and I were alone. “This is fine,” I told him. “I'll stay with you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I walked over to the bed and picked up my bag. Even though I'd decided to stay with Henry, I hadn't yet decided I was ready to have him watch me undress. “I'm just going to change in the bathroom.”

When I returned wearing a T-shirt and boxers, Henry was already lying in bed, the covers pulled up to his waist. Which was naked.

He must have seen the flash of terror cross my face because he laughed and lifted the sheets. “I have boxer shorts on, Kendra.”

Now it was my turn to laugh, at myself. I went to the bed and Henry moved over so I could crawl in next to him. “Queen-size bed, can't beat it,” he commented.

“A king-size bed,” I told him, and he smacked his head as if he hadn't even thought of it.

“Touché.” He turned onto his side and fit his body against mine. I felt my body stiffen.

His chest was even darker than that first day at the beach, when I saw him surfing, and I realized he never talked about surfing with me, just fishing, almost as if he knew I couldn't
relate to learning a new sport in Hawaii, only sitting beside a pond I'd known my whole life.

Henry propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at me. “What's wrong, Kendra?”

“I don't know.”

“You do know.”

“Why'd you let Tom believe you bought me the dress?” I asked him, before I even realized what I was saying.

“I didn't do that.”

“Yeah, you did, you told him we just bought it.”

“Yeah, we, as in you and me.”

I frowned. “That's not what he thought you meant.”

“Kendra, he's a guy, he probably didn't hear anything I said, we were talking about a dress.” Henry moved away from me, creating a space between us that was eerily reminiscent of how we used to sit in Poppy's truck. And I didn't like it. “What's going on, Kendra?”

“I felt like some girl you had to teach to dress up, like in
My Fair Lady.
Like Tom thought you took pity on me.”

“Kendra, I would never make you feel like that, and if I did, I'm sorry. As for Tom, he wouldn't know if you were wearing curtains.”

“That's
Gone with the Wind,
not
My Fair Lady.
” I thought Henry would laugh, but his expression was dead serious.

“Whatever it is, I wouldn't do that to you.”

The thing is, I believed him. I did, so why was I feeling like this? “It's just complicated, you and me.”

“I think you're making it more complicated than it is. At the end of the day it's just you and me, and I think it's as simple as that.”

How did he always see things so simply?

“Why'd you ask me to get ice cream with you that first day?” I asked, almost hoping Henry would tell me he'd always had some deep-seated feelings for me. At least that way I'd see it like Henry did, simply. We were two people who grew up friends and realized one day that we wanted to be more than friends. The reality wasn't as black-and-white.

“I guess I just wanted to get ice cream with you,” Henry answered.

“That's it? Nothing more?”

“I liked spending time with you, if that's what you mean.”

“Did you plan on kissing me that night?”

“No.” Henry shook his head, then slowly changed it to a nod. “Well, maybe I'd thought about it, but not planned it.”

I laid my head on his chest, exhausted, and looked up at the ceiling. There was no canopy, but the crown molding above us was beautiful, thick, intricately carved steps of dark wood that seemed to be making their way down to us.

Henry leaned over and started kissing my neck, which felt amazing. I arched to the left, giving him more skin to kiss before turning my head toward him and offering my lips instead.

“You feel amazing,” Henry whispered, moving his face down along my collarbone.

“If you were not planning to kiss me on the ghost tour, were you not planning to sleep with me tonight either?”

He looked up at me. “Look, I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to do. We can just sleep, okay?”

“Okay.” It wasn't that I didn't want to do more than sleep with Henry, it was just that, given all that had happened that day, from our talk on the ferry to the dress and dinner, it wasn't the way I wanted it to be.

I turned on my left side and Henry curled up behind me, his knees tucked inside mine until we were spooning. He draped his arm around my waist and laid his hand against my bare stomach. It was the same spot he'd touched earlier, when he was tickling me, but this was entirely different. This time I didn't want him to move his hand away.

“I can't believe that after all those years listening to you and Mona talk until two a.m., you and I are finally having our own sleepover,” he said.

“Finally?”

“Yeah.”

