I nod. “Where’s the chalk markers?” She hands them to me and I go back outside, but not before chugging a cold bottle of water.
Mom has better decorative handwriting than I do, but I do my best to replace the words on the sign. I add an arrow at the bottom of it to point toward the store.
The boardwalk has filled up with people now, mostly beach goers by the smell of the sunscreen in the air and the fact that people walk right past all the stores on their way to the ocean. I’m nearly finished with my sign when I hear a girl say, “Seriously, Jonah?”
My head whips up. Across the way, near the hot dog stand, is the petite girl from Jonah’s lunch table. She’s wearing cut off shorts and a black bikini top with no coverup so that her boobs are on display. And her hands are on her hips while she stares at Jonah.
My heart skips a beat. Seeing him outside of school is weirder than weird. He’s wearing board shorts and flip flops. And, well, I’m not going to say that the sight of his surprisingly muscular bare chest sends me falling to my ass on the boardwalk, but I do have to reach over and grab the wall to steady myself. Maybe I’ve just been kneeling too long in front of this stupid sign and maybe that’s why my knees are suddenly weak.
I’m partially hidden by the sign, and there’s other people around so I’m pretty sure they have no idea I’m here watching their private conversation. Which is good because I couldn’t look away now, even if I wanted to.
Jonah’s hair is either wet or gelled, because it’s slicked to the side like usual, only it’s a little messier than when he’s in school. I try not to stare at his chest, but damn. I had no idea he was packing such a hot body underneath those nerd outfits he wears every day.
Here at the beach, he looks like a normal guy. With tanned skin and board shorts hanging low on his hips, I would swoon my ass off if a guy like him ever came into the store. It’s amazing how different he looks, and I’m feeling like the worst person on earth right about now for judging him based on appearance.
Jonah called me pretty and I called him a nerd.
I cap the chalk marker in my hand. I should go back inside. But that girl’s got her hand on her hip now as they move forward in line at the hot dog cart and she looks annoyed with Jonah. He says something I can’t hear and then they order their food. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wallet, handing some cash to Thamir, who owns the hot dog stand.
Watching him pay for her meal is all it takes to know they’re a couple and that my fantasy of them being just friends is now just that—fiction.
Now I go inside. Watching them any longer just feels creepy and wrong.Over the next few hours, I work in the store and I tell myself a lot of things.
Like how I’m happy Jonah has a girlfriend.
And how I never liked him anyway.
And how both of those statements are a lie even though I won’t admit it to myself.
The Magpie gets quite a lot of shoppers today, and although many of them are just browsing, many more purchase something. We sell enough books to make me think this might actually be a profitable venture, and I distract myself from thinking of Jonah by looking up new books to buy for the store.
It doesn’t help much.
I’m not a superstitious person, and I don’t believe in signs. Like one time sophomore year, my friend Tabby was asked to prom by this gorgeous senior guy. Only, two seconds after she’d said yes, some idiot threw a football in the hallway and it smacked her right in the face. She’d taken that as some kind of cosmic sign that she shouldn’t go to prom. So she didn’t.
I’m not the kind of person who believes in things like that, but when I look over at the clock on the computer at our front desk, it says the time is 11:11. I think back to being a kid and always making at wish at that time. They never came true. But I always wished anyway. Just like I do now.
I want to be friends with Jonah again.
And then, as if it’s some kind ofactualcosmic sign, I look out the window of the store and see Jonah’s girlfriend storming down the boardwalk toward the parking lot. Even from here she looks pissed, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. I wait a few beats, but I don’t see Jonah following behind her. Did he leave first? Or is he still on the beach?
I can’t help my curiosity. I tell Mom I’m going to go grab us smoothies from the shop down the way and she eagerly hands me some cash because the smoothies are the greatest drink ever.
Then I’m out the door, heart pounding with curiosity. I walk slowly, scanning the area for the unusually sexy guy who comes off as such a nerd at school. He’s not on the boardwalk though, at least not where I can see. I venture a little further, down past the shops and to where the boardwalk ends and the beach begins.
And then I see him.
He’s sitting on a large granite rock that separates the private part of the beach were people own beach houses and the public part. He’s just staring off at the water, his toes in the sand.
I walk over to him. At first, I’m going to do this fake, “Oh hey! I didn’t see you there! What a coincidence!” thing as I walk by, but the second I get close and he looks up and our eyes meet, I chicken out. I’ve never been a good actress.
“Hey,” I say, walking over to the large boulder of granite he’s using as a chair. It’s about four feet tall and just as wide, cut into a jagged square shape by the industrial equipment that cut and hauled all of these to the beach years ago.
He doesn’t say anything, but he gives me a half-hearted smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I saw your girlfriend leave,” I say, staring at a streak of black in the rock instead of looking at him.
“What?”
