Be True to Me Page 7

  “The guys are always pranking each other. But we could skip everything and walk over by the dunes,” I said to Gil quietly, so the others couldn’t hear.

  “Yeah, okay. I’d like that.”

  I raised my voice. “You two go on ahead without us.”

  “Wait,” said Julia. “Seriously? You’re not coming?”

  “Nah,” said Gil. “I don’t feel like more parties.”

  “Me, either.”

  I’d been annoyed about Bertie’s trick, but the feeling was already fading. The real night was Gil and me. In spite of the blazer, I shivered again, and Gil moved in closer. He began to rub my arm. But I was shivering with excitement, not cold.

  Gil Burke. The dunes. That worked.

  “See ya, kiddoes.” Julia gave me a tiny “told you so” smile. “You can’t stop smiling around that Burke boy,” she’d told me. “Pretty giddy for a girl who said she wasn’t ready to fall in love this summer. Now it’s all Scott Wholihan?”

  But Gil was so different from Scott. So much older seeming, with his law firm internship and his college courses, his studio sublet in New York City. The only cool thing Scott ever did was go to Tampa for football camp. Gil versus Scott? Those two names shouldn’t even hang out in the same sentence.

  We redirected bikes and left the house behind. At the juncture, where Oliver and Julia veered toward the bay, I signaled the turn for the beach.

  There, we dropped our bikes in the grass, kicked off our shoes, and raced each other to the ocean. We walked along the edge of the surf, checking out the perfect half-moon and the sky with its crazy blaze of stars.

  “I love this smell,” I said. “It’s sweet with a kick. Kind of like spicy grapes.”

  “You can smell sage and bayberry all along South Beach,” said Gil.

  “Bayberry! Listen to you.” How did he know that? “You’ll be an honorary Sunkie by Labor Day.”

  “Unless I’m kicked off the island for my crappy band and beer T-shirts. Here every shirt’s got a collar and a club emblem on it.”

  “I like your crappy T-shirts,” I said. “You’re probably the only person ever to show up at the yacht club in a shirt that says ‘Keep on Truckin’.” And I want to borrow that orange Frank Zappa one you had on Tuesday. Where I’m from, you look kind of refreshingly normal.”

  “Well, thanks. But I might look less normal as the days go on. Aunt Weeze’s real stiff and proper about my clothes.” Gil took my hand; my heart leaped. “She leaves these stacks on my bed, with notes about how Junior’s got doubles of these sailing shorts, or how Uncle Carp never wears this sports coat.”

  “Because finally she’s got a boy she can dress up like a Ken doll. It’s got to be pretty depressing for Weeze, to see you standing next to Junior.”

  “To be honest, I think it upsets her,” said Gil. “I’m not the one Weeze aims to shine.”

  “But you’re her kin—you’re her nephew.”

  “Yup.” Gil kept his gaze out on the ocean, and I felt a scratch of doubt that I’d done the reverse of what I’d intended, by reassuring him.

  “Though it’s got to be tough,” I said, “since she never knew you as a kid. Just—bam, here you are, all grown up and dropped in the house. You’ve got the same last name, but you’re a stranger. I’m sure Weeze wants to treat you like family, but maybe she doesn’t know how yet.”

  Now Gil nodded in real agreement. “I never had a name to live up to before. But being a Burke—that really means something here.” He laughed, a little self-consciously. “Listen to me, I sound like I think I’m the next king of France. And speaking of names, what’s the deal with ‘Fritz’?”

  “My dad had really hoped for a boy,” I explained. “In fact, he was so sure I was gonna come out a boy, he told everyone. When I was born, he stuck to his guns and named me Fritz.”

  “I like it. It’s sporty.”

  “He pushed me when I was little. Karate class, racquetball, Little League. But it worked out all right. Especially since my kid brother, Kevin, ended up being not much in the sports department. Someone had to bring home the medals.”

  “Like the Junior Cup Tennis trophy?”

  I paused. “Jean Custis tell you about that?”

  “All I know is that it sounds like her family screws the pressure down pretty tight.”

  We walked a bit longer, comfortable, letting the tide lap over our bare feet. I wasn’t sure what to say about Jean. Her eyes on me tonight had been a little wild, even frightened. Like Gil was up for grabs—and we both were grabbing.

