Page 37 of Acadia Falls

“It was fun, Blondie.” He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Want to hang out again tomorrow?”

My heart leaped inside my chest. “I’d love to.”

“Then it’s a date.” He gave me a hug, then a chaste kiss on the cheek, and then headed to his truck.

As soon as he left, I felt cold.

I watched as he pulled away, truck kicking up dirt, feeling weirdly like I might cry.

Big girls don’t cry—especially over nothing, I scolded myself.

But as Jack’s truck disappeared down the empty road, I worried this was becoming something more than nothing.

The next several days found me wondering if there was, in fact, something to divine timing. It seemed that more than just the sun was smiling down on me.

My studies were going well. I took practice tests each day, and I aced each one. My intense preparation was paying off.

Alex was totally occupied with a new social group. Tori Blaisdell had friends visiting from Los Angeles, and Alex hung out with them daily. They went to the pool club, rode around in Tori’s boat, and went to dinner at the dock. Rumor had it they’d gone through four bottles of five-hundred-dollar wine one night. The whole island was buzzing about it!

Tori’s guests all worked in entertainment, and they were fashionable, sophisticated, and well-traveled—right up Alex’s alley. She seemed happily distracted, which was a blessing after the wedding disaster. I did worry that she was partying too much, but my bestie was a big girl. Plus, I was keeping an eye on her.

Jack and I were spending a lot of time together. With Alex down at the Lookout, we had the house to ourselves. In an interesting twist, we didn’t have sex once. Apparently, we saved that for when we were in public. Ha!

What we were having was dinner every night. We discovered that we both liked Neil Young, Joanie Mitchell, and Chris Stapleton, so we listened to music as we cooked pasta, grilled steaks, and drank the Vejas’s excellent wine. Then we sat out on the porch, ate dinner, and talked.

“Where’d you go to school when you were a kid?” Jack asked.

“New Jersey.” I wrinkled my nose, remembering the litter-strewn sidewalks of my run-down neighborhood. “Which isn’t as bad as New York, but it’s pretty close.”

“Your parents still there?”

“My mom is.” I speared a bite of asparagus.

“What about your dad?”

I shrugged. “I don’t really know. They got divorced when I was little. He wasn’t ever around.”

“So you don’t talk to him?”

I shrugged again. “There’s not exactly a lot to talk about. My mom’s my family, you know? She’s the one who raised me.”

He nodded. “Is she coming to visit this summer?”

“I don’t think so.” I bit my lip. “She doesn’t have a lot of extra money to travel. And she’s proud—she would never come up and stay at the house. She doesn’t want to take a handout from Alex’s family.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Ha, except I’m sitting on Alex’s porch, drinking her wine.” I bit my lip.

“Don’t go there, Blondie. She asked you to stay after her wedding got canceled—she needed a friend. Like I said before, you’re doing her a favor.”

I sighed. Someday, I would have plenty of money and be as generous to Alex and her family as possible. For now, I was sleeping in their guest room and drinking their wine. And as Mr. And Mrs. Vejas were busy entertaining at their mansion in the Hamptons, and Alex was down partying at the Lookout, it didn’t appear to be bothering anyone but me.

“What’s your mom do?” Jack asked, tactfully changing the subject.

“She works for the postal service and lives in an apartment in Jersey City. It’s gotten super expensive, but she’s lived there forever,” I explained. “She doesn’t know it, but she’s part of my grand plan. I want to make enough money so she can retire and move out of there, maybe someplace in the country. She’s always wanted a mountain view.”

“Then she should definitely come up this summer.” Jack nodded. “There’s an inn, you know, in Northeast Harbor. She’d love it—mountain views all around.”