He laughed softly and shook his head, and I leaned back to be able to look at his face, which was close to mine, closer than it had ever been. “What?”
“Just . . . you,” he said after a moment, with a faint smile. “Crashing a wedding.”
“Your idea.”
“I know,” Frank said. “But I was just thinking about that first night at the Orchard.”
“What about it?” I asked. I was trying to focus on having a conversation with Frank, and trying not to think about how close together we were, that he was touching my waist, that he was holding my hand.
“You just seemed so . . . diminished,” he said after a moment. “Like you were hoping nobody would see you.”
I kept my eyes on his, not letting myself look away. “And now?”
He looked right back at me as he gave me a half smile. “You’re the brightest thing in the room,” he said. He lifted his hand from my waist, and slowly, carefully brushed a stray lock of hair from my cheek. “You shine.”
My breath caught in my throat. People said those kinds of things about Sloane—not about me.
“What?” Frank asked, his eyes on mine.
“Just . . .” I took a shaky breath. “Nobody’s ever said something like that to me.”
“Then they don’t see what I see,” he said. I looked into Frank’s eyes and knew, without a doubt, that he meant every word. I started to say something when the chorus kicked in and Frank moved closer to me.
He was tall enough, even in my heels, that I could have rested my head on his shoulder. I swallowed hard, feeling the need to try and freeze the moment and sort through everything that was happening, and figure out just what I was feeling. Our faces were close enough that I could see the constellation of his freckles, his dark eyelashes, and smell that he was wearing some kind of cologne for the occasion—it smelled like cedar, like early mornings, and it made me want to step even closer and breathe him in.
Frank’s hand tightened on my waist, just a little bit, and it could have been just him moving with the music. But even though we weren’t looking at each other—even though we both seemed to be working very hard notto look at each other—I had a feeling he’d done it on purpose, and a moment later, he unclasped his hand from around mine and threaded my fingers through his.
I felt my heart pounding as I concentrated on staying upright and moving to the music, on the song that I knew was ending, any minute now, and I couldn’t tell if I wanted it to end right then, or keep playing on for days. I looked up at him, realizing again just how close we were, when the song ended and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” started. He dropped my hand and took a step away, and I looked away, pretending to straighten my dress, not exactly sure what had just happened.
“Hey!” Dawn was approaching us, a half empty water bottle in her hand, smiling at Frank. “When did you get here?” She looked around hopefully. “Is Matthew here too?”
“No,” Frank said, pointing at me. “I figured that one wedding crasher was enough.”
I nodded at Dawn’s water bottle. “Is there any way I could have some of that?”
“Sure,” she said, handing it over. “All yours.” She yawned and stretched her arms over her head. “I swear, I am never doing one of these again. It’s much better to be on the road and actually getting tips. Thank god this is finally over.”
“You’re done?” I asked as I lowered her bottle, realizing I’d just drunk all of it. Dawn nodded.
“You guys want to come to my place and hang out?” Frank asked, as he pulled out his phone. “I’m not sure if Collins had plans, but I can text him . . .”
“Cool,” Dawn said. “Sounds good.”
“Em?” Frank asked, looking over at me as he texted.
“Actually,” I said. I took a breath before speaking again, not quite able to believe I was about to suggest this. But I couldn’t think of a better time, or one when I’d be so willing to take a risk. “I had an idea . . .”
12
GO SKINNY-DIPPING
“I can’t believe this,” Collins said as we stood in a line on the sand, still fully dressed, and looked out at the water. “And this was Emily’s idea?”
“Yep,” I said, still getting my head around that fact myself. “It’s for the list.”
“Please,” Collins said, waving this away. “This is all just a grand scheme to check out my bod. You can admit it.”
“So, um,” Dawn said, twisting her hands together, sounding more nervous than I’d ever heard her, “do we have a plan? Like, are we going to go in one at a time while everyone else looks away? Or all at once? Or . . .”
“Emily?” Frank said, looking over at me with a smile, even though I could see he was blushing—which he really hadn’t stopped doing since I’d proposed this, back at the wedding.
Maybe it had been the hours of dancing, or the slow-dancing with Frank, or the fact that I’d been dehydrated, but skinny-dipping had sounded like such a good, easy option back then. But now, actually standing in front of the water and contemplating swimming in it naked—with my friends—things were no longer seeming quite so simple.
“Okay,” I said after a minute, when I realized that since I had proposed this thing, I couldn’t back down, and I needed to be the one to try and figure something out. I glanced up and wished, for the first time all summer, that the moon wasn’t quite so full. It was like having a giant spotlight shining down on us. I looked at the stack of four beach towels that Frank had brought out from the house and tried to sound more confident than I felt. “Okay. I think we should all put on the towels, and then we can go with the towels down to the water, and then throw them aside and jump in.” It seemed like the best plan I could think of for limiting out-of-the-water nudity.
“When did she get so bossy?” Collins muttered to Frank, shaking his head.
“I just think,” I started, “this way, we’ll all feel comfortable, and—”
“To heck with that,” Collins said as he kicked off his flip-flops and yanked off his polo shirt, getting it stuck briefly on his head. When he started to drop his shorts, I realized where this was going and turned away, and after a noticeable pause, Dawn did too. “Here I go!” I heard Collins yell, and I looked a second too soon, seeing Collins’s bare butt as he dove into the water. “Agh! That’s cold!” he yelled, then held his nose and ducked under. But he was grinning when he surfaced again, and waved us in. “Come on,” he called.
“I think I’m going to do the towel thing,” Dawn said, grabbing hers, and I took one as well.
“Me too,” I said.
I glanced at Frank’s neighbors’ houses, to make sure they were all staying dark, but it didn’t seem like we’d woken anybody up. Dawn and I walked a little bit up the beach, and I held up my towel for her, blocking her from view while she took everything off and wrapped herself in the towel, and then she did the same for me. I knew this was ridiculous, since we were going skinny-dipping, but I just didn’t think I was ready to run full-out buck naked toward the water Collins-style. By the time we headed back to the water, clutching our towels, Frank had gotten in as well, and was next to Collins in the water. I could just see their bare chests, and tried to tell myself I would have seen them anyway if we’d all been swimming, that it