Annie stopped and looked back. “So there. We’re even. Admit it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I followed after her, and when I caught up beside her, I held her hand.
“I bet JP would be jealous,” I said.
“Don’t even go there, West. You said we shouldn’t talk about JP to each other.”
“Okay.”
I sighed. In the fading light, we hadn’t noticed that her mother and father had been standing just down the beach, watching us. But we didn’t let go of our hands.
Her father’s arm was around her mother’s shoulders. Doc Mom smiled and said, “You look so nice walking on the beach together.”
After dinner, Annie and I went out to the pool house to go for a swim.
Unfortunately, her parents came along. They just sat there reading in lounge chairs, but they were keeping an eye on us too, and I think they enjoyed doing it. But when we sat in the hot tub, I started playing with Annie’s feet and rubbing her legs with mine. It was the best feeling I could ever have dreamed up, and I could tell Annie liked it too, but it was really making me crazy. So I leaned my head back on the deck and closed my eyes because I wasn’t about to let her think I wanted to kiss her. Or something else. But I will say that all Annie would have had to do was whisper, “Let’s go skinny-dipping,” and those goddamned red lifeguard trunks would have been hanging from the rafters.
Chapter Fifty-Five
IT FELT SO COMFORTABLE SLEEPING in that bed that I guess I must not have wanted to wake up. When I did, the sun was already pouring through my window and someone was knocking on my door.
“Ryan Dean. Are you still sleeping?”
It was Annie.
“I was. Until maybe two seconds ago.”
“Sorry.”
I rubbed my eyes.
“You can come in,” I said.
The door cracked open, and she cautiously peeked her head into my room. I could see she was dressed for a run.
I folded my hands on the pillow beneath my head. This was like a dream come true: Annie Altman waking me up in the morning after we practically took a bath together the night before.
“Come get some breakfast, and let’s go for our run. It’s beautiful out there.”
It’s not so bad in here, either, I thought.
“Okay.” I sat up and rubbed my chin. “I’ll be right there after I get ready. I think I need to shave.”
Annie laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“Hey. I have
“No.”
“Well, you can’t see it from way over there. You have to get close.”
She moved to the edge of the bed.
Score.
“Look,” I said. “It’s even dark and everything.”
I kept my chin up, and Annie leaned over me.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I can see it.”
She was so close.
She said, “It looks so lonely and lost, maybe you shouldn’t shave it. And maybe you should name it ‘Ryan Dean.’ ”
I looked into her eyes.
“I better get out of here,” Annie said, straightening. Then she spun around and went to the door.
“We’re not even anymore, Annie.”
Then I heard her call “Pedro,” and that little disgusting animal came nail-tapping-panting-slobbering- excited-grunting into my room. Annie left, shutting the door just as Pedro sailed up onto my bed and began frantically mounting my foot. I scooped him up by his little sweaty armpits, his hips still pumping at the air, opened the door with my elbow, and scooted him like a shuffleboarded puck-puppy to the opposite end of the hallway.
Annie was smiling, standing there, watching me.
I looked at her and said, “So, are you going to give me time to get dressed, or is it okay if I come to breakfast in my underwear?”
She laughed, and I said, “And, no, we are not even. Ryan Dean West has officially pulled into the lead.”
“It’s not fair if you count getting Pedro to think about kissing you.”
“Good one, Annie. In that case I’m
I went back inside my room and got into my running gear.
Chapter Fifty-Six
DOC MOM FED US BAGELS with butter and sweet tomato jam she’d made from her own summer garden, and we drank black coffee and orange juice. And throughout the meal, the doc parents were both trying to talk to us, but our feet were twitching and we needed to get outside.
“I’m sorry, Doc Mom,” I said. “I don’t usually sleep this late, but this place sure is a beautiful spot for resting.”
“Thank you, Ryan Dean.
I fired a quick and perverted, arched-eyebrow-(it hurt my stitches)-remember-the-Jacuzzi look at Annie, who rolled her eyes.
We ran so far that morning.
I’d almost forgotten that Annie’s being on the cross country team meant that anything under ten miles was a warm-up for her. I followed Annie along trails and streets, heading south along the shore of the island, and we came to a park where a stream cut a V-shaped harbor. The place was deserted, too; I saw just one small fishing boat rocking like a lazy walrus off the shore. We stopped running, and walked through wide fields of knee-high grass that made our legs wet.
The park was the site of an old sawmill, now abandoned, but the outer walls of the mill building still stood, square, like a fort, in the middle of the field. And you could tell from the outline of the perimeter of the open space, and how the forest butted up against it, that there had been tall trees there at one time, before the mill was operational.
“Come on,” Annie said. “I want you to see inside the building.”
I followed her.
It was kind of a surreal place. What was left of the old mill—the floor and side walls—had been entirely constructed of concrete. Huge openings in the sides and in the roof were the gutted remains of former doors and skylights. And just about every available surface inside was painted with bizarre and colorful graffiti, some of it very artistic, and a lot of it just nasty and drugged out. There was even a tree growing from a hole in the floor, all the way up through one of the open skylights, about twenty feet over our heads.
“Who did all this?” I said, turning in my place and scanning all the images.
“Just kids. They get bored living here.”