I turned over onto my back and looked at Henry. “Finally, as in you've actually thought about this before? I mean, even before we went fishing?”

“Come on, how could I not?”

“Because you saw me throw up beef stew,” I reminded him.

“Okay, there is that. But I also watched you get ready to go out and there were those nights when Mona fell asleep on the couch and you and I would just sit there and watch TV.”

“We'd watch those shitty old horror movies,” I told him. “Like the one where that girl was attacked by the creature who looked like a guy in a frog suit.”

“They weren't shitty. They were classic.”

“We obviously do not remember things the same way at all. What else do you remember about me?”

Henry reached over and stroked my hair. “You chew your cereal too loud.”

“You're kidding me.”

“Would I kid about something that annoying? Every time you spent the night I knew I'd have to listen to it the next
morning, you at the table crunching on Honeycomb or Chex or whatever we had in the house.”

“Okay, what else?”

“You hum when you brush your teeth.”

I laid my head on Henry's chest and he kissed my head. “Do not.”

“Really, I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning, won't we.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sound of Henry's heart beating, the feeling of his fingers lightly going through my hair, the heat coming off his chest.

Just as I felt myself begin to nod off, Henry pulled me into him. “If you want to go to Stanford, go to Stanford,” he whispered, his voice soft and low in the dark. “Just don't do it for the wrong reason.”

I lay there, pretending to be asleep so I didn't have to answer. Because he was right.

“Princeton has a better mascot,” he muttered, his voice fading as if he was struggling to stay awake. “So remember that when you're making your decision.”

The next day we drove straight to the deli from the ferry.

“I'm starving,” Henry told me, patiently following a car with New York license plates into Edgartown. “I am so getting a Santa Fe Gobbler.”

Since I didn't know the menu, I had no idea what I was going to get, but I was starving, too.

It was prime lunchtime, which meant we weren't the only people who thought it was a good idea to go to the deli. The line had to be twelve people deep and we couldn't even stand inside the store until the next round of customers left and there was space for us. While we waited outside, I cupped my hands around my face and peered into the plate-glass window. Behind the counter on the large blackboard Lexi had written the menu out in chalk, along with a brief description. I squinted until I could read the list.

I saw the Santa Fe Gobbler Henry had told me about as well as the Hot Tuna Meltdown. As I went down the list I saw something called an Alice 'n' Jack (turkey on multigrain bread with Jack cheese, green apples, and cranberry mayonnaise—my mother's favorite) and a Charlie Tuna (tuna on a bagel
with Swiss cheese and relish—my dad's favorite). I didn't see anything with my name on it until I got to the very end, where Lexi had written “Kendra with a Pickle on Top” (roast beef, Cheddar cheese, lettuce, pickles, and “NO MUSTARD” in Lexi's round, bubbly writing).

“Come on, there's room.” Henry held the door open for me and we stepped inside to take our place in line.

I was so busy reading and rereading the description for the sandwich Lexi had named after me, I didn't even see the group of girls up front at the counter placing their orders.

But one of them saw me.

“Kendra?” When Mona said my name Lexi looked up from the register and waved to me, a smile on her face.

Before I could even react, wave back at Lexi, or warn Henry that his sister was about ten feet from us, Mona was pushing her way past the line back toward me and Henry.

“What are you two doing here?” Mona wanted to know, only she wasn't addressing just me or Henry, she was asking both of us. She turned her attention to Henry, seemingly knowing I didn't have an answer. “Henry, I thought you went to the city.”

“I did,” he told her. “I just got back.”

Apparently satisfied with Henry's answer, Mona turned to me. “What are you doing here with him? I thought he just got back from the city.”

“We're just getting lunch, Mona, it's no big deal.” I could see Jilly and Emily up front watching us.

“I don't get it, what's going on with you two?” Mona asked me again.

I could have told her, right then and there. She'd asked,
she'd given me the opening, but I couldn't. Not like this, in line at the Pot Belly Deli.

“Nothing, Mona, we're just friends having lunch.” I didn't look over at Henry because I didn't want to see the look on his face after hearing that I'd just reduced us to friends.

