One day, while all that badness was happening with Noel not answering his phone, Gideon Van Deusen showed up shirtless on the dock of our houseboat. I was helping in the greenhouse, because Meghan was off with Finn as usual and Dad was seriously behind in photographing his summer blooms for the newsletter. Instead of working, he was moping around all day saying stuff like: “My mother always kept her kitchen sink clean.” And “My mother will never get to see this year’s gardenias.”
I was trying to make a short video for his blog (
Gideon hopped out wearing nothing but a pair of board shorts and a bead choker. His dark brown hair was wet and hung over his face. I had never seen him without a shirt on and for a second I didn’t recognize him. Maybe it was the wet hair and maybe it was the bead choker of my seventh-grade fantasies. Or maybe it was just his extremely nice-looking bare chest. In any case, I thought: It’s Tommy Hazard.
The surfer-boy version of Tommy Hazard, all grown up.
I must be hallucinating.
But then he said, “Ruby, hey. How are ya? We’re nearly out of gas. Isn’t there a station up at the top of the hill?”—and I realized it was Nora’s brother.
“Hi, Gideon,” I said. Meaning: Nice abs. “Yeah, there’s a station. Do you have a can to put the gas in?”
I looked at the boat, where two more shirtless guys were tying up to the dock. They headed toward us, one dark-skinned and slightly heavy with long dreaded hair, one Caucasian and beaky, carrying a presumably empty gas can; both were clearly friends of Gideon’s from Evergreen. I could tell by their sideburns, hemp bracelets and sandaled feet.
“Yeah, we got a can,” said Gideon. “We were wakeboarding in the middle of the lake when I suddenly realized we’re on empty. It didn’t seem safe to try to make it all the way across to fill her up. We might have gotten stranded. So we docked here.”
The two guys waved at me as they headed up the hill carrying the gas can, while Gideon shook the water out of his hair and smiled down at me. Very Tommy Hazard. “What are you filming?”
“I’m making a video for my dad’s gardening Web site,” I said. “How come you’re not going with them?” I tipped my head to where his friends were pushing through the gate that led to the street.
Gideon laughed. “I didn’t bring any shoes.”
“Well. It gets you out of having to hike up the hill to the station.”
“True. Hey, do you have a Band-Aid I can borrow?”
Now this is going to sound insane, but a part of me was surprised that Gideon Van Deusen, who traveled the world for a year before starting college, who questioned the teachings of his Sunday school back in ninth grade, who played guitar badly and didn’t mind being bad at it, who folded his laundry so neatly, who had been class speaker at Tate Prep the year he graduated and who obviously spent quite a serious amount of time doing sit-ups—I was surprised that Gideon Van Deusen, who seemed so well-balanced and comfortable in himself—would need a Band- Aid.
He seemed so perfect to me, I guess. An older guy who’s got it together. A guy so confident in himself that it seems impossible he’d have a hole in his skin. A hole that might actually be bleeding.
“You can’t borrow one,” I told him. “But you can have one to keep.”
He laughed and I showed him into the houseboat. Polka remembered him from the one time he’d been over to visit and slurped Gideon’s hands.
I went to the bathroom to get Band-Aids, but before I went back to the living room, I stopped and put on lip gloss. I thought:
What? I have no lip gloss on. My lips feel dry. This lip gloss has nothing to do with Gideon.
Oh, fine. There is a shirtless college boy bleeding in my living room. I want lip gloss.
I can still be in love with Noel and want a shirtless college boy to think I am good-looking, can’t I?
Or maybe I can’t.
Maybe if you’re really in love, you don’t care if anyone thinks you’re good-looking besides the person you’re in love
Maybe it’s deranged to want college boys to think you’re hot when you already have a boyfriend.
Maybe I am a sex maniac slut like everybody says.
And then again, it’s just lip gloss.
I brought out a box of Band-Aids with pictures of sushi on them, along with some antibiotic ointment. Gideon showed me a spot on his calf where the wakeboard had flipped and sliced him. It wasn’t big, but it would need two Band-Aids to cover it.
“Are you a sushi fan?” Gideon asked.
