At the end of the day, I was left infinitely and utterly alone and I had no one to blame but myself.
Summer was in full swing. I couldn’t believe we were already halfway through it. It seemed like it was just yesterday that we walked out the doors of school and into summer break. As always, the restaurant was packed and I worked all the time. There were only two months out of the year that Oak Island had a high season for tourism. Cole spent most of the time surfing while I worked, along with the boys. Lucas also hung around a lot more than he used to.
It was like having the old Bo again. I got so used to seeing him surf with the boys that I started putting in his order for lunch without him having to ask me. He always met my eyes when he came in. Lucas tried to talk to me at least a few times a day, asking me how I was, how my day went if I needed anything. I don’t know what caused the 180-degree change in his attitude toward me, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
Girls still flocked to him, he was a magnet to the opposite sex, but he didn’t pay them any mind. I hadn’t seen him hanging out with anyone other than the boys. Sometimes I would catch him talking to Aubrey, it always seemed as if they were in some deep conversation, but never around the boys. It only happened when it was just the two of them. There were several times that I wanted to ask Aubrey about it, but I decided against it at the last second. I didn’t want to rock the boat.
We weren’t Half-Pint and Bo anymore, but at least he was cordial now.
“Hey,” Lucas greeted, nudging me with his shoulder and pulling me away from my thoughts.
I nudged him back. “I didn’t see you standing there.”
We stood in the sand where I watched them surf all the time. Cole wasn’t as good as Lucas, but he wasn’t that far behind either. Lucas was always the best surfer among the boys, and they knew it too.
“Do you have time to sit for a bit?”
I glanced over at him, smiling. “I do.”
He returned my smile and nodded toward the sand before sitting down. I followed suit. We both sat with our knees up and our arms lying across them, side-by-side. Our shoulders touched and I immediately felt his warmth roll down my body.
“How’s your day going?” he asked, looking at the ocean. I wondered if he watched Cole.
“Good. Busy.”
“You like busy, though.”
I softly chuckled, “I do. How’s your summer going?”
“Nothing too exciting going on.”
“I know, you’re here every day,” I blurted, my cheeks reddening the second the last word came out of my mouth.
Looking at me with a fascinated regard, he grinned and nodded. “That I am,” he simply stated.
“So, are you excited about turning eighteen soon?” I questioned, changing the subject.
“I guess. You excited about turning sixteen soon?” he answered, throwing my question back at me.
“I’m excited to drive. It would be nice not to rely on someone to get everywhere. I’m kinda over my bike.”
“I could… I mean… I… umm…” he mumbled.
“You could what?” I was never one for patience.
“I could drive you to and from work? You know, the way I used to.”
“Why? Why now?”
He sighed, defeated. “And we’re back to this again.”
I shook my head, dumbfounded. “What do you expect from me? I wish I could just let things go and we could magically go back to what we used to be, but I’m not made like that, Lucas. You know that. I need to know why now? I don’t understand how you can go from ignoring my existence, to offering me rides, and not expect me to question your timing.”
He kicked the sand around below his feet. He did this when he was nervous. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Alexandra. I really don’t.”
I ignored how normal my full name sounded from his lips. I ignored the way it made me feel because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to go on with this conversation. It would end how they always had. Bad.
“Tell me the truth,” was all I replied.
He gazed out at the ocean again, as if it pained him to look at me and tell me what he had been trying to hide for so long.
“Everything got so confusing. One day I woke up and I wasn’t a kid anymore, but you were. I know we’re only two years apart, but that’s a long gap when you’re that young. You may not be able to understand that, but that’s how it felt.”
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
He grimaced, his shoulders slumping forward. His eyes shut and he sucked in a deep breath, collecting his thoughts of what he wanted to say to me. “I know. I missed you growing up. Or maybe I didn’t. I saw it happening and it didn’t matter because I couldn’t handle it. You wanted what we all did, to have experiences. I’ve known you your entire life and it was hard for me to see you as anything other than my brown eyed girl.”
