The Summer I Learned to Dive (9 page)

“Where’d he go?” I asked Hannah.

“He had to leave,” she said, but I felt like she was hiding something. “My turn to bowl.”

I took some sips of my drink. “I’ll be back,” I shouted, but my voice was muffled out from the loud music blaring in the background and the sounds of several bowling balls crashing into pins. I headed toward the restroom and saw Jesse walking with Hank, one of my grandfather’s customers. Hank was stumbling and laughing uncontrollably. Jesse had his arm around him, trying to keep him from falling down.

“Spare!” Hank shouted loud enough for everyone in the bowling alley to hear. Jesse’s face turned beet red. He looked embarrassed.

“Come on Dad,” Jesse said, walking with him toward the front entrance. He saw me staring at him, at the spectacle Hank was making. He glanced quickly at me, his face disconcerted. I forced a sympathetic smile. He held onto Hank and kept on walking.

Chapter 10

I kept what I had seen to myself. It wasn’t my business to discuss it with Hannah, Meg and especially Jesse. He acted as if nothing had happened and treated me the same as he always did. It was probably embarrassing to him that I knew his father had gotten drunk that night. I would have been mortified if my mother had gotten publicly drunk. The look on his face, the pained expression said it all. I had to respect his privacy.

Dylan’s party was a couple of days away and I was dying to go. I had never gone to a real party before— the kind of party with kegs and bonfires, and most importantly, no adults.  The last party I had been to was Chloe’s tenth birthday party. Going to a real party, the kind of party seen in movies, appealed to me. I was anxious and nervous at the same time. Going by myself was not an option. I asked Hannah and Meg to go with me. Hannah said no immediately stating that she wouldn’t be caught dead in Dylan’s house again and that I shouldn’t either. “Be careful, Finn,” she said.  I didn’t want to pry about why she didn’t like Dylan. He seemed so approachable. I couldn’t imagine what happened between them that would make her hate him so much. Meg agreed to go with me. She wouldn’t admit it to me, but I knew she wanted to see Blake. His name usually came up in our conversations. They had been broken up for a few months but Meg still had strong feelings for him.

I sat on the bar stool, my elbows resting on the counter. The diner was quiet. I could hear the sounds from the dishwasher.

“Your soup will get cold,” my grandfather said, interrupting my deep thoughts.

“Huh, oh, I’m not that hungry,” I said suddenly aware of his presence. He stood behind the counter.

“You need to eat,” he ordered.

“Grandpa.” It still felt awkward calling him that but he had insisted. It would have been more suitable to refer to as Mr. Hemmings or Grandfather but he wouldn’t have answered.

“Yes,” he said. He took a sip of his coffee.

“How long did my dad work here?”

He stopped drinking his coffee and put the cup down on the counter. He looked at me scratching his chin. It felt like several seconds had passed before he answered. “For a few years. He was a good cook and a lousy server. Don’t get me wrong. He was friendly with people, but he’d get so wrapped up talking to people, he’d forget to refill their drinks. Now cooking,
that
was what he was best at.” He chuckled lightly.

“What dishes did you like that he made?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, lots of them.  His meatloaf was his best dish though,” he said, he took another sip of his coffee.

“He must have learned how to cook from you.”

He laughed again. “Well, actually, he learned how to cook from your Nana.”

“Really?” That surprised me. I thought he would have been the one to teach my dad how to cook.

“Yep. She’s quite a cook. But you wouldn’t know it. She stopped cooking long ago,” he said reflectively.

“Do I remind you of him?” I asked, hoping that some part of me was like him.

He looked at me, but was really looking beyond me, deep in thought. “A little,” he answered quietly.

“How?” I wanted to know.

“When you set your mind to something, you do it.” He grinned and laughed quietly to himself.  He patted me gently on the head and walked away. It was the first time he had ever shown affection for me.  I didn’t mind it. He was a hard man to decipher. He was like an onion with layers and layers before anyone could get beneath the surface. I wondered if I would ever get to that point with him.

***

I waited impatiently for Meg to pick me up at my grandparents. It was the night of Dylan’s party and I was anxious. It was my first
real
party. I had told my grandparents where I was going and neither of them seemed to pleased about it. “Just be careful,” Nana said. She added, “Have you and your mother talked yet?” She wouldn’t let this go.

