Second Star

17

It’s dark when Pete leads me out through the back door and toward the stairs to the beach; halfway down and to the left, onto the rocks. The sun has long since set, but the moon is bright and the stars reflect brightly off the ocean. I know exactly where Pete is leading me, to the same crevice on the cliffs where we spent our first night together. I tiptoe over the rocks carefully, pebbles and sand getting caught inside my sandals.

Pete stops abruptly and settles onto the flat rock, which looks for all the world like someone built it there just for his use.

“Come here,” he says, reaching his hand out to pull me onto the rock beside him. His hand is cool and dry, and mine fits perfectly inside of it, like we were made to hold hands. Fiona once told me that when she and Dax started dating, it took them a while to get used to walking hand in hand, took them a while to get their steps in sync, to fit their hands easily.

“That was great tonight,” Pete says, his smile lighting up the darkness.

I shrug. “It was just dinner. No big deal.”

Pete shakes his head. “Why are you always selling yourself short?”

I open my mouth to argue, but no words come out. Because the truth is, it was a big deal, and I know it. It made me miss my brothers, reminded me of the family dinners we used to have before they ran away.

“Wendy,” Pete says softly, “it’s amazing the way you know how to do things, how to take care of yourself.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been taking care of yourself for—” I stop talking midsentence. I don’t actually know how long Pete has been taking care of himself. “You take care of yourself, and Belle, and the boys.”

“Yeah, but it’s different. You really know how to take care of yourself. I just figure it out as I go along.”

To me, that sounds like a much greater achievement, but I don’t argue.

“And you’re such a good person, too. I mean, you worked your whole life to go to college, and now here you are, putting it all on hold to find your brothers. Coming to live in a strange place with a bunch of lowlifes like us.”

“You’re not lowlifes,” I say quickly.

Pete nods. “Maybe not. Maybe now that you’re here—”

“Me?”

“I can’t explain it. You bring—I don’t know—a different energy to this place. Kensie feels different with you here.”

“Different how?”

Pete shakes his head, and he doesn’t look at me when he says, “Different better.” We’re silent for a beat, and then he adds, “I don’t know, Wendy, I just really like having you around.”

“I like being around,” I say, the words thick in my throat. “Around you, I mean.”

I feel like I’ve known Pete my whole life, and yet I feel like nothing that’s happened in the past several days and weeks even resembles what my life has been up to now.

Pete smiles. “You’re getting pretty good out there,” he says, gesturing to the water.

“I fall a lot more than I stand,” I say automatically. I still spend most days tumbling off my board instead of balancing on top of it. But I keep going. Usually, by the end of the day, when the sun starts to fall from the sky, I manage to stand and take at least one wave all the way back to the beach. I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of anything; not getting into Stanford, not my SAT scores, not even when I finally trained Nana to sit and stay.

Pete shakes his head. “There you go,” he says, sliding closer to me, as graceful and quick on solid ground as he is on water. “Selling yourself short again.”

I can feel his breath on my bare shoulder and I shiver with longing, forcing myself not to lean into him, even though the pull to be closer to him feels impossible to resist, a force beyond me, like gravity. No, I tell myself firmly.

“I’m so sorry, Wendy,” he says, and it’s not the same kind of sorry that I’ve been hearing for so many months. First, they were sorry that my brothers ran away, then they were sorry that they’d died. I’m sorry for your loss, that’s what they would say, and I would think it was such an odd turn of phrase. As though my brothers had just been misplaced and I didn’t know where to find them. Now, I think that it’s a lot closer to the truth than any of those well-wishers could have imagined.

But Pete’s I’m sorry sounds different. It’s weighted with something deep and heavy; I remember the way he told me I had to be light on the surfboard, the way I had to leave my troubles behind on the beach before I took to the water. If Pete tried to take a wave now, hard as it is to imagine, I can’t help thinking that he’d fall, head over feet, tumbling into the waves.

“What for?” I ask.

He pauses before he answers, like he’s trying to figure out exactly what he means. Finally, he says, “I shouldn’t have kissed you that night.” He leans so close that I can feel the heat from his skin against mine. “Belle and I…” He shakes his head again, looking down, so that his curls fall across his forehead and brush my shoulder. “I love that girl. I really do. I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone hurting her. Even if that someone was me. Especially if it was me.”

I nod as though I understand, but I’m more confused than ever. He’s telling me that he loves her while sitting so close to me?

“But I’m not—I haven’t been—maybe I never was—you know what I mean?”

“No,” I say honestly, “I really don’t.”

“I don’t love her like that. I don’t feel that way about her. You know, the way I feel about—about you.”

I exhale a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, and Pete’s lips are hovering above mine before my chest has had a chance to empty.

His arms snake around my waist and pull me close. I let myself lie down beside him, and the rock feels as warm and soft as a plush bed with satin sheets. The sound of the ocean is drowned out by the sound of Pete’s breath, the warmth of his touch, the heat of his skin.

He pauses as his mouth comes close to mine, almost as though he’s asking my permission. I move my head just the slightest bit, an infinitesimal nod.

And then he kisses me.

Music from one of Jas’s parties drifts down from his house above us. A low beat, as though someone in the distance is banging an enormous drum. A rhythm so deep, I can feel it vibrating through the rocks below us. Together, Pete and I watch the waves in the moonlight as we wait for sleep, the beat of the bass humming through the rocks so that it looks like the water is dancing.

“Do you ever get scared out there, on the water?”

Pete shakes his head. “Nah.”

“But what about—”

“Waves that hold you down? Rocks that cut you open? Sharks that’ll eat you alive?”

“Yeah,” I say, closing my eyes and trying not to think about the beat-up surfboards the police left on our dining room table months ago.

Pete shrugs. “It’s hard to explain. It’s not like I don’t know about those things, not like I don’t think about them, but—I don’t know. They just can’t keep me out of the ocean. I respect the waves, the rocks, the sharks. Did you know sharks have been on this planet longer than trees?”

The fact sounds impossible. “Really?”

“Yeah. And the ocean, the rocks—they’re even older.”

“Doesn’t that make you feel small? Surrounded by all those ancient dangers?”

Pete shakes his head. “No,” he says, “it makes me feel…” He pauses, as if searching for the words. “Some of us have only ever found home when we’re on the water. Some of us are always waiting to take the next wave.”

I roll over so that Pete curls around my back, places his arm beneath my neck. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so comfortable. I close my eyes and let the surf fill my ears like a lullaby. My eyes are still closed when Pete’s lips find mine once more.

Later, when Pete leads the way back up to the house on the cliffs, I look up at the sky and make a wish on the second star I see.