Delilah offered, “You remember Teddy Barrington, my boyfriend. He’s a football hero and legend of the small screen.” Inexplicably, she broke into giggles, and Teddy rolled his eyes.
“Nice to meet you,” he grunted, even though we’d been introduced at least once every summer for the previous several years. “Nellie, right?”
Delilah let out an exasperated sigh. “Naomi, you jerk!” she corrected him, hitting him in his meaty upper arm with her delicate little fist. She tried to do it again, but he caught her wrist in his hand and smiled devilishly, bending her arm toward her face as she squealed in protest.
“Why do you keep hitting yourself, Delilah?” he teased as he gently tapped her in the face with her own fist.
“Stop it, you ass!” she protested, laughing.
“No, seriously, why do you keep hitting yourself?” He pushed her fist into her face again, and she whacked his shoulder with her free hand. He caught that wrist, too, and soon he was making Delilah faux-punch herself with both arms.
It was sort of charming and sort of horrifying, but it didn’t distract me from noticing that the handsome, dark-haired boy standing beside Teddy was studying me.
“Jeff Byron,” he said, holding out a hand. I shook it, which seemed kind of weird and formal, but I liked the way his hand felt, warm and big.
“Naomi Rye,” I said.
Jeff cocked a thumb at Delilah and Teddy, who were still play fighting. “This will last another five minutes, until she admits he’s bigger and stronger than she is,” he explained in a low voice.
“Never!” Delilah shrieked, trying to kick Teddy with the pointy little sandals on the ends of her perfectly sculpted legs. “I never lose, Jeffrey!”
Jeff sighed and shook his head. “We know, Delilah. We know.”
“Jeffrey usually summers on the Vineyard,” Delilah said by way of explanation. “But he goes to school with us at Trumbo and—ouch, Teddy!” She whacked him with her tiny, shiny purse.
“So you don’t usually summer in the Hamptons?” I said awkwardly as we watched the lovebirds fight. It was the first time I’d ever used summer as a verb. Only really rich people do that. My mother does it, and it drives me nuts.
Jeff rolled his eyes, not in a mean way. “Usually,” he said. “My parents just got divorced, and my mom decided there was no way we were sharing the Vineyard house with my dad and his new girlfriend. So we’re renting a place on Georgica Pond.”
“I love that you’re renting,” Teddy piped in. “It makes me feel like you’re from New Jersey.”
“Teddy!” Delilah said. “I love you, but you are a snob with a capital S.”
“You’re damned right I am,” he said, grinning, and began tickling her.
Jeff leaned down and whispered in my ear, “If you need to puke, I carry a bag for that purpose any time I’m with them. All you have to do is ask.” I stifled a giggle while I enjoyed the warmth of his breath on my ear. I wasn’t used to such a good-looking guy speaking to me at all, unless you counted Taylor Cryan (boyfriend of Queen Beast Jenny Carpenter) asking to cheat off me in science class.
“Hey!” a man from the tarmac called. “Miss Fairweather! Your mother called my cell—she wants us to get a move on!”
Teddy dropped Delilah’s wrists, and she landed one good kick to his shin. He yowled, and she said, “Oh, don’t be a wuss, Theodore.” This set her off into another fit of giggles, which sounded like wind chimes tinkling in the breeze. It was like they were acting out a play for us—this “I love you/I hate you” thing. “If your mother’s calling the pilot, we’d better get going,” Jeff said. “Come along, children.” He began walking slowly in the direction of the pilot, beckoning me to come with him. Uncertainly, I followed him, and Delilah and Teddy followed us.
“Ever been in a helicopter before, Naomi?” Jeff asked. I guess he noticed how big my eyes got when he led me to the Fairweathers’ sleek helicopter. “N-no,” I said. “Never really wanted to be in one, either.”
“So why are you here?” he asked curiously.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said, which was easier and more polite than saying, “Because my mother is a huge suck-up, and she’d rather risk my life in this airborne death trap than miss a chance to bond with Merilee Fairweather.”
The pilot helped all of us inside, and I realized that while the helicopter looked big and impressive, its interior was not nearly large enough for my comfort. We were going to be whirling around the sky in a box, essentially. Like Charlie in the glass elevator with Willy Wonka.
I was squished between Jeff and the happy couple, who commenced bickering over something as soon as the enormous door slammed shut. We buckled ourselves in, and the pilot passed out noise-canceling headphones.
“Do I really need these?” I asked Jeff. I hate feeling like my ears are clamped in.
“You’ll have a much better time with them than without them,” he said, chuckling. He reached over, and I flinched.
“It’s okay,” he said, and for some reason his voice actually made me relax a little. He put the headphones on me and adjusted them as I tried to stop blushing. It felt like a weirdly intimate gesture.
“Smooth, buddy,” Teddy said, winking at Jeff. “That’s your patented move—put on the lady’s headphones for her. It’s a panty-melter.”
“Theodore,” Delilah said, “that is disgusting.” She took out a one-hitter and lit it, inhaling sharply. I wondered what her staunchly anti-drug father, the Republican senator, would have to say about his darling dearest getting high on his helicopter.
“You know when I first heard that term, ‘panty-melter’?” Teddy asked us. He looked at us all expectantly, and I felt obligated to shake my head.
“It was at a table read for Oh, Those Masons!,” he began.
“Oh Lord,” Delilah said. “Here we go.” She pretended to fall asleep on Teddy’s shoulder.
“Season two. I guess I was ten,” Teddy continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I interrupted Danielson”—this was a reference to Drake Danielson, who’d played his older brother and, unlike Teddy, had broken out of the child star mode and graduated to a successful film career—“after he read the line, ‘Playing guitar is a surefire panty-melter.’ I said, ‘Drake, that doesn’t make sense. Underpants can’t melt.’ And the whole table just busted up laughing.” He gazed into the distance and smiled wistfully.
“Thank you, Teddy,” Delilah said. “We are all happier for having heard that story.”
And then it was time for takeoff, which was way smoother than I anticipated. I guess being super-rich really does buy a better everything, because soon we were in the air, with a gorgeous view of the city below. Everything was closer and bigger and brighter. It was so exciting that I forgot to be scared. The sun was on the verge of starting to set when we took off, and as we flew, the sky changed colors. Long Island was below us, first ugly and sprawling, then lush and green, with wide swaths of lawn between homes that seemed to grow bigger and splashier as we went farther east. And to both the north and south, you could see the open water—the words “Long Island” took on new meaning. I felt a poke in my side, and turned to see Jeff grinning at me and giving me a thumbs-up. He pointed to my face, and I realized with a start that I’d unconsciously been wearing a huge smile. I blushed again and instinctively put my hand over my mouth, which made him laugh, which made me blush harder.
I looked away and caught Delilah and Teddy exchanging a knowing glance, and then Delilah smiled right at me like she had a plan. I know it’s stupid, but it made me feel kind of glowy and special.