I sighed heavily. “I texted her that I was fine.”

“She must miss you,” Nana pressed.

“I’m sure she does. I’m not ready to talk to her yet. Can we let this be?” I asked, pleading for her to respect what I wanted.

She placed her arm around me. “I’m sorry, Finn. I don’t mean to boss you.”

“I know you mean well,” I said, giving her a faint smile.

Meg beeped her car horn. “That’s her,” I said.

“Do you have money?” my grandfather asked.

“Yes.”

“Be careful. Hannah dated that boy for a while. He’d come into the diner a lot and have this stupid smirk on his face all the time. There’s something about him I don’t like,” he said.

“Grandpa,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. I walked outside and got into Meg’s car.

She tugged on my pony tail. “Finn, really,” she sounded exasperated.

“What?” I touched my hair feeling self-conscious. I had made some effort to get dressed and thought I looked nice.

She shook her head, almost in disgust. “We’re stopping at my house before we go to Dylan’s party,” she said.

“It’s fine, really.” I said.

“No, it’s not. You cannot go looking like that.” She frowned, pointing at my outfit.

I glanced down at my jeans and t-shirt. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“Finn.” She shook her head. “Just trust me. This is obviously not your area of expertise,” she said almost condescendingly.

“Fine,” I relented. She was right. Fashion was not my forte. It was hers.

***

I became Meg’s doll once again. She curled my hair, put make up on me and dressed me in a pair of skinny jeans and a light blue sleeveless shirt. I felt like a piece of sausage as I was being squeezed into the jeans. They were tight, almost unbearably tight.

“Fashion is pain sometimes, Finn,” she said, showing me the red marks on her feet from her strappy high heels. I grimaced at the sight of them. “You look beautiful. If I had your hair and your skin.”

I looked at her in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You’re a goddess!” I envied Meg’s tanned skin and golden hair. Instead I was stuck with pasty white skin and auburn hair that was much more red than brunette.

“Ha, goddess,” she scoffed. She smirked to herself. “I’ve never been called that before but I could get used to it.”

I smiled. She smiled at me in return and then looked at me, studying me. “Finn, you should know you’re beautiful. I can tell you this, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it.”

My face turned red, almost in embarrassment. I looked down, away from her. I had never thought of myself that way. It felt awkward to hear someone say it out loud to me. Meg put her hands on my shoulders and made me face the mirror.

“Believe it.” She looked at me in the reflection, her expression was confident. I smiled at her in return, too quickly. She knew it was fake. She sighed heavily and shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s go to this party. I want to make Blake regret the day he dumped me,” she said. “Cut the light will you.”

On my way out of her bathroom, I looked at myself again in the mirror. I liked what I saw in the reflection. I felt my face and gently touched my hair. It was me, just one I had never known existed.

***

My instincts were right. Dylan definitely had a lot of money, more than enough to share with the entire town. We had to enter a gate to get to his house. He lived in a large, garish, ostentatious house that sat on top of a rolling hill with acres and acres of land surrounding it. The house itself was odd. It didn’t fit with the rest of the area. Most of the homes near it were small, older, and more common. His house screamed money and it seemed his family wanted everyone in the town to know it.

We parked on the grass, hundreds of feet away from his house. His yard was filled with cars. The party had barely started and he already had a full house. Walking in Meg’s cute but highly uncomfortable flats for hundreds of feet was excruciating. I complained, which fell on deaf ears. Meg told me to suck it up. I was tempted to take the shoes off and walk on my bare feet, but I knew I’d never hear the end of it.

There were large Corinthian columns outside the front of the house. Marble covered the entire front entrance. I looked up, seeing a large stained glass window with an image I couldn’t recognize. The house was a bad mix of elements that didn’t mesh. It made me think his parents had told the architect that they wanted every single thing they liked or admired in one home and no one was smart enough to challenge them on it. I had heard rich people could be strange. This was proof.

We entered his house. Music was blaring and people were talking. I could not hear myself think, let alone anything Meg said. The staircase was enormous. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling. The floor was checkered black and white. The inside of the house was just as bad as the outside.

