Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (32 page)

“Hey, I meant to tell you, I love my sandwich.” I pointed to the board. “This place is great, Lexi, really.”

“Thanks, Kendra. I appreciate that.”

“So you think you made the right choice?”

“Yeah, I think we did.”

“Me, too,” I told her, and meant it.

“I can't believe this is our last time fishing.” Henry stood beside the car, holding the door open and waiting for me to join him so we could make our way down the path one last time.

It
was
hard to believe that this was the last time we'd go to Seth's Pond together, but it was even harder to believe that we'd ever gone there together in the first place. Or that someone I'd thought I'd known so well could have turned into someone I hardly knew at all. Or that I'd actually fall in love with him.

“You know I like fishing as much as the next girl, but can I take a rain check?”

“A rain check?”

“Yeah. I have an idea. But first, you need to trust me. And you need to let me drive.”

“Finally!” Henry practically yelled, and then started laughing at me.

“What's that mean?”

“Do you know how many people would give up their firstborn to drive this car, and all you ever wanted to be in was the pickup.”

“I never said I didn't
like
the car.”

Henry just stood there shaking his head at me and smiling.

I couldn't help but smile back. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

I held out my hand. “The keys?”

Henry reached into his pocket and then dropped the Porsche keys in my hand. “They're all yours.”

Once Henry was all buckled up, I slipped the car into drive and looked over my shoulder to make sure a car wasn't coming before I pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road. And as I turned back I caught my reflection in the sideview mirror.

I wasn't pretending to be someone I wasn't. I was just driving my boyfriend's car. And it just happened to be a Porsche. And I just happened to look great driving it.

There were a few orange and yellow leaves littering the driveway, and the shadows from the trees were already shifting from their summer positions.

“What are we doing here?” Henry asked when I put the car in park and shut off the motor.

“You'll see,” I told him. “Come on.”

I probably shouldn't have been surprised, but still, when I opened the door to the barn I suddenly stopped.

“What happened to all of Izzy's paintings?” The walls were almost bare, and the few canvases that remained were covered in bedsheets.

“She's getting ready to leave the island for the season.”

“Come here.” I took Henry's hand and led him over to the couch, where a few unused sheets were stacked on the cushion.

I took the top sheet and shook it until the neat folds fell apart, then I laid it on the floor.

“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me take a pillow from the sofa and place it atop the sheet.

“Perfect, no?”

I pulled him down with me and we lay there with our heads on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. “Not bad.”

“I never noticed that before,” I told him, and pointed above, where thin slices of morning light shone through the planks of wood. “You can see right through the roof.”

“It is an old barn, Kendra,” Henry reminded me, then slipped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer to him. “Those cross beams up there have to be almost a hundred years old.”

“Are you trying to freak me out, because now all I can think of is that those two-ton, hundred-year-old beams up there are going to come down right on us.”

Henry laid his head on my shoulder and kissed my neck. “I don't think you have to worry about that. They've lasted this long, I think they'll last a little longer.”

It was the right person and the right time and the right place. And I couldn't believe I didn't realize it sooner.

“I love you, Kendra.”

I closed my eyes and let the words swirl in between the rays of light before answering. “I love you, too, Henry.”

“What would Mona say?” he asked.

As if on cue, my eyes opened and I turned to look at Henry, who grinned at me.

“Do we have to tell her?” I answered, following a script we'd both rehearsed before.

Henry shook his head. “I think she already knows.”

“Then I guess there isn't anything we can do about it, is there?”

Henry took my face in his hand and leaned in closer. “Well, maybe there is one thing.”

And before I could answer he was kissing me, and my eyes closed and I couldn't see anything except the remains of the morning light floating up, up, and away.

“Hey, Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I may be a morning person after all.”

Labor Day weekend was always a strange time, both a beginning and an end, a return to normalcy. And yet, because we'd become used to the tourists and traffic and crowded sidewalks, it didn't feel quite normal with everyone leaving the island. The three-day weekend was the official end of summer, dates we could circle on our calendars so we had something to work toward. But once Labor Day arrived, it felt less like an achievement and more like the day after Christmas.

Mona and Henry were on the six o'clock ferry home. The last time I met Mona at the ferry to say good-bye, we had no idea what to expect: she was heading off to Boston to a new house, a stepdad, and people she'd never met, and I was staying on the island to learn how to go it alone without my best friend. While the logistics hadn't changed, just about everything else had. Maybe that's why, when I pulled Lexi's car into the space in front of the Steamship Authority and spotted the black Range Rover at the end of the ferry line, I didn't have the same pit in my stomach, the same feeling of dread I'd had last year.

Before, I was afraid everything would change, but I wasn't
afraid of that anymore. It was going to happen whether Mona and Henry stayed on the island or not, whether I went three thousand miles away to school or just up Route 93 to Boston, whether I was ready for it or I resisted it with every bone in my body. Even though I hadn't wanted to admit it, Mona was right, I had changed, and not just because I fell in love with her brother. The thing was, we'd all changed, Mona and Henry and me, Lexi, my parents, all of us, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. And even if things between us would never be exactly the way they were before Mona moved, before Henry and I got together, even before the deli disrupted our entire family, that was okay. I wasn't sure I wanted us to stay the same forever; I decided I'd rather see where all that change would take us.

Henry was standing next to the car waving at me, and I waved back, then headed over to him.

It was a day of lasts. We'd had our last morning of fishing, our last meetup at Stop & Shop when Shelby needed corn syrup, our last drive back to the inn, where he kissed me before I went inside to serve my last breakfast of the season. Then, at four o'clock, Wendy handed me my last paycheck and Shelby and I said good-bye, but not for the last time. She'd sent in her application to the culinary school and was still waiting to hear if she could start in the winter semester. Until then she'd keep working at the Willow, and I'd stop by to steal some bacon on my way to school.

