“Okay,” he said, giving in. “Really here’s what I’ve been curious about from the beginning. My dad always said what great character you had, and how much drive you had to become a pilot.”
“One day a year and a half ago, I walked in on you and Grayson discussing my drive to become a pilot.” I meant their joke that I’d screwed Mr. Hall.
He knew exactly what I was getting at. His cheeks flushed red against his pale hair. But, typically, he pretended he had no idea. He went on, “I wondered where your drive came from.”
I nodded. “Clearly not from my mother, because she’s white trash.”
“Oh,” Molly said in warning. I wasn’t sure to whom.
Alec gaped at me for a moment, then managed, “I never said—”
I interrupted him. “The only explanation is that my dad is a nuclear physicist. Either I inherited that drive genetically from his side of the family, or just knowing that he’s a nuclear physicist gives me the motivation to make it out of the trailer park myself. It can’t be that I’m just like this. That I just look around and say to myself, ‘It is no fun being a sitting duck during tornado warnings, with no car to drive to the safe shelter they always talk about for people who live in unsafe places like that. It’s no fun not to have food in a refrigerator, or a car to go get it. I think I’ll make an effort to get a job.’ No, I couldn’t possibly come to that conclusion all by my lonesome.”
He stood up suddenly. I flinched at the loud screech as the bench raked back beneath me on the deck. He still blushed, but the red in his cheeks had shrunk from an embarrassed flush to two small, angry points.
“I’m going to get a refill,” he muttered. Then, almost as an afterthought, he looked down at me. “Would you like something?”
I shook my head, adamant about what I’d said, and yet ashamed at the same time.
He took his cup and stalked away across the deck, through the door to the café.
I picked through the salad with my fork again. Two days of regular meals had finally caught up with me. I wasn’t ravenous anymore. I couldn’t eat another bite. I waited for Molly’s cutting comment, which would be that much more cutting because she made it in front of Grayson.
What she said surprised me. “Leah, Alec’s not like Grayson.”
“Oh, thanks,” Grayson protested. “What do you mean, he’s not like me? I am a nice person.”
She turned and cupped Grayson’s face in both hands. I would not dare do such a thing to Grayson, but Molly got away with it. She told him, “You are not a nice person. Shut up.”
She turned back to me. “You can’t be mean like that to Alec. He’s such a gentleman, and he’s treating you like he wants to be treated. He didn’t understand he was wading into a hornet’s nest with your nuclear physicist daddy and whatnot. Holy Mother of God.”
I put my fork down. “You are one to talk, Miss Manners.”
“I observe and adapt,” Molly said. “I’m treating you like you want to be treated, but unlike you, I can turn that mean streak off. Watch and learn.” She spun around, lifting her long legs over the bench, and clopped across the deck to follow Alec inside.
I needed to find something else on my plate to play with, but Grayson caught my gaze before I looked down. He said, “Molly’s right. I thought you would be good at this, but you’re incredibly bad at this because you’re so sensitive. I could have sent Molly in to flirt with Alec with better results than you’re getting.”
“If you think Molly is so great, why can’t you use her, without even using her?” I asked. “Why can’t she be the girlfriend Alec falls in love with over spring break?”
I expected him to give me an angry list of reasons why not. Instead, he seemed to consider my suggestion. His blond brows knitted. He took a long pull at his drink, watching me over the rim of his cup. After he set the cup down, he still stared at me like he would find the answer in my face.
Finally he asked, “Where is she going to college in the fall?”
“SCAD.” When he gave me a puzzled look, I remembered SCAD was a lot closer to my high school than his. Maybe he’d never heard of it, even though the people at my high school thought it was the coolest postgraduation destination possible. “Savannah College of Art and Design.”
“Then, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Heaven Beach is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Charleston. Savannah’s a hair closer to Charleston. I need him to feel pulled away from Charleston.”
My obvious next question was, “What’s so awful about Alec going to Charleston?” That was the key to the whole puzzle. And yet, because clearly I had a head as big as the state of South Carolina, I asked, “How do you know I’m not going to college somewhere else in the fall?”
“Because you’re not.”
“I can’t believe you!” Molly exclaimed. She and Alec were coming out the door. Laughing, she leaned into him. As they stepped outside, she looked for me and arched her eyebrows at me: This is how it’s done.
Oh, yeah? If everybody was pushing me into hooking up with this clueless boy, I would show them how it was done. I rose from the table and walked across the deck with a swing in my step, assisted by the stilettos. Ignoring Molly still touching him, I put my hand on his chest. “Alec,” I whispered huskily, “I’m so sorry I was mean to you before. You touched a tender spot.” I looked up at him through my eyelashes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Molly remove her hand from him, staring at me with awe and new respect.
“Oh.” Beet red, Alec gazed down at me with wide blue eyes, mesmerized by me. He’d completely forgotten he was standing on a deck outside a restaurant with two other people, holding a drink. “No, I’m sorry.” He glanced down into my cle**age.
I tugged him by the arm down the deck steps, toward his car. As we walked, I glanced behind us and stuck out my tongue. Molly stared after us with her lips parted.
But my greatest triumph shocked me, and I had no idea whether it was really a triumph at all. Grayson stared after us too. His blond brows were down. His face had gone pale underneath his tan. Down by his side, he had squeezed all the blood out of his white fist.
twelve
As soon as we reached the party, it was like my triumph had never happened. Walking to the door of Francie Mahoney’s parents’ mansion, Molly caught up with Alec and asked him who he remembered from her classes. She must have assumed, probably correctly, that Alec would recall these people, whereas Grayson would not, or wouldn’t admit it.