“We’re here,” Lucy said, jerking on the emergency brake as the car shuddered to a halt. “Cath, wake up.”
“I’m up,” Cath mumbled, shoving her sunglasses on top of her head and squinting out at the sparkling water. “God, it’s bright.”
I climbed out of the back when Cath got out, stretching her arms over her head before lighting a Marlboro, and threw the others their towels. I was hauling my backpack over my shoulder when Lucy nudged me.
“Look at that,” she whispered, cocking her head toward Billy Caruso’s Jeep, parked just five spots away. “Who is he?”
“He” was beautiful, tall, with dark, slightly unruly hair and large dark brown eyes, his lean body delicately corded with muscle. I swallowed and felt the blood rushing to my face when he glanced up and saw me looking at him.
Westfield wasn’t a small town, but there was only one high school. By the time you arrived there, you either knew everyone, or someone you knew had gone to grammar school or one of the two junior highs with the people you didn’t. For Billy, a freshly graduated and enormously popular senior, to show up at the beach today accompanied by a strange boy who looked the way this one did was a social error of fantastic proportions. He was fresh meat, a new face, a walking possibility.
Lucy wasn’t waiting, either. She and Billy had been on the newspaper together, and his social credentials didn’t faze her even slightly. Tucking her gingery hair behind her ear and pushing her glasses up on her nose, she hefted her beach bag and marched toward him. I followed, nabbing Cath by the hem of her black T-shirt as I did.
“Congratulations on graduating, Billy,” Lucy said, raising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, her lips landing on the hard line of his jaw, instead. “The paper won’t be the same without you.”
“I’m sure you’ll marshal the troops, Luce.” His voice was light as he inclined his head at me and Cath. He was every inch the suave upperclassman, his baggy plaid shorts riding low on his hips, his Ray-Bans perched on top of his cropped blond hair. “Tess. Cath.”
“Who’s your friend?” Lucy asked, sticking her hand out to the stranger, who was watching the interchange with amusement.
“This is Michael Butterfield,” Billy said, busy scanning the people down on the sand. “Just moved in next door to me.”
“Hi.” Michael shook Lucy’s hand as he nodded all around. “Caruso said the beach was the place to be today.”
“You from the city?” Cath said, eyeing Michael’s H.S. 475 T-shirt.
“Yeah.” He shrugged when the short answer was met with three pairs of curious eyes, his hands jammed in the pockets of a pair of faded cutoff jeans. “My dad died, and my mom wanted to join a practice out here. School ended last week.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. The words sounded inconsequential in my ears, useless and small, but Michael smiled at me. A real smile, his eyes going warm and even darker. I felt my cheeks heating up again and tried not to bite my bottom lip.
“Well, I guess we’ll head down,” Lucy said abruptly, turning and marching for the worn wooden steps that loped over the dunes. “You guys coming?”
She’d done her duty and satisfied her curiosity at the same time, and if I suspected that she wished Michael had given her the smile he’d given me, she would never say so. Cath was, as usual, oblivious to anything that wasn’t shouted, and she dawdled as we trudged across the hot sand, struggling to light another cigarette in the breeze.
But she noticed when Michael spread his towel out next to mine, and arched a plucked eyebrow in reaction. The safety pin in her left ear gleamed in the sun, and she left on her shirt and the black leather collar around her neck when she lay back on her towel. She was going to have one strange tan, not that she would care.
Michael seemed fascinated by a game of Frisbee farther down the beach, and for a minute I wondered if he’d realized where he’d chosen to sit. I pulled off my plain white T-shirt and pretended I didn’t know he was there, as I smoothed oil on my legs and stomach.
It wasn’t until a half hour later, when I rolled onto my stomach to change the station on the radio, that he even moved.
“Do you want some on your back?” he asked, picking up the greasy bottle of Hawaiian Tropic. He held up his other hand to shade his eyes, and I avoided his squint before I blushed again. It was so hot by then that I was probably bright red already, and I had to resist the impulse to dab sweat off my forehead and chest with the corner of my towel.
“Sure.” I gave him a noncommittal shrug, and hoped I wasn’t trembling as his hands worked the oil into my back in long, firm strokes. His fingers were strong, but equally gentle, and everywhere he touched felt strangely alive, vibrating with a teasing echo of his hands. I was suddenly painfully unsure what my plain bikini bottom covered and what it didn’t, what the curve of my spine looked like and if my shoulder blades were anything more than bony wings.
When he finished, I propped myself on my elbows to rummage in my bag for a piece of gum. My mouth had gone dry, and I was just unwrapping a piece of Juicy Fruit when he leaned closer still. My heart was already beating hard as he waited for me to return his gaze. And when I did, he licked a drop of sweat from my upper lip without any warning.
“Hot,” he said.
I blinked, and I think I nodded, riding out the potent combination of shock and arousal and curiosity. Michael Butterfield wasn’t like the few boys I’d gone out with so far, kids I’d known for years, as familiar and unsurprising as my own face. From them I could imagine a cheap grope, an attempt to untie my bikini top, a casual slap on the ass. This was different.
Michael turned over and lay on his stomach, resting his head on his crossed arms so he could look at me. I knew even then that my life was going to change again, even if I couldn’t predict exactly how. One thing was sure, though. The summer I’d been dreading for weeks wasn’t going to be aimless or empty if Michael Butterfield had anything to do with it.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MORNING AFTER SOPHIA KEATING’S surprise phone call there was little time for Michael and me to talk. He was late for his train into the city, where he was the executive editor for a small but prestigious publisher, and Emma was eyeing the two of us over her bowl of Frosted Flakes. We were rarely all together on weekday mornings.
“Must be nice to get to sleep late whenever you want,” she complained, then set her bowl in the sink and zippered her backpack. She’d twisted her hair up behind her head with a black butterfly clip, and she looked at least two years older, which was unsettling, especially on this particular morning.
“I still have to bring a note from home, though,” Michael teased her. His tone was light, but the restless night had left a deep gray smudge beneath each eye. He was puttering, too, pouring a second cup of coffee, returning upstairs for a different tie, idling over the morning paper.
I refilled my mug of tea from the old china pot on the counter and said, “You’re going to miss the 7:50 if you don’t hurry.”
“He’s not going.” Emma slung her backpack over one shoulder with a wry smile. “You two are going to play hooky, aren’t you?”
Michael glanced at me, but I looked away, watching an enormous bumblebee hovering in the thick blue fists of wisteria outside the kitchen window. We’d taken plenty of days off while Emma was at school, spending the morning tangled in bed and later indulging in lunch out somewhere or window-shopping downtown. It was one of our rituals, a stolen day of reconnection we tried to make time for every