  “A lot of the adults rooted for Jean, because her family’s been winning that cup since Old Testament days,” I said quietly. “Traditions are so important to these people. Last summer, on the ferry back to Bay Shore, I sat with it between my knees, and I couldn’t even look some of those old Sunkies in the eye. I felt like I’d robbed a bank.”

  “Jean doesn’t seem like someone who’d be fun to crush in sports.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “She’s very ladylike.” I knew better than to speak against Jean. It always came off crummy to snipe about a girl behind her back. If I talked against her, I’d come off small, like a hick. And I didn’t want to sound jealous, especially when she’d looked so classy in that peach silk dress with her matching initialed bag. I’d never owned anything silk.

  But Gil had gone quiet. Was he thinking about Jean and their night in New York? He’d told me and Julia all about it, how they’d hit some trendy bar and ate these amazing burgers. Burgers in a bar didn’t seem like any big deal until you set it against the backdrop of New York City, which somehow made the whole thing like a movie.

  We got to a sandy embankment, where we stopped. Gil shook out his blazer and dropped it as our landing zone. We settled in, shoulder tip to shoulder tip, knees just touching. Gil stretched, letting his arm fall loose around my waist. When he turned to look at me, I kept staring out at the sea.

  The silence was smooth. I waited for his voice to skate across it.

  “Okay, Fritz O’Neill,” said Gil after a couple of minutes. “Here’s a night full of stars, and only you and me on this beach, and everything real nice—so I’m just gonna ask, but I think I need to know. You got a boyfriend back home?”

  Scott Houlihan’s name was a faint pain through my body. Hardly there at all. “Not likely,” I said, with all the dismissive boredom I could muster.

  Gil laughed. “You face tells the end of that story. I reckon I won’t ask more.”

  “Well, and what about you?” I knocked my leg against his, and then let it stay there, quietly buzzing. “You got any girlfriend pining for you back in New York, or in Elmore?”

  “Me? Nah. Not there, not here. Unless you want to count this hot and heavy thing I’ve got going with my Intro to Law books.”

  My vision had adjusted to the darkness. “Got your eye on anyone here?” I asked him, keeping my eyes fixed on the ocean.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Yeah, you could say that. You could say I got my eye on someone here.”

  Anyone could tell Gil was a sociable type, giving it his best shot this summer, to impress his aunt and uncle, hoping they saw him as a solid striver who was worth their investment. A girl like Jean Custis was a natural fit for a guy who wanted to get ahead with the Burkes. But I also knew, and I knew it down deep, that Jean was wrong for Gil Burke. He’d never be free with her. With Jean, he’d always be on his toes, playing the part, working to impress.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” I told him.

  “Yeah?” That smile. “I’m gonna let you.”

  I moved closer. My fingertips barely landing, butterfly-light, along the edge of his chin. Then I gave myself a moment, memorizing the dark brush of his lowered lashes and the outline of his cheekbone, before I leaned in and let my lips come to rest a moment on his.

  At my touch, Gil reached for me, pressed in, his arm encircling my middle, his hand twisting in my hair, his lips parting. The two of us together, invincible, and nobody s
trong enough to pull us apart. I didn’t know everything about Gil Burke, but I knew right then we were as magnetic as the tide.

  Gil and me. Me and Gil. That was all.

  JEAN

  That’s me—the sophisticate, the daredevil.

  The problem with feelings and hangovers was that they didn’t mix well. This morning was no exception. The pumping of my bruised heart only amplified the throbbing of my aching head. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so alive with pain.

  I squared my sunglasses, swallowed the bile in my throat, and staggered the rest of the path to the gazebo.

  Mom and Dad, also looking a bit queasy by the morning light, were fussing with their breakfasts. “Jean, your food went cold while you slept,” said Mom, “but you’re going to have to eat it anyway or you’ll hurt poor Mrs. Otis’s feelings. She was up before any of us, making our breakfasts.”

  I lifted my fork. Ever since Mrs. Otis had come marching in to pull up my bedroom shades twenty minutes ago, I’d been jolted into such specifically awful memories of Punch Night. Gil’s gentlemanly, remote kindness. Fritz’s scratchy laugh. The two of them slipping through the side exit to dance in their private corner of paradise. While I stood alone, stupidly, in the middle of the club dining room, trying not to cry.

