do you mean?”
Dot poured and handed a glass to Grace. “All this negativity about Blue Moon Bay? Sometimes I think you’re looking for excuses not to like it here.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it reminds you of the years you spent with Michael?”
And the years she spent before that, years in which she could have been taking a different direction with her life. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Mom?”
Dot smiled. “It runs in the family.”
Grace raised her glass to her mother, drank, then went to her room to shower before going to meet Luke. Not that she wanted to impress him; it was just that her pride prevented her from showing up filthy and giving him one more thing to dislike about her.
She stripped her clothes off in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The strong afternoon sun had toasted her skin, leaving a white impression of her halter top behind. The light in this bathroom had always been flattering, and made her tan look deeper than it was. For a moment, she felt as though she’d time-traveled back to a summer two decades before, when she used to cover her Roxy Music album in tin foil and prop it on her chest as she lay in the sun, wearing no more protection than baby oil. She shuddered at the thought now and wondered how many of the faint lines around her eyes she could attribute to that, and how many to the stress of Michael’s abrupt exit.
She took a quick, cool shower, wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her room. It was only five o’clock. There was time for her to rest for a few minutes before going out, so she lay down on the bed and stared at the faded rose wallpaper.
She remembered when her father had first put it up for her. She’d been eight and had just danced in her first ballet recital. Daddy had told her she was a real little lady now, and he let her pick out new “grownup” wallpaper to replace the zoo pattern they’d put up when she was a baby.
This wallpaper had seen her through a lot. The sketched red flowers had hung there, bright but just a little melancholy, through giggly sleepovers; all-night teenage telephone conversations; delirious first dates and tearful breakups; her dog Buff’s death; getting ready for her high-school prom—and her wedding day.
And if the wallpaper had absorbed anything of her thoughts over the years, it had absorbed more than a little Luke Stewart, especially during one summer when, briefly, their relationship had changed.
Grace and Luke’s association had always been…heated. Throughout their high-school years, it had seemed to be the typical animosity that tended to exist between a guy’s best friend and his girlfriend. They argued over almost everything, from which weekend nights were for Grace to whose fault it was when Michael came over at 3:00 a.m. drunk after a night “with the boys.” Come to think of it, they argued a lot about who was at fault for Michael’s shortcomings.
But right after Grace’s senior year of high school, things had changed. The long, hot summer had stretched by with Michael away looking at colleges. Grace had stayed behind, dutifully spending time with Jenna and being available for Michael’s occasional long-distance calls.
Then one evening Jenna, who pronounced herself sick and tired of Grace’s inactivity, talked her into going to the boardwalk over in Ocean City. Jenna met a guy in a T-shirt shop and disappeared with him, cropping up every half hour or so to promise Grace she’d just be “a few more minutes.”
Grace had waited for an hour and a half, sitting there in her prissy sundress, wondering how Jenna got the nerve to just go off with some guy she didn’t even know and do God-knows-what. Just as Grace was getting ready to give up and call a cab to take her home, Luke had shown up, like some dark knight in a white El Camino. He’d offered her a ride and, telling herself it beat paying for a 40-mile cab ride, she’d accepted.
But that wasn’t entirely true. The prospect of riding all the way home with Luke wasn’t exactly unappealing. In fact, it was sort of…exciting. Thrilling. Maybe even dangerous. Under the boardwalk lights, his dark hair gleaming and his skin tanned to brown, making his pale eyes seem even lighter, Luke certainly looked dangerous. That, contrasted with the unexpected chivalry of his offering to drive her home, had made him irresistible to her that night.
She watched him in the dim dash light as he drove home. His hands strong and capable on the wheel, forearms lean with sinewy muscle, his profile straight and masculine…by the time they made it back to Blue Moon Bay, Grace had kissed him a thousand times in her mind.
Although she could never know the evolution of his thoughts that night, he must have begun to see her in a new light too, because he didn’t go directly to her house when they got to town. And she didn’t ask him to. Instead, they circled the quiet streets by the shore, eventually stopping at the small Jolly George “Fun Park” at the end of the boardwalk, where there were a few ancient rides—a wooden roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, that were open in the summer evenings.
They walked through the park, neither touching nor drawing apart, for what seemed like hours, talking about everything. Grace wondered how she’d never seen this side of Luke before. Granted, he only showed the world his silent, somewhat intimidating, exterior. But she’d never even imagined the sensitivity he had; the fact that he was artistic and liked to draw; the fact that he worried about, and had taken care of, his father since his mother’s death. It was hard to believe, but the guy who had been a thorn in her side since she’d begun dating his best friend was suddenly touching her heart as no one ever had before.
They were by the Ferris wheel when the guy who was running it announced that there would be just one more ride that evening. Grace, to whom Luke had just confided that he’d never gone on the rides here as a child, insisted that he had to go on with her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The Ferris wheel had only taken about five turns when it got stuck, with Grace and Luke at the top. It was the first time she realized she had a fear of heights. It was also the first time she realized that kisses could be more than a bland precursor to pleas for sex and guilt for not complying.
Grace lay on her bed now, aware of Jimmy down the hall but caught up in the honeyed memory of a summer night that she’d stored away in the back of her mind for so long.
She closed her eyes and felt herself back in the cool metal seat next to Luke. It felt as if they were in space, a million miles from the bright lights and popcorn-strewn ground below. It was terrifying. When the wind lifted, the old seat squeaked on its hinges.
“What’s wrong?” Luke had asked, just as she felt the blood drain from her face.
“We’re stuck.” It was stupid. She’d never been afraid of a Ferris wheel before.
Luke must have thought it was stupid too. “So what? He’ll get it going again.”
“Did you see that guy?” Grace’s panic mounted. “Did you smell him? I bet that was a bottle of Mad Dog he had in his pocket.”
Luke shrugged. “Either that or he was glad to see you.”
“Luke, I’m serious.” Her voice rose thinly. “I’m scared.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Shh. It’s okay.” He put an arm around her, a little awkwardly.
“How do you know? This thing’s fifty years old if it’s a day. It has to die sometime. Maybe this is the night.”
“Nah.” He was totally calm. “This happens all the time. These old motors overheat and just give out temporarily. Sparky down there will keep fidgeting with it, pushing the arm on and off, until it cools off some and starts to run again and he’ll think he fixed it.”
Grace laughed, despite her fear. Down below she could see the ride operator doing just that. It made her feel better. “You’re sure?”
“I guarantee it.”
“Okay.”