Page 31 of The Other Side of Paradise
“Er… I think I’ll pass,” she said. “I’m not feeling it.”
“C’mon,” I insisted. “At least give it a try. It probably just feels bad right now, but it’ll feel different once you get into it. Just one guy, a little time on the beach, maybe a drink or two…”
Ryan cleared her throat. Based on the way Brooklyn and Allison both looked like they wanted to laugh. I probably wasn’t the only one getting on Ryan’s case about this, which I was glad for. “I’ll… pass,” Ryan repeated, her voice thin, and I gave her a frustrated sigh.
“It wouldn’t have to be anything serious! This is a vacation. You could take the opportunity to just… reset,” I said, and Brooklyn laughed, trying to cover it up with a cough. Was there some kind of in-joke I was missing? Maybe Brooklyn had already told her the same thing.
Allison, meanwhile, was on my page, because she leaned across the table with a smile that verged on vindictive—I guess they had some score to settle—and said, “Stella’s right. What kind of guys do you like, anyway?”
Ryan sighed, fingers to her temple, and she said, punctuating each word, “None, right now.” I scowled.
“At least say you’ll keep an open mind to it,” I said, and she relented with, at least, a polite smile as a waiter started towards us.
“You know?” she said. “Maybe. I’ll keep an open mind to the idea of a… vacation… fling. Why not?”
Yes.We were making progress, the three of us. We’d have Ryan get out of her own head yet. “There we go,” I said. “I knew you weren’tallboring.”
Everybody else fumbled with the menus once the waiter was at our table, clearly not having looked and having to pick, but Ryan knew me—she directed the waiter’s attention to me, and I took a glance at the menu and pointed to the first thing that popped out as nice, a battered cod sandwich with tartar sauce. It bought enough time for Brooklyn to order the chickenwrap—she was clearly the type to load up on a kilogram of protein per meal, with her arms and abs—and Allison was the last one to order, which meant that Ryan had the opening to improve my opinion of her even further once the waiter had left, leaning across the table with her own vindictive smile.
“So what about you, Allison?” she said. “What kind of girls do you like?”
“Uh—” Allison shut off completely, going blank, blushing brilliantly again. I was obsessed with how quickly she got like that as soon as you said the wordgirlin her vicinity. “I dunno…” she mumbled awkwardly, shifting in her seat. “I thought we weren’t having this conversation.”
“Well,” Brooklyn said, joining in the bullying match, “looks like you thought wrong.”
Allison shot her a look, and Brooklyn just shrugged like she’d never done anything wrong in her life, and I kinda liked her. Whole crew was fun. I was even kinda liking Ryan at this point, watching her pick on Allison with us.
“Um—” Allison looked away, out the window, fussing with the salt and pepper shakers sitting in the sill. “I dunno. I haven’t been with a lot of girls.”
“That means you’ve been with some,” I said, and she prickled.
“I mean, I had a girlfriend when I was fifteen. Nothing really counts at fifteen. I had a girlfriend more recently, but, uh, in retrospect, not someone like her. I don’t know!” she said, now clearly trying to battle away the blush, something I’d seen her do plenty of times by now. It always had the opposite effect. “Girls who are… uh… pretty?”
I shrugged, relaxing as the waiter came back and delivered our drinks, and once he was gone, I said, “Well, we’ll play a game at the beach, point out girls and see which ones you like.”
Allison withered a little. Maybe I was being mean, but I couldn’t help it. She was cute like this. Brooklyn smiled brilliantly at us. “You should,” she said. “The beach will be great. Allison loves an athletic girl.”
Allison looked horrified at her. I wasn’t surprised she reacted like that to having her type aired out like that, butIfor one was holding on dearly to that particular piece of information.
An athletic type, huh? I could do that. I was going to see her with the most ripped girl on this island, if that was what it came down to.
∞∞∞
“Allison—” I interrupted her in the middle of a conversation with Ryan, coming up behind her on the beach, and I put my hand on her shoulder before I’d thought it over. I really needed to stop grabbing the girl, with how awkward she was about it, especially like this, out on the beach under the setting sun with Allison in her swimsuit. She tensed up even more with my hand on her bare shoulder, but it at least did the trick, turning her away from Ryan to where she faced me, lifting up her sunglasses to look at me, and I dropped my hand from her shoulder. “You’re coming with me,” I said, and she put her hands on her hips.
“What is this, a kidnapping?”
“Yep. Get in the van.”
Ryan gave me a dry smile, inquiring, but I waved her off with a kind ofI’ll explain latergesture, and I immediately screwed up again, because I put a hand on Allison’s back as shestepped away from Ryan with me. She tensed up, and I pulled my hand away with a quick,
“Sorry.”
“No—it’s fine. I was just a little surprised, is all.”
So she said, but her voice was thick with unspoken things, and I tried to push it away by saying, “Come on—I wanted to show you something.”
“Is it the ocean? I’m aware of it.”