  I’d lost him. He’d slipped away before I’d even had a chance.

  My parents usually ate breakfast at the gazebo, as long as Dad didn’t taste too much quartz dust in the cross breeze. It was the prettiest corner of our property, with rose mallow climbing the trellis walls, and a sweeping view of the ocean below. But I couldn’t find any joy in it today.

  My eggs were runny side up. I gagged down a mouthful and smiled.

  “Mmmm,” I said to Mom, who woozily served one back as she passed me the juice.

  “Was Rosamund’s after party fun?” The words had no sooner formed on Dad’s lips than he jumped up and bolted. Hands clamped to his mouth, he sprinted the path to the back door, presumably heading for the powder room toilet bowl.

  Mom and I kept eating as if we hadn’t noticed. In the Custis house, everyone was too good a sport to point out something as messy as a hangover.

  I reached for the Arts section. Mom scoured the front-page headlines.

  “Quite honestly, there’s only so much a person should have to read about Beirut,” she murmured, a note of blame in her voice.

  Last night kept hemorrhaging through me. Gil and Fritz. Sticky-sweet punch. Those mean and stupid things I’d said to Sara. Sara, who was my friend, who deserved better from me.

  Regrets, regrets . . . I closed my eyes and let egg slime slip down my throat.

  Opened them to see Dad slide neatly back into place.

  When Mrs. Otis reappeared with the aspirin bottle for Mom, I intercepted it and shook out a handful for myself. “I’d better get ready for tennis.”

  Mom took the bottle from me. “Goodness, everything was so fun last night, and then the next morning we all need so much medicine. Life’s little ironies. . . . If you’re done with Arts, I’ll have it.”

  Leaving the house on unsteady legs, I got all the way to the end of the drive before I gave in to it. I let my bike fall and I doubled over, gripping my knees as my insides cramped and heaved, and all my breakfast came up in a torrent of egg yolk and orange juice, into Mom’s pachysandra.

  Now my breath was disgusting. I’d have to clean myself up at the casino.

  I arrived to find Coach Hutch out on the courts. As I scurried to the women’s restroom, the twang of his Australian accent carried through the open window.

  After rinsing my mouth, I gave myself a stern look in the mirror. A wan, sad, frizzy-haired girl frowned back at me. Was it only last night I’d told the mirror that I looked pretty?

  I was a joke. I was a pathetic joke.

  I felt too sick to get through a tennis lesson. Not today. Outside, I wheeled my bike around the other side of the building, out of Coach’s sight, and pushed off toward the bay.

  It was a gorgeous morning. Blue sky and blue water and a warm bay breeze. Cherry-red, apple-green, and lemon-yellow bathing suits flapped on porch railings. My headache fuzzed my vision, and I nearly fell over twice as I rattled around the corner onto the narrow slatted boards of Bay Walk, where I saw Sara and Rosamund sunning themselves bottoms up, on deck chairs on the Wembleys’ double-story porch.

  Sara must have stayed over at Rosamund’s. It meant they were extra angry with me. They clung to each other whenever they felt I’d wronged them.

  But I had wronged them. Why had I said such hurtful things? This apology wouldn’t be easy.

  I braked a few cottages away, got off my bike, and leaned it against a tree. Plastic cups were scattered in the Wembleys’ bottlebrush hedges; up the steps, I caught that skunky bite of stale beer in the air, more proof of last night’s party.

  “Hi, girls.” I waved, buoyant and awkward. “That’s a nifty new swimsuit, Sara.”

  Their heads lifted. “It’s Rosamund’s,” said Sara, and she put her head down again.

  But Rosamund was scowling at me. “You have some nerve, Jean. Showing up here, with your phony compliments.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t forgotten already!”

  No, I hadn’t forgotten. It’s always been my curse to remember everything, no matter how much I’ve had to drink. I stayed quiet.

  “For example. Do you remember,” Rosamund prompted, “that you called Sara a pumpkin?”

  “I was only kidding.”

  Sara’s head jerked up again. “You were drunk. And when you get drunk, or angry, or any combination of both, you put your foot in your mouth.”

