“Oh yeah?” I perked up. “Do tell.”
“There was a last-minute withdrawal from the Furman Gallery showing next Friday, so they want to replace it with myOn the Bayseries.” She paused and finally let herself beam with excitement while the news set in to us. “Obviouslyit goes without saying that I’d love for you two to be at the showing with me.”
“This means I get to buy a new dress!” Nikki squealed in delight.
“That’s great, Mom.” I returned her smile. “You deserve it.”
“Oh, can we bring dates?” Nikki asked, dancing around in circles while Gracie tried to keep up.
“You mean Alec?” I chided Nikki.
“Who’s Alec?” Mom raised an eyebrow at her.
“No.” Nikki groaned. “I’m not dating Alec. Besides, he won’t even be here, he has to go back to Stanford for some smart-people convention. Imeantyou could bring Brooklyn, Nat.”
“Pot calling the kettle black. We’re not dating either. We’re hanging out.” I waved a dishrag around.
There was a pause, and I caught sight of Nikki out of the corner of my eye, still grinning.
“Maybe you two canhang outat the gallery, then,” Mom stated plainly, but she and Nikki traded scheming glances. “He seemed nice.”
“Oh yes, he’s verynice.” Nikki jabbed me in the side again, her grin widening by the second.
“All right, all right.” I held my hands up in defense. “If I ask him, will you two conniving creatures leave me alone?”
“Only after we go shopping,” Nikki insisted. “I need a dress, you need a dress, we all need dresses.”
“Okay, Oprah, calm down.” I chuckled. “We’ll get dresses.”
>> <<
In literature,pathetic fallacyis the use of weather to reflect tone or mood. Typically it was applied in a negative way, such as a storm to imply something detrimental or foreboding. But sitting out on the beach on a Saturday at the end of June, with the sun warm and high and glinting like diamonds against the water’s surface, I thought maybe for once pathetic fallacy could be good. Genuinely good.
Nikki and I had met Brooklyn, Alec, Stella, and a few of Stella’s college friends out at the beach by Sixth Street mid-morning (after going out of our way to pick up Bad Beans). Alec had been constructing a massive sandcastle (half child, half engineer), and Nikki eagerly skipped over to him, leaving me to the conveniently open lounge chair beside Brooklyn. Third Eye Blind played from a speaker clipped to his backpack hanging between the two chairs, and I dropped into it with a sigh.
“Not a bad way to spend a Saturday,” he remarked, sipping his iced latte.
“Unless you forgot your sunglasses,” I responded as I rummaged through my beach bag past a few bags of chips and my notebook. “I’ll have to go back and get them.”
“Oh, wait.” Brooklyn leaned over the side of his chair to dig through his bag, then produced a worn-out Clayton baseball cap in the school’s black and teal colors. He slapped it onto my head with a grin. “All better.”
“I feel traitorous.” I chuckled, adjusting the brim to shield my eyes.
“No,stylish.”
His grin widened as he sat back in his lounge chair. Sweat glistened on his bare chest, and the way his sternum rose and fell with each breath, so calm and steady, was entrancing. Before I realized I had been gawking at him, he gave me a knowing glance over the tops of his sunglasses.
“You like what you see?”
I stiffened a bit, but let the faintest smirk grace my face. “It’s . . . you’re getting burned.”
“Oh. I’ll live.” He gave me a knowing smirk before settling back in his chair again. He had me under a goddamn spell, and maybe he knew it. Time slowed when we were together, and nothing more than his presence made me feel so safe and so secure. I didn’t have to try so hard to prevent bad things from happening, and I could simply be me. Nobody had ever given me that feeling before. I wondered if it would ever go away.
I reached back into my bag for my notebook, hoping the weather and the vibes would inspire me somehow. I took in my surroundings—Stella and two of her friends lying on towels, with hats and shirts over their heads; Nikki trying to follow along as Alec built up more sections of his sandcastle; a teenage couple beside us on a towel, giggling as they ran their hands all over each other. I clicked and clacked my pen about a thousand times, scribbling little hearts in the margins of my notebook instead of actual words.
“What are you writing over there?” Brooklyn asked.
“Literally not a damn thing.” I sighed and snapped my notebook shut. “The words aren’t coming today. Or this month, for that matter. But I’ve learned you can’t force it, otherwise you’re probably going to hate what you write.”