“Really. Are you sure that's it, because Emily talked to Tom this morning and apparently Henry and his new girlfriend had dinner with him last night.”

I didn't say anything, but I didn't have to. Mona kept talking, her voice getting louder and louder. “God, how can you stand there and lie to my face, Kendra? Did you think I wouldn't find out? Or were you hoping I did, hoping everybody heard you spent the night in Boston with my brother?”

“Mona, this is ridiculous, cut it out.” Henry stepped between us and pushed Mona away from me.

By now the entire deli was staring at us. Behind the counter Lexi wore a quizzical expression, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. But before Lexi could even ask for an explanation, before my parents realized I'd gone to the city with Henry, not Mona, I turned my back to them, pushing my way out the door.

“Kendra!” Henry called after me, but I continued running up Winter Street, away from town, away from the crowds of people and the deli and Mona and her friends and my family, who by now had to be getting the full story from Mona.

“Kendra, come on.” Henry was right behind me, his footsteps just over my shoulder. “Stop!” He grabbed my arm and I had no choice but to do as he said.

“Mona was way out of line,” he panted, still catching his breath. “Once she calms down we can talk to her and explain what happened.”

“It doesn't matter anymore, Henry.” I shook my arm and his hand slipped off. “It's a mess, the whole thing.”

This time Henry took both my arms in his hands and held me there, forcing me to listen to him. “It's not a mess, and it does matter.”

I looked up at Henry and opened my mouth to say something, but all that came out was a choked sob. And that was all I needed for the tears to come, and they came hard; months' worth of tears spilled down my cheeks and onto Henry's shirt as he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed tight.

“It's going to be okay, Kendra.” He buried his mouth in my hair and kept saying it over and over again.
It's going to be okay, Kendra.
But it was already August and things were coming to an end. Today it was Mona, in a few weeks it would be Henry. And no amount of hugging or soothing would change that. And no, it was not going to be okay.

“What the hell was that all about?” Lexi wanted to know when she got home from the deli. I was sitting at the kitchen table, pushing some frozen macaroni and cheese around on a plate. “Mom and Dad want to talk to you.”

As if on cue, my parents came into the house behind Lexi.

“Kendra, we'd like to see you in the family room.” My dad motioned for me to follow him. “Now.”

I knew this was coming, I was just sort of hoping they'd be so tired from working all day, they wouldn't have the energy to do it right away. Maybe tomorrow. Or in a few weeks.

I pushed my chair back and stood up. Lexi gave me a look like she hoped I had a good explanation, but she stopped short of giving me a thumbs-up or quick smile to show she was on my side. It was almost ironic, how I'd become the daughter my parents had to deal with, and Lexi had become the one who had her act together.

You'd think I would have come up with a logical explanation for the scene Mona and I created in the deli. I had almost six hours to craft every word, spin the situation to elicit sympathy
from my parents instead of disappointment. Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy.

After he'd finally gotten me to stop crying, Henry walked me to his car and took me home, where he kissed me good-bye, and told me again that everything would work out, and I tried to act like it helped. Then I went to my room, flopped facedown on my bed, and tried to figure out how things had gone so wrong. I didn't even know what I wanted anymore. I used to know what I wanted, or at least I knew what I
didn't
want—to be like my sister, marrying some guy I'd known since sixth grade, to be stuck on the island doing what was familiar and known and so damn safe it didn't matter which day I woke up, it would be the same as the day before. But now nothing was familiar, not my dad going to work in khaki shorts and a T-shirt, not my mom sitting in front of the Food Network at night choosing between two-ply white paper napkins and unbleached natural brown napkins, and definitely not my sister, who'd gone from scrawling Mrs. Bart McAlister on her notebooks to calculating the cost of lettuce per sandwich on a legal pad. Even my feelings when I was with Henry were confusing. How could I go from feeling like the most important person in the world one minute to feeling completely inadequate the next? It was like waking up in an unfamiliar place and trying to figure out how you got there. And to think that at the beginning of the summer it was only Mona who seemed alien to me. Now I felt like I was living in a foreign land.