What I Thought Was True

Chapter Fourteen

I’m lying on my bed, staring at the slow beat of the ceiling fan, which makes loud whooshing and clattering sounds but never seems to do anything for the temperature. Mom and I call it “placebo fan.”

My thoughts flick around.

Do I really want this job? Between Henry and the bathing suit and The Sultan?

Don’t think about that. You need this job.

And Cass. That look.

I roll over, trying to find a cool spot in my narrow bed.

Spence. Alex. Swim team tradition.

Mom counting out the money and Grandpa being a little more stooped and Emory . . .

Whatever’s going on between Dad and Nic.

Viv and Nic.

I’m itchy and jangly, so tired of watching the numbers on the clock shift that, no matter how late it is, I can’t just lie there anymore.

“Hungry, Gwen?” Mom asks when I head out to the living room. She’s curled up on Myrtle, reading a book whose cover features an unnaturally buff man wearing a kilt, an eager expression, and nothing else. “I can heat something up,” she offers.

“Just insomnia,” I say. “Carry on.”

“It is getting to the good part. Lachlan McGregor and his sworn enemy, the McTavish, have just realized Lachlan’s stable boy is a her who’s been binding her breasts . . .” Mom’s already picked up the book again, vanishing into it as I watch.

“And now they’re aaaaall in therapy,” I say. Fabio rouses himself from his dead dog imitation by the wood stove, staggers over to the couch, and attempts to fling himself onto Mom’s stomach. He falls down, looks around with an “I meant to do that” face and then slinks under the couch.

To my surprise, Nic, who I thought was off with Vivien and the plovers, is lying down on the porch, staring at the sky. He’s got one arm folded behind his head, the way he always used to when we would lie out at night, little kids, Fourth of July, watching the fireworks from town bursting over Seashell. Then I notice the cigarette glowing between the folded fingers of his other hand.

I snatch it away—“What the hell, Nic?”—and throw it onto the gravel, where it glows bright as a firefly for a few seconds. Viv’s real dad died of lung cancer at thirty-six.

He sighs. “C’mon! You know I don’t smoke. I just bummed one off Hoop because he said cigarettes help him focus.”

“Hoop’s an idiot. You know this.” I sit down next to him, wrapping my arms around my legs.

He stands abruptly. “Let’s go jumping. I had a beer and I’m tired as hell and I don’t want to think. You look pretty wired too. Bridge or pier?”

A little rush snakes through my blood.

Replaced by a quick guilt.

“Where’s Viv?” I ask. Nic and I hide from her how often we do stuff like this. It mystifies her. “What, life isn’t scary and dangerous enough?” she says. And to be honest, I wonder what it is in us that needs the rush. But I don’t court the danger, like Vivie thinks. I just hook up with it from time to time.

“She’s making a truckload of cupcakes for some baby shower. Strawberry on strawberry. Waaaay too pink for me.” He shudders. “Get your suit, cuz.”

“Uncle Mike stay for breakfast?” Nic asks as we drive to the bridge in Mom’s Bronco. “Or did he just come by to drop off his laundry for his ex-wife to do, and make his only nephew feel like shit.”

“Nic . . .” I sigh.

He shakes his head. “Why’s he got to get on my ass so much?”

I massage my forehead with the palm of my hand, that itchy tense feeling multiplying. Nic reaches out, pulls my head toward his chest with the crook of an elbow, ruffling my hair with his knuckles. “Forget it. Not your problem. I told you I didn’t want to talk about anything heavy and there I go. Let’s just jump.”

But a few minutes later:

“I heard from my mom today,” he says as we clamber up the wide wooden rails, worn and silvery with age. We’ve done this so often, we know which loose ones to skip over, which strong ones to rely on, planting hand over leg on the copper-nail-studded boards.

“Anything new?”

I know there won’t be. My aunt Gulia is caught in an endless loop of bad boyfriends and bad jobs and bad choices. Her whole life is like my last March.

He shrugs, takes a deep breath, gives a yell, and flings himself out into the air above the rushing water. I wait for his head to bob back up.

“You’re stalling!” Nic calls up. “Going soft?”

It is a rush, that moment when you’re suspended in the air, and then rocket deep into the cold water. When I splash back to the surface, the adrenaline is tingling through me, more of a cool thrill than the water. I’m laughing as I come to the surface, and so’s Nic.

