“What was that?”
His brows draw together. “A family of turtles…” He trailsoff, yanking the gearshift, then tapping the accelerator again. I turn to Ethan. I can feel his brain whirring. Panic flickers in his eyes before his confident smile snuffs it out.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he tells me.
“You have insurance, right?”
Multiple emotions war on his face. He turns off the ignition and hops out of the driver’s seat, responding with a stiff, “I have insurance, Beekman.”
I stare into the middle distance of Lake Superior for thirty agonizing seconds—I count them. I’m not looking at his facial expression when he finally admits, “So the turtles are safe, but the van…”
I jump out before he can finish to find him squatting on the ground in front of a tire that’s lodged in at least three inches of mud.
He nods once with a delusional optimism I do not possess and strides back in the direction of the side door. “It looks like we’ve found where we’re going to eat!”
Chapter 9
People Don’t FullFelicityfor Their Friends
Ten Years Ago
My dorm roomwas tiny and smelled like nickels. Luckily, my roommate had already lofted the beds, so that addressed my most immediate concern with the living situation. I had yet to meet Erin Gallagher but based on her decor, she had a singular interest, and that interest was horses.
“I’m still not over that you followed yourpen palto college. It’s literally psychotic,” Laurel chided me while fighting a collapsible milk crate that was refusing to cooperate.
“First, I followed my scholarship money to college,” I argued, breaking down the crate myself and stuffing it under the desk that wasn’t claimed by aBlack Beautytabletop calendar. “Second, Ethan’s not mypen pal. He’s my friend. People go to the same college as their friends all the time.”
Laurel unzipped an overstuffed suitcase. Several rogue “going-out tops” mounted their escape. “People don’t fullFelicityfor their friends.” She said the word “friend” as though it possessed an ulterior motive.
“Who’s Felicity?”
“Keri Russell, Charley. Get some culture.” She rolled her eyes.
I wasn’t sure what Keri Russell had to do with anything, but Laurel was a little bit right. There was more to my college selection than friendship and finances. It was also this town. College was the first choice I had that was all my own, and I didn’t want to go to another strange place packed with people I didn’t know. For once, I didn’t want to be the new kid. I wanted to be recognized. I wanted to go back to Lewellen.
“Why areyouhere then?” When I’d suggested she transfer from Milwaukee Area Technical College to be with me at Lewellen, she couldn’t wait for me to get the sentence out before she was ringing the registrar’s office. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain sophomore on the hockey team, would it?” If she was going to reduce my college experience to chasing a boy, I could do the same for her and Petey, who was already making a name for himself on the hockey team as both the coach’s son and one of the distressingly few Asian men playing the sport at the collegiate level.
“I would never move anywhere for a man.” She straightens an already neat row of books on my desk. “Even one who watches all of my Snapchat stories and is clearly obsessed with me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Liar.”
The door creaked and the tension between Laurel and me broke as Ethan and Petey burst into the Shrinky Dink of a bedroom, and suddenly, they were surrounding us with a megaphone and noisemakers.
“Beekman! Beekman!” they shouted in concert, theiramplified voices echoing around us like we were in a coffin. Laurel and I covered our ears, but it was no use.
And then, for the briefest moment, the world paused. It was Ethan and me, eye to eye, for the first time in too long. For years, my best friend had existed only in pictures—intangible two-dimensional images of someone older than the Ethan from my memories. When I imagined him—the sound of his voice, how his hands were always a little warmer than mine, the way his nose scrunched before he let out one of those laughs that exploded across his face—I was picturing the boy I knew back when. But the Ethan in front of me now wasn’t a boy at all.
“You got tall,” he said, smiling in a way that made me smile back.
He was finally close enough to touch, and the sight of him overwhelmed me. Ethan had always seemed to glow in the dark, but this was more than that. He’d grown into his limbs and transformed from a skinny, sweet-faced kid into an eighteen-year-old with a devastating smile and a jawline that could cut glass, and I wasn’t prepared for how potent those developments would be in person. But since I couldn’t very wellsayany of that, I accidentally negged him.
“You didn’t. Get tall, I mean,” I said back without thinking.
A boisterous laugh burst from his belly, surprising us both. “You think you’re so funny. Don’t you, Chuck?” He scooped me up by the waist and threw me over his shoulder. My chest simmered with giggles as my legs flutter-kicked behind me. Even with my feet in the air, I felt more grounded than I had in years. It didn’t matter what Laurel had said. I knew in that moment that coming back to Lewellen was the right choice.
Petey, who was still chanting our names, took this moment as an invitation to start picking people up and sat Laurel on his broad shoulders, shouting, “Barn Party waits for no one!”
•••