“I am—”
“You’re not,” he scornfully interrupted. “You haven’t been for a long time.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I never said life was fair.”
I hated when he said that to me. Now more than ever, but I let him continue with what he needed to say. If he was opening up to me, I wasn’t going to begrudge him that.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I see you sometimes and I have no idea who you are anymore. I mean you’re still my Half-Pint but at the same time you aren’t. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it was so much easier when I didn’t have to look at you. I fucking hated it. I still hate it, but it was easier in some ways and harder in others.”
“Do you not want me to grow up?”
“I never really thought about it. When it started happening it was like taking a knife to the heart, it still is. I’m sorry I don’t have a better explanation for you. That’s all I got.”
“So now what? What happens now?”
He shrugged still not looking at me, even though he could feel my intense stare on his face. It’s almost like he feared if he said anymore it would change the calm that was placed in between us.
“Cole and I are friends. We’re just friends,” I found myself saying.
His jaw clenched. “For now. Cole will always have you in a way that I can’t. There’s no history there. No baggage. It’s new and untainted. We have so many barriers placed in between us and I don’t know how to remove them.” He finally peered back over at me with a sad smile that I’m sure I mirrored. “Do you?”
I bowed my head. I didn’t.
“Yeah,” he added.
We sat there in silence for I don’t know how long. This was the most we had spoken to one another in a year. There was still so much that was left unsaid between us.
How long would it go on like this?
“I love you, Bo.”
He reached over and grabbed my hand, bringing it up to his lips to tenderly kiss my knuckles. “I love you, Half-Pint.”
I didn’t know what the future held for us.
But, at that moment I didn’t care.
We were trying to find our way again and that’s all that mattered.
Summer was almost over.
After our talk on the beach, I took Alex home from work a few times. It helped us. I wanted so badly to take her to our abandoned house. A part of me knew she wanted that, too. I was terrified that if we went there, our complicated relationship would follow us. I didn’t want to ruin whatever progress we had made.
Our friendship wasn’t anywhere near what it used to be, but it was something for now.
She and Cole spent a lot of time together. I saw them everywhere. My eyes tended to gravitate toward her, even when I willed them not too. I never talked to him, even though the boys did. We ate lunch with him a few times and I played nice.
Not for him.
For her.
I spent the morning arguing with my parents over the fact I still hadn’t decided on what college to attend. If I didn’t respond soon, I would lose the opportunity to attend. I’d end up at Wilmington University.
Would that be so bad? I didn’t know…
By the time I made it out to the beach, it was after lunch. I saw the boys as soon as I placed my board on the sand. They had been out there for hours already. Alex was on the restaurant deck with Cole standing in front of her, caging her in with his arms against the wall. She looked so tiny, gazing up at him. She seemed completely comfortable in her own skin. From Cole’s body language, it was obvious what he wanted.
Her.
He said something that lit up her entire face, the same way it used to for me. The glimmer of her lip-gloss reflected against the sun, making her mouth appear more inviting and enticing. I gripped my surfboard so fucking hard that my knuckles turned white. Jealously quickly escalated through my entire body in response. He may have a lot over me that I couldn’t compete with, but I did have one thing going for me that he never would.
She was mine first.
I must have made a loud noise when I picked up my board because our eyes locked despite the distance between us. Cole rapidly followed her stare. He scowled at me but shook it off pretty fast and tugged her face back to him with his thumb and forefinger.
I gripped my board, making my way to the ocean. I would take out my frustration on the waves. I paddled out a few yards and found a steady rhythm as always. Nothing compared to the feeling I got riding the water with skill and stride that I acquired throughout the years. As I caught my first wave, I saw pretty boy out of the corner of my eyes, paddling into it and cutting me off. I rode the wave as close as possible to him, made a firm left turn and sprayed him as hard as I possibly could. Narrowly dodging him, making him fall back into the wave, as I continued riding on.