With all of the people inside the house, I’m surprised I immediately spotted him. He was talking to some blonde haired girl, who was grinning from ear to ear, twirling her hair with one finger, touching his arm with her other hand. “There’s Dylan,” I said to Meg.

“What’d I tell you? Player,” she said.

My eyes plead with her to stop. I looked over at him again. This time he saw me. He smiled and came my way. “Here he comes. Don’t say anything,” I said to her.

“I’m going to be sick,” Meg grumbled.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

Meg rolled her eyes at us. “I’m going to get a drink. You two can gawk at each other all night,” she said and then left us alone.

Dylan said to me,“I’m glad you came.” He brushed his hand lightly against my arm, the same move that the blonde had done to him.

My heart beat rapidly. “Thanks for inviting me. You’re popular.” I gestured to all of the people in the house.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know half these people. They hear there’s a party with alcohol and they show up.” We stood in silence for a few seconds. “Do you want a drink?”

“If you’re getting one,” I answered without thinking. I had never had a drink in my entire life and wanted to know what the hype was about.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t leave,” he said and touched my shoulder, rubbing it. I stood there watching people. Some were talking, others were dancing. Some were making out. I tried not to stare at them all. I felt awkward, standing there alone. Dylan came back and handed me a drink. I took a sip and made a disgusted face. He laughed.

“This is strong,” I said. My throat was burning. It didn’t taste like soda. It was strange tasting, strong and definitely not good.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said. I didn’t know how I would ever get used to something that tasted this bad. He took several sips of his drink. Even though my brain told me not to, I imitated him, taking long, hard swallows of the disgusting stuff. My head told me to stop, to quit being so stupid. I tuned out all reason and kept drinking despite my better judgment.

“So, do you want to go where it’s more quiet?” he asked.

“Okay.” I followed him upstairs. He took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

“I lock all the bedrooms. Otherwise people would use them as their personal motel. And this place, as you can see, is not a cheap motel.” He smiled and opened the door. We walked into his bedroom. It was immaculate, way too clean for a boy.

“It’s so clean,” I said, looking around at everything. The furniture was all modern and shiny black, the walls a dark gray. I looked at the pictures on the wall. Most of them were baseball and wrestling pictures. Trophies adorned his bookshelf. I studied the books on his shelf; most of them required summer reading with the exception of a few sports biographies. We definitely did not have our reading choices in common. He came up from behind me.

“I’m not into reading,” he said.

I turned to face him. Our faces were inches apart. My heart beat rapidly. This was the first time I had ever been alone with a boy in his bedroom. He put his hand behind my neck and moved me closer to him. Slowly his lips touched mine. He quickly kissed me on the lips.

“You have nice lips,” he said. “They’re soft.”

I turned red, my face flushed. “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know how to respond to that aside from the fact that it was an obvious observation. All lips were soft weren’t they?

“It’s so much better hanging out with you up here. We actually get the chance to talk,” he said.

“It’s hard to hear anything down there.” The music blared in the background. My head was beginning to spin. I felt a little dizzy.

“Do you want another drink?”

“Sure,” I answered, mad at myself for saying so. I knew better but chose stupidity over reason.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t let anyone else in,” he said and then closed the door behind him.

I walked around his room, snooping, trying to catch a glimpse of him. I was trying to find the common thread we shared, to see what attracted me to him besides his good looks. We didn’t read the same books and I was not interested in sports. Deep down under, I hated to admit to myself that his good looks were the quality I liked best about him. I had become another one of those girls and it bothered me.

He tapped lightly on the door. “Finn,” he whispered. I opened the door. He had a beer bottle under his arm and a cup in one hand. He gave me the cup then shut the door. He opened the beer and took a huge gulp. Then he sat down on the bed.

I took a sip of my drink. It was just a gross as the first drink. I made a disgusted face.

He patted the bed. “Come sit next to me.”

I sat down next to him. He drank the rest of his beer. “You drank that fast,” I said.

He laughed. “You need to drink yours,” he said, referring to my nearly full cup.

“It’s not easy to drink fast.” I took a huge gulp, the back of my throat burned. I drank again and again, leaving the cup almost empty. My body felt warm and everything in the room was definitely spinning.

“Are you okay?” he asked.