“Aunt Gulia and Dad being a grouch in one day. No wonder you’re tense.”

“Hey, at least she didn’t ask for money this time. Grouch? I’d say Uncle Mike was more of a dick. But then, so was I.” He shoots me a wicked grin. “At least Vee knows how to take care of that.”

I put my hands over my ears. “La-la-la!”

“It’s funny how you’re such a prude about that when you—” Nic stops, his voice cutting off like Cass’s mower earlier today.

The water suddenly seems colder. “When I what?”

“Gwen . . .” he starts, then trails off, ducking his head under the water as if trying to clear it. When he resurfaces, I’m ready.

“Just say it, Nic.”

“Spence Channing? For real? What were you thinking? I thought he was just . . . blowing smoke. Like that rumor about him doing five girls in a hot tub. I mean, come on, who does that? Entitled prick. But I never thought—” He shakes wet hair off his forehead. “That Alex guy, okay, typical douche giving you a snow job. But Channing?”

“Don’t get all self-righteous on me, Nico.”

“Gwen . . . I didn’t mean it like that. You know I don’t judge.”

“You had a little slip there.”

He sighs. “I know. It’s just . . . Let’s get out.”

We swim for shore, climb back up to the Bronco, pull towels out of the trunk. Then Nic turns to me, pinching his thumb and index finger together. “We’re this close to screwing up and getting stuck, Gwen. You know? I worry about it with me. That I’ll be pissed off and not thinking and do something that ruins everything. I don’t want to worry about it with you too. You’re . . . you’re too smart for that. But one little slip, and there you are . . . stuck in this place with some baby or some STD or some crummy reputation. I don’t want—”

“I already have the crummy reputation, Nic.” And you’re the one looking at engagement rings at age eighteen and not telling me. But the accusation tangles into a lump in my throat. I can’t ask. Not after he’s had to deal with both his mom and my dad today.

“Not really. ’Cause I never heard a thing until Hoop was going on about it. He thought I already knew.”

“Yeah, I pretty much thought everyone knew.” My voice catches on everyone.

Nic looks at me. I look away.

“Well, not me,” he says. “Probably not a lot of people. And it’s not like I’m going to pass it on. I just don’t really get where your head was. I told you not to go to that party.”

“I’m the swim team mascot, remember? I like to party.”

He swears under his breath, hunches his shoulders, twitches them like he’s shaking something off. Nic shutting down.

I dive out into the water, shut my eyes, swim away from him, off to Seal Rock. It’s firm and familiar under my hands. Still faintly warm from the sun. I climb up, rest my cheek on my folded knees, and look out, far out, to the edge of the ocean.

Nic’s right. I should never have gone to Spence’s party. When your host is famous for hot tub orgies, you sort of know what to expect. But I wasn’t going to hide after what happened with Cass. I wasn’t going to let those Hill guys, those swim team guys, think I was good enough to record their times in the pool, good enough for a one-night stand, but not good enough to socialize with. Nic and Viv were at the White House Inn. The only hotel on Seashell—which Nic had to have saved for ages to afford. I’d spent the afternoon lingerie shopping at Victoria’s Secret with Viv, after helping Nic call in an order for the flowers and the gift basket to be left in their suite. I teetered along the cobblestone path in my unaccustomed heels next to Hoop, who was cracking his knuckles as though expecting a wrestling match at the door. As we paused on the walkway, Emma Christianson brushed by us—tall, blond, angular, high-cheekboned, the image of money and poise, and I lost my nerve.

“Are we actually invited? We’re not walking into some scene where they’ll beat us up or anything, are we?”

Hoop rolled his eyes. “Daaaaamn, Gwenners. You know how these parties are. Spence invited hell near everybody from school—he’s gotta save face since Somers threw that big one earlier. They’re so crazy competitive. Dumbasses. Come on, I’m going to get me a beer and some serious action. Don’t worry, you look fiiiiiine.”

I’d borrowed a dress from Viv, who is considerably smaller than me—everywhere. So it was super-tight. And red. And low-cut.