  “Well, excuse me. I thought I was being funny.” My fingers found the deck railing. I steadied myself.

  “It’s always that you think you’re being something else,” said Rosamund.

  “Look, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

  “You botched it worse than sorry,” said Sara. “Maybe you could go be somewhere else today? I don’t want to pretend everything’s superduper with you again.”

  I knew Sara loved this a little bit. Usually I had all of Rosamund’s loyalty, but the minute I didn’t, Sara lost no time twisting the knife.

  “Okay.” My face burned. I had nothing else to offer them. “I really didn’t mean it. For what it’s worth.”

  The answer was silence. I stumbled down the steps and back to my bike, and I rode all the way past the fisherman cottages, right to the very end of Bay Walk, where the reed grass grew so fast and thick along the freshwater that as a little girl, I had nightmares of swimming into it and being swallowed whole.

  Around the bend by the boathouse were the shallows where the Junior Minnows took swimming lessons. I’d learned to swim here myself, in this silvery-blue inlet. My memory could still loop back to my girl body, a flipping dolphin in my “green bean” Speedo, my toes wriggling for the silky mud bottom.

  Make-up Minnows was under way. Years ago, Julia Tulliver’s mother had mentioned that the weekend Make-up Minnows program had been set up to foist off children into a morning class while their parents nursed their hangovers. But when I reported this comment to my mother—I was forever being dropped off at Make-up Minnows—it created a bit of a firestorm.

  Always mellow Oliver Olmstead was watching over everyone from the lifeguard chair, while Tiger and Gil stood waist-deep in the water, shepherding the kids. Their voices were low as they urged the squealing Minnows to trust them, let go, breathe.

  I parked and walked to the water’s edge. I kept still and silent until Gil noticed me. He seemed surprised, but not unhappy, as he turned and said something to Tiger, who nodded.

  As he came sloshing in, I wanted to run. What did I really need to say to Gil Burke, anyway? This was another one of my usual bad impulses.

  “Jean, what’s going on? Everything okay?”

  “Not really.” Hearing his voice, tears welled in my eyes and then, worse, began to
spill down my cheeks.

  “Hey—hey! What’s wrong?”

  “I feel like an idiot.”

  “You? Never. Talk to me.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Sure you can. That’s why you’re here, right?” His voice was so gentle. All that Southern comfort. “You want to tell me something, and I want to hear it.”

  “Honestly? Fine. Here it is. I’m an idiot, and it’s all because of you.” I wiped my eyes with my arm, humiliated by my own raw confession. “Because ever since you got here, I’ve felt wrecked. I’ve been in a sort of agony about not seeing you, and last night I said crummy things to my friends, and it was only because I was . . . I was sad. Because . . . because . . .”

  Oh, good grief. Where was my dignity? This was such a stupid idea. My words were sputtering out and I needed to blow my nose.

  But when I looked up at him, Gil’s expression was as calm as the blue sky above us. “Jeez, Jean, now I feel bad. It shouldn’t have got this mucked up between us.”

  “Back in New York, I thought we had some kind of—I don’t know. Click. When we were dancing at Hollander’s. Walking home. In front of my apartment. Didn’t we? Or was it all in my head?”

  “No, it was real, we were—look, I sort of might have reckoned you’d gone off me. You never went out of your way to find me here, and of course you’ve got all your Sunkie pals.”

  “Really?” Was that the truth?

  “Yeah, for sure. I didn’t want to breathe down your neck. But let’s not talk about fault and blame—when it’s so easy to start over.”

  “Start what over? Aren’t you keen on Fritz O’Neill now? I should tell you nobody in our set likes Fritz, and it might become—” I made myself say it—“harder for you to make the friends that you want, if you’ve got Fritz hanging around you.”

  Gil lifted his hat, bent to dunk it in the water, then replaced it on his head. The look in his eyes was no longer so soft. “Fritz’s real,” he offered. “She’s her own person.”

  “Well—so am I!” I tried to picture my sister in this moment. I imagined the set of Daphne’s hard little chin, her haughty gaze whenever she sensed she was being wronged. Daphne always decided her own terms. “We should be friends, at least,” I said firmly. “I’m not sure what’s happened between us. But we weren’t meant to be less than friends.”