When We Collided(35)
“She wears a little tiara, too, right? Holly Golightly?” He doesn’t look up at me because he’s carefully placing the salmon onto the mound of mashed potatoes.
I’m charmed. Oh Holy Mother Earth, am I ever charmed. “You’ve seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
“Sure. My mom made me watch all those old movies when I was little.” Both plates are almost done now, and he’s putting a little more glaze onto the salmon. This whole experience is mouthwatering, and I have to wonder how I got so lucky—a beautiful boy on this beautiful night, making me this beautiful meal.
“Hey, Jonah?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t really know how to break this to you,” I say. I hop down from the counter and look up at him. “But I think you are maybe falling in love with me.”
He hands me my plate, and his smile is the faintest bit smug. “Viv, I just made you wild-caught Alaskan salmon baked with mango chutney, on a bed of garlic red potatoes and arugula. While talking about an Audrey Hepburn movie. I think you are maybe falling in love with me.”
I lift to my tiptoes so I can press my mouth against his. When I return to my heels, I smile right back. Even though there are no maybes at all in this situation and we both know it, I can be an enigma, too. “Maybe so, Jonah. Maybe so.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jonah
The Verona Cove bonfire is always on the first Saturday after the Fourth of July. No one knows who started the tradition. I’m not even sure who brings the firewood or buys the keg. Or why the police let it happen. Silas has this theory that the cops let us get it out of our system this one night a year. Probably saves them trouble for the rest of the summer. The usual crowd is high school– and college-aged townies. It’s an unspoken rule: no one under fifteen, and you age out after college. A few vacationers are invited, but mostly the ones who have stayed in Verona Cove every summer of their lives. From a calendar standpoint, they’re one-fourth townie.
Naomi decided to walk from our house to the beach with me and Vivi, a surprise to both of us. Not that she’s said anything on our walk. Vivi has skipped beside me the whole way, asking about who will be here (everyone) and whether there will be fireworks (yes, but just little ones). In Vivi’s presence, it’s impossible to deny that I’m weighed down. She’s buoyant, feet barely tapping the sand she walks on. Her body seems subject to less gravity than the rest of us. Naomi has always been thin, and her bony shoulders hunch forward a bit. I always thought she had bad posture. I never considered that she’s been as weighed down as I am, except for longer. Even before my dad died, Naomi worried like it was a hobby. About grades, about college, about money, about the other five of us, the environment and pollution. Seriously.
“Wow,” Vivi says, “I mean, would you just look at these stars—they’re unreal. I love this, being away from any city lights. It feels like if you walked off one of the cliff sides, you could step on each star like lily pads in water and jump from one to another to make your way through the whole solar system.”
With that, she wraps one arm around me and jumps up to peck me on the cheek. I don’t have to look to know Naomi is rolling her eyes. I smile anyway, even though Vivi tugging at me splinters the pain in my already-aching back.
My whole body is sore from working on the restaurant patio all week, in addition to watching the littles and working my usual shifts. On the first day, I hauled all the miscellaneous crap away. Half of it went into the shed out back and the other half went to the dump. I called Silas to bring the car and help me move an old, busted oven to the junkyard. Yesterday, I ripped up the weed infestation, but I left the ivy. Silas showed up, even though I didn’t ask him to. We worked silently, me pulling at the deep-rooted weeds with all my force and Silas rerouting the electrical cords and testing which lights still work.
Today, I borrowed a power washer from Mr. Thomas, who owns the hardware store beside the restaurant. The patio is, at least, empty and clean. Everyone who uses the alleyway as a shortcut said how great it looks. Mrs. Kowalski said she wants a reservation for the first night the patio opens. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead, but Silas and I thanked her anyway. Maybe it’s lame, but it feels good to sweat for something I care about. The patio looks a little better each day, measurable progress in front of my eyes. I don’t even mind the ache. I’m used to it.
The fire roars in the distance, and there are dark forms all around it. I can smell the smoke already, hear the laughing and chatter. Last year, I came with my friend Zach and a few other guys from the baseball team. I spent most of the night hanging with them and flirting with Sarah. That was when she was a cute Yorkie, not a yippy one. Since I didn’t do baseball last spring, I don’t even really see those guys anymore. But I can’t let myself think about this—about how much can change in a year. It feels like someone driving the heel of their hand into my nose, in a street fight I didn’t know I was in.
As we make our way into the masses, people call out greetings, mostly to Vivi. We pause for a moment as Naomi says hello to a group of old friends and Adam, the guy she dated in high school. When I look back for Vivi, she’s a few yards away. She’s chatting with Dane Farrow like she knows him. And she’s already holding a beer.
Dane Farrow is a lowlife. That’s the word my dad would have used. Kids at school go to Dane for drugs because his older brother deals. He does, too, by association—pot and Ritalin, I think. He leaves the harder stuff to his brother. I never really think about guys like Dane. I mean, what do I care what he does? Verona Cove is kind of a hippie town, so it’s not like weed is a big deal here. But I don’t love Vivi talking to him.