Page 3 of The Beach House
As we reached the door, there was movement from near the kitchen. Lee looked past me and I turned to see my dad standing there in his pajamas and old burgundy robe, his glasses sitting a little crooked on his face and too far down his nose. He pushed them back up.
“You kids ready to set off, then?”
“Yup,” the two of us answered in unison.
“You know the drill: no mad parties drinking tequila, don’t swim out too far, be nice to the other kids…”
“We know,” we chorused.
Dad laughed, but it broke off with a yawn. “I know, I know, same parental spiel as every year, right? Come on then, Elle, let’s have a hug before you go.”
I went over and gave my dad a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Be careful.”
I rolled my eyes. What did he think I was going to do—see if I could beat up a shark and live to tell the tale? Honestly…
“You know what I mean.”
I frowned questioningly at him. Did I?
Lee coughed pointedly by the door, and Dad shifted from foot to foot and crossed his arms. He clenched his jaw briefly, looking uncomfortable, then said,“With Noah.”
Somehow, I managed to keep my cheeks from flaming. Instead, I sighed and rolled my eyes again elaborately.
On the bright side, at least Lee didn’t make any sarcastic comments. It was bad enough that he’d bought me a pack of condoms for my birthday. Then he’d given them to me in front of not only his parents and Noah, and my ten-year-old brother, but my dad too! Lee’s way of dealing with the awkwardness of me dating his brother was to crack jokes.
You can just imagine how much the whole condoms thing made me laugh. Ha-ha.
“I’ll be fine, Dad. Stop worrying. I’ll call you when we get there,” I said.
“All right, bud.” He smiled and, for a second, he looked more like a forty-eight-year-old man than he usually did. But only for a moment, and by then I’d already started back to the front door. Lee picked up my suitcase before I had the chance to.
“Lee?”
He half turned toward to my dad. “Yeah?”
“Look after my little girl for me, will you?”
It wasn’t Dad I was looking at now; it was my best friend. And he was looking back at me with a soft, friendly smile on his face. His blue eyes were warm and familiar, and the freckles spattered across his nose were embedded in my memory, as they had been for over a decade. I felt the sudden urge to hug him tight and be glad that whatever else went on, however much things changed with us getting boyfriends and girlfriends and growing up, I always had Lee.
A small part of me, in a voice that sounded oddly like Lee’s in my mind, told me to stop being so cheesy.
“Don’t worry,” Lee said, watching me, and I could tell his thoughts were on the same wavelength as mine. “I will.”
Chapter 2
Instead of all of us cramming into his dad’s car, this year Lee and I were in Lee’s ’65 convertible Mustang, and the two of us spent the whole drive singing along to the radio at the top of our lungs and joking around. The journey went by way more quickly than usual.
Well, that—or Lee was speeding.
We arrived after the others, though they couldn’t have been there for very long; Matthew, Lee’s dad, was only just shutting the trunk and locking the car. He gave us a smile and a wave.
“Roads okay?”
I swung out of the car and put my huge straw bag up on my shoulder. “Yeah.”
Lee was still in the driver’s seat, clearing up the jumble of candy-bar wrappers and empty bottles. He was normally messy, but he was way too proud of his car to leave trash in there.
