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“Waves are shit, but I’d still get out there if I could,” Gary said, oblivious to my wandering thoughts.
I couldn’t remember all her friends’ names, just Val, the one with the skateboard. The other two, Tiffany called Dumb and Dumber. To me they looked the same, except that one of them was always gawking at me. Tiffany said it was because she was scared.
Val dropped her skateboard on the sidewalk and pushed off, passing Gary and me in a slow, controlled ride down the sidewalk. Lake and the other two climbed on their bikes. Out of nowhere, a toddler ran up from the beach and crossed their paths. The two girls swerved, but the boy tripped and fell anyway. Lake slammed on her brakes and dropped her bike to go to him just as his parents swooped him up and took him away.
She got back on and started to pedal, but her chain had popped off and her foot slipped. I went to get up as she stumbled forward, then looked up, right at me, her blue eyes hitting me hard.
As seconds passed, something loosened in my chest. Four weeks had passed since I’d picked her up from the prom. I’d seen her at family dinners, but even then she was rushing in from studying or volunteering or whatever else, or she was hurrying off somewhere.
“Hey, Lake,” Gary said when he noticed her. “What’re you doing here?”
She wheeled her bike over to us, the chain clinking.
I nodded at the plastic bag hanging from her handlebar. “Shopping for a birthday present.”
Lake’s eyes lit up. “You remembered,” she said before cinching her eyebrows. “Or I guess Tiffany told you.”
June ninth. Lake’s eighteenth birthday. Couldn’t forget today if I tried. “She didn’t tell me.”
Either she blushed or she’d gotten too much sun. The pink tip of her nose and the bridge had a light smattering of freckles. I had the urge to run my thumb over them, to spend my afternoon covering her head to toe in sunscreen. “What’re you guys doing here?” she asked.
Gary thumbed the coffee table in the bed of the truck. “Delivering some furniture.”
“For who?”
He nodded at one of the houses. “This lady bought it from us. We’re meeting her husband.”
Lake looked around me. “You guys made that?”
“Well, Manning did.”
“We did it together,” I said.
“But you designed it.” He grinned. “I’m just an extra pair of hands. And I’m making sure you don’t scare off your customers.”
It was just a table, not much to it except that I’d oxidized and stained the wood and added some metal detailing on the legs and corners. I’d built one for our upstairs neighbor, and his girlfriend’s mom wanted one, too. The money wasn’t much but every little bit helped and I had the time. I glanced over my shoulder and wished it was more. Something worth looking at.
“It’s so good,” she said. “I can’t believe you can do all that. I knew you could make things but not that you were . . . creative.”
As I went to speak, I realized I’d been holding my breath. “I’m good with my hands, that’s all.”
Her cheeks went pinker as she tucked some hair behind her ear. “Oh. Y-yes. I . . .”
I had to look away. She was way too cute when she was flustered. “Your friends left you,” I pointed out.
“They’ll be back.”
A car pulled up behind ours, and Gary craned his neck over the top of the truck. “I think this is them. I’ll go see.”
Lake set her bike on the sidewalk and came to stand right by me. The threads of her cut-off shorts drifted against my jeans. She lifted her hair off her neck and fanned herself, showing me the delicate curves of her shoulders. She was eighteen. Fuck. Never had there been a greater test of my will.
“You’re always saying at dinner how you’re looking for work. Why don’t you just make things?” she asked.
I blinked slowly, trying to pull myself from the trance her nearness always put me in. “What kinds of things?” I asked, hearing the rasp in my voice.
She reached behind me. I could’ve stared at her all day, except that she got too close, her cheek right by my face, smelling like lemon and Coppertone. I could almost convince myself I detected watermelon on her lips. I turned to watch her small hand glide along the table’s edge.
“These things,” she said. “The wood is so cool. Smooth.”
Her short, bare nails were pale on her tan fingers. I’d never seen her bite them except her thumb sometimes when she was nervous. She had hangnails and golden hair on her knuckles and more freckles.
“Don’t you normally work today?” I asked, changing the subject for my own sanity.
She chewed her bottom lip, bringing her hand back to her side. “I ditched. Val says you don’t work on your birthday.”
