Page 6 of Enemies to Lobsters
“I can walk, thank—” I wince when something sharp jams into the soft arch of my foot. “Thank you,” I wheeze.
“But I want to go home,” he says, a little too close.
Bumps raise on my arms. “You can go. Thank you for the rescue, but I can make it from here,” I state calmly as I hobble toward my car. I don’t know why I’m speaking like my grandparents are listening. I should use language Ike will understand, like grunts and armpit scratches. The corner of my mouth ticks up, but guilt pricks me. “I’m sorry. That was unkind.”
“Was it?” Ike sounds genuinely confused.
I just apologized for my thoughts. I’m really tired. I can only shrug in response. This day has drained me.
Instead of trying to pick me up again, or leaving like I wish he would do, Ike stays with me until I reach my old car and pop the trunk. I have a fresh, complete pair of heels in here to wear to my grandparents’ house. I start to unzip my luggage, but rethink it when I realize he’s still standing quietly behind me with his arms folded across his chest.
I straighten. “Can I help you?”
“Oh.” Ike startles. “Uh, no.”
I don’t want him to watch me open my luggage. There are personal things tucked in there, and Ike is a tease. He’ll find something to hold over my head. Maybe literally. “Okay, well…” I make a shoo-ing motion toward the waiting fire truck. His cohorts are watching us with the windows down, and the eyes of all three men make me feel extra awkward in my shoeless state.
He straightens. “You sure you’re good, Princ—”
I cut him off with a sharp look.
His eyes flash with mirth. “You good,Diana?”
I’m shaky and tired, but he doesn’t need to know that. “Fine, thank you. You can go.”
He smirks. “It was a pleasure serving you, Your Highness.” He makes a production out of bowing before he backs away, and the other guys chuckle.
And just like that I’m a teenage girl, lonely and misunderstood in the life she was handed, and angry at Ike Wentworth all over again.
∞∞∞
Before I head to my grandparents’ home for the night, I have to see Stevie. It’s the law. If I don’t pop in now that my old Mercedes was spotted, it’ll be weeks before the guilt tripping stops.
My best friend lives a few blocks from the ocean in a tiny cottage she shares with a roommate I haven’t met. It’s dark now, but the place looks the same as it did the last time I was here—its brown shingle siding is still faded from the sun and salt air. There are pots, buckets and boxes of flowers in every color scattered around the front porch, and a thick vine of yellow flowers climbing around the white door. Stevie and I have been on walk-in terms since seventh grade, so I turn the knob as I knock.
“Stevie?” I call, opening the door. The familiar apple-cinnamon scent of her house invites me inside, but the living room is empty.
A gasp and the sound of a pot being dropped into the sink comes from the kitchen. “Di?” Stevie crashes into the doorjamb of the kitchen in her gray sweats and bare feet. “Di!” She screams and launches toward me, a blur of red hair and hugging arms. She doesn’t waste any time. “Okay, what are you doing in town?”
“I had a dream that I made out with Tom Selleck at the top of the lighthouse.” Wow, that felt like dumping a load of bricks. My friendship with Stevie is as liberating and comfortable as holey, ten-year-old sweatpants.
She laughs, dragging me to her threadbare yellow couch. “Um, what?” she asks with a snicker. “I’ve been nagging you to come home for years, but Tom Selleck got you here?”
I fall back against the cushions. “Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve been feeling—” I run my hands down my face. “My life has gotten—” I groan.
“I knew it.” She crosses her legs under herself on the cushion.
I pull my hands away from my face. “What?”
“You don’t like your job, or living in New York.”
She’s partially right, but I’ll never admit it. New York City is the symbol of my silent rebellion. I can’t tell my grandparents I don’t want to get married. But I can hide in my dumpy third floor walkup on the Lower East Side while I studiously avoid it, doing a job that feels like hitting my head against a brick wall every day. I am a strong, independent woman and it just be like that sometimes. Choosing not to accept my grandparents’ financial help after I finished school narrowed my options. “I love the city. I don’t always love the job.”
“What is it that you do again?” Stevie asks with a smile in her voice.
I’ve told her at least a dozen times, but I don’t blame her for forgetting. “I’m on an FP&A team for an ergonomic bathroom solutions company.”
Stevie snickers. “I love you, but I fell asleep halfway through that sentence.”