I was used to parties with only a keg, or just six-packs bobbling around in melting ice in a dingy tub. This one had an entire bar—black-and-white and mirrored in a dizzying way—set up with four blenders churning out margaritas and some sort of pink drink. Spence, in a black T-shirt with a purple lei draped over it, was dumping the last of a bottle of rum into one of the blenders. He watched as we walked in and flashed me his perfect smile, the one that rarely reached his eyes—but it did now. “Whoa-ho, it’s the princess of Castle’s. Whaddya know. Didn’t think you’d show for this one, Gwen.”

Pouring a tall glass of the pink stuff, he reached over, wedged one of those little umbrellas in it, pressed it into my hand.

“I was just going to go for a Coke. Not much of a drinker,” I said.

“Yeah, she’s a freakin’ lightweight,” Hoop confirmed. Then he gave me a friendly pat—on my butt—and slid away, shoulders bobbing to the music.

“Yet here you are.” Spence’s eyebrows lifted.

What I’d told Spence was true. Still, I immediately took a nervous slug of whatever the drink was, nearly choking on a chunk of ice. Spence just sat there while I coughed, sputtered, and eventually got control of myself. I put my glass down and hiked the top of my dress up. He smiled more broadly and gave me a practiced once-over, as though tracing the path of the blush I could feel rising.

They must offer a secret course for these guys on Hayden Hill: Putting Girls Off Balance 101. Well, to hell with it. I turned on my heel and headed toward the door I’d seen Hoop vanish through. Time for me to stick with my own kind.

Hoop had collapsed bonelessly on the couch and was animatedly recounting to some girl I didn’t know the story of a marlin he’d once landed off the coast of the island. I recognized the story. It was Nic’s marlin.

I drifted from room to room, trying to look as though I knew the house and exactly where I was headed in it. There was a hallway with a series of marble busts, a huge oval mirror, some tall shiny black standing vases with waxy white lilies. Then a room set up to look like it was outdoors, even though it wasn’t, which contained several cockatoos in cages that reeked as though the newspaper hadn’t been changed in a while. One of the cockatoos hopped up and down as I entered, screeching, “Live bait! Live bait!” I twisted the gold-plated handle of the French doors and headed out onto the terrace. Even Spence’s birds disconcerted me.

It was a huge terrace, like a whole outdoor version of the house. I could dimly make out a figure at the curved end, looking out over all of Stony Bay. I knew who it was just by the way he was leaning on his elbows, by the glint of the hair on his down-tucked head. I wanted so badly to walk up behind him that my right foot nearly tingled, and I was suddenly afraid it would take control, dragging me into a place I knew better than to go. How on earth could I still feel that way? Nice work, Sundance. This swirl of hurt and shame and loss and confusion tightened in my stomach. I bumped back into the terrace-y room, to be greeted by the same creepy cockatoo shrieking, “There’s gold in them thar hills!” I swallowed down the last of my drink, now warm and full of strawberry seeds.

“You didn’t shut the door all the way.” Spence was leaning against the wall by the door. He gestured at the French doors behind me. “The birds need the temperature carefully regulated. Very important to my mother. But then, she’s in Marbella right now, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. So, Gwen Castle, what are you looking for, in here all by yourself? Got to be a reason you came to this party.”

His eyes were the weirdest yellow-green color, slightly tilted up at the corners. Cat eyes. They’d always seemed to skip over me before, but now they were fixed steadily on my face. When I said nothing in response—since I had no real answer—he raised a thumb slowly to his lips and chewed on his nail, completely without self-consciousness, despite the fact that, now that I was looking, I noticed that all his other nails were bitten to the quick. Then he nodded like he’d come to a decision.

“You need another strawberry daiquiri.” Slipping his arm around my waist, his fingers resting lightly on my hip, he towed me out the door.

“I really don’t need—”

“Come on, Gwen Castle. You haven’t had enough. Not yet. Besides, you’ve always struck me as a girl who gets an awful lot of ‘not enough.’ That won’t happen tonight.”

We took a different route to the bar than I’d taken before, down a long hallway with red-and-gold flocked wallpaper, hung with dark oil paintings of sea captains who looked as though they were sneering, and uptight round-faced women, presumably their wives.

“Your ancestors?” I asked Spence, searching their faces for his familiar smirk.

“Bought at estate sales. It’s all for show, Castle, right? All about the look of the thing.”

A side door opened and an elderly man emerged, wearing a paisley dressing gown like someone in one of Grandpa Ben’s movies. His thinning hair was ruffled up around his pink ears and he was rubbing one eye like Emory when he’s tired.