I wove my way through the rows of idling cars until I got to Henry, who waited until I reached him to step away from the cars and come toward me.

“Where have you been? The ferry's in ten minutes.” He wrapped his arms around my waist so I couldn't move away.

“I stopped by the inn to pick you all up a little something.” I took out the hand I'd been hiding behind my back and held up the freezer-size Ziploc bag dangling from my fingers. “Sunshine muffins. Courtesy of Shelby.”

“One for every day of the week?” Henry asked, counting them.

“No, you have to share. Where is everyone?” I didn't see Mona or Izzy or Malcolm anywhere around the car.

Henry took the bag from me and put it on the backseat. “They went to get some bottled water for the ride home.”

This time when he said “home,” I knew he meant Boston.

“There they are.” I pointed to Mona, Izzy, and Malcolm, who were on their way back to the car. Over by the dock I could see the ferry workers preparing to let the cars on.

“Big plans after I'm gone?” Henry joked, taking my hands and swinging them back and forth like we were little kids.

“I'm heading into town to help with the deli, there's a lot of stuff to do now that the season's winding down. I thought I'd help.”

“When you come to visit promise you'll bring me a Santa Fe Gobbler or two, okay?”

“I promise.”

Mona came around the front of the car and handed a bottled water to Henry. “Where have you been, we were afraid we'd miss you.”

“I had to stop and pick up a care package from Shelby, she made you some muffins.”

Mona rubbed her stomach. “Yummy.”

Henry let go of my hands and went to meet Izzy and Malcolm at the front of the car, leaving me and Mona alone.

“Make sure you send me some of your pictures, okay?”

“I will, but wait a second.” Mona reached inside the open backseat window and felt around until she found what she was looking for. “Here, this is for you.”

It was the print of the little girl looking at her reflection in the building, and it was just as amazing as I remembered.

Mona tapped the glass. “Henry told me you liked it, so I had it matted and framed.”

“I love it, thanks.”

“You're welcome.” Mona reached her arms out and pulled me into a bear hug so tight it reminded me of Izzy.

“Make sure you tell me what you decide to do about the envelope,” I reminded Mona, and she nodded, her hair rubbing against my face.

“I promise you'll be the first to know.” She glanced over at Henry. “Well, the second.”

“Come on, guys, the line is moving,” Izzy called out from the across the hood of the car. “Kennie, you'll come to Boston soon, right? Malcolm has some sort of Princeton alumni thing he wants to take you to.”

Malcolm gave Izzy a sheepish grin and then looked over at me. “It wasn't totally my idea, so I can't take all of the credit.”

“Oh, they're moving!” Izzy yelled, jumping into the front passenger seat. “Get in.”

“Good-bye, Kendra.” Mona gave me another quick hug. “I'll miss you.”

“You, too,” I told her, but she was already in the backseat, opening the Ziploc bag to pick out a muffin.

“That leaves us,” Henry said.

“Yep.” I leaned up against him and he took my face in his hands.

“I hope you know I love you, Kendra.” His voice was soft and earnest and so completely Henry.

“I do,” I answered, and our mouths found each other just like that first time, only so much better.

“I'd better go,” Henry told me, pulling away. “I'll call you when we get to the city.”

“I'll talk to you then,” I agreed, and I had no doubt I would.

A few minutes later the ferry horn blew and the boat pushed off from the dock, its massive body slowly pulling away from the harbor as it left the island behind. I could see Mona and Henry by the deck railing, waving to me, and I waved back. I waved and waved, not stopping until they were nothing more than specks making their way around the bend of land, and then nothing at all.

Already the shadows had changed, the sun starting to make its descent earlier, as it did every September. Cars were filing into the emptied lines, preparing to leave on the next ferry, to say good-bye to the island until next year. And I knew exactly what all those tourists were thinking, their cars dusty and filled with sand from the beach: that summer vacation was ending and it was time to go home.

So I made my way back to Lexi's Honda and drove.

Read on for a sneak peek at
Rich Boys,
Jenny O'Connell's second book
in the Island Summer Series!

Available now in bookstores everywhere.

I don't play tennis with Jessie anymore. Not since last summer, when she asked me to
just hit it around,
and I naively believed she meant we were simply going to volley the ball back and forth over the net, not that I'd get a forehand to the stomach and end up doubled over gasping to catch my breath. Jessie immediately ran over and apologized profusely (she jumped over the net, which, even though I was nearly suffocating, still impressed me), but that was the end of our match. So now the closest I get to Jessie on the court is the sidelines, not so much because she's so good, which she is, but because she is so much better than me. And as much as I hated getting hit with a ball going sixty miles per hour, I hated losing even more.

“Come on, just one game?” Jessie begged, bouncing the ball against alternating sides of her racquet head. She was between clinics, so we had an hour to kill before her afternoon program. Even after only a week of teaching junior clinics at the Community Center, Jessie was dark, her legs and arms a warm toffee color compared to my mid-June pallor. The thing was, no matter how dark Jessie's skin got, and by
the end of the summer she was darker than even the girls who loyally fake-baked at the Sun Tropez, Jessie's hair was always the same color. Almost black. Not a single highlight, no streaks from the sun. Just a solid mass of black curls pulled back into a ponytail, so dark and shiny the color reminded me of licorice jelly beans, which I always thought looked out of place in my pastel-colored Easter basket and always traded with Shelby for the purple, grape-flavored ones. My hair, on the other hand, ended up pale honey blond by the end of the summer, which looked great with a tan. But when my regular old dirty blond started growing in around October and there was no sun and salt air to provide a little assistance from Mother Nature, I had to turn to a bottle to ease the transition to my winter shade of blah.