“What’s all this noise?” he asked Spence.

“Party, Dads. Remember?”

This was Spence’s dad? He was like eighty—had to be his grandfather.

The man frowned. “I agreed to this?” he asked vaguely.

“You bought the booze,” Spence responded.

The man nodded wearily and disappeared back through the door he’d come out of. He didn’t shut it completely, and Spence reached out and gave it a shove with the flat of his hand until there was an audible click.

Then he cut his eyes at me, as though waiting for me to say something.

“Your father doesn’t mind you partying?”

“Dads? Nah. He doesn’t care. Though, strictly speaking, it was just his credit card that bought the goods, not the man himself.” He shrugged, gave a little laugh. “What? Don’t look at me like that, Castle.”

I had no idea how I was looking at him, although I suspect it was with pity. Our house could practically fit in his foyer, but it never felt sad and empty like that, despite the distant party sounds. “I—”

“I’m sure you have crazy relatives locked in your attic too. What family isn’t dysfunctional, right? Come on, let’s get you what you need.”

He poured me another daiquiri and one for himself, then led me back down the hallway. And I followed. That’s the thing, I trailed right after him into this big study, where he waved me to a big puffy couch, all swirly embroidered flowers on a white linen background, then sank into an equally puffy chair across from it, studying me over the rim of his glass. “You really are pretty as hell, Castle. Much hotter when you don’t wear the baggy clothes. Don’t stress about what happened with Sundance. How could he help himself? Besides, it’s just sex. No big deal.”

That’s exactly what it hadn’t felt like. Not just sex. Not no big deal. Not at all. Not to me.

But this was the last thing I was going to let Spence know. I gulped my drink, shook my head, laughed in what I hoped was a carefree and dismissive way. “I’ve already forgotten the whole thing. Water under the dam.” Was that right? Bridge? Dam? I should put this drink down now.

He whistled. “Don’t tell Cassidy that. Not in those words, anyway. We guys are touchy. Good to know there are no hard feelings, though.”

“I’m not planning on any heart-to-hearts with Cass Somers.”

“C’mon, Gwen. He’s a good guy. Don’t be mad at him.” He examined my face more closely, then whistled again, longer and lower. “O-ho. You’re not mad. You’re hurt. Damn, I’m sorry.” He sounded as though he meant it, and to my horror, tears sprang to my eyes.

“Oh man. I didn’t think . . . You always seemed so . . . Don’t do this, okay?” Spence set his drink on the coffee table, swept my glass out of my hands, one smooth motion. Then did the most unexpected thing. He leaned forward to kiss the tears away, lifting my hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ears, whispering against my cheek. “Sobbing girls are my weakness. They slay me, every time. Shh. Secret. Word gets out and every girl at school will know how to get to me.”

“No more five chicks in the hot tub, then,” I said shakily.

“Six,” he murmured, still smoothing back my hair. There was a smudge of black on his lower lip from my mascara. “But who’s counting? You have dreamboat eyes, you know that?”

“Did you use that lame line on all six?”

“Nah. Didn’t bother. None of them were looking for a deep and meaningful relationship. Neither, of course, am I. And tonight, I’m betting you aren’t either. Right?”

He was right. I wasn’t. Not that night. Viv and Nic and the hotel—Cass—flashed into my head and then zoomed out as Spence bent toward me, moving forward to my lips this time.

On the drive home from the bridge, Nic keeps glancing over at me, shoulder muscles tense.

“Look,” he says finally. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just . . . I mean, you’re pretty, you’re cool, and you’ve never really dated, and . . .” He drums his thumbs on the steering wheel, his mouth open like he hopes the right words will just magically fly into it. Finally: “Did that ass Alex break your heart?”

“Please. Alex got nowhere near my heart. I thought he did back then, but it was nothing. He just hurt my feelings, the putz.”

“Then did Channing . . . ?” He trails off, clearly finding the thought completely impossible.

Hunching back in my seat, I kick my feet up on the glove compartment

“C’mon, Gwen. Talk. Tell me.”

I shake my head. “No, thanks.”

Nic reaches over and tries to pull my head to his shoulder but I’m stiff, edging him away. “I’m good,” I say. “Let’s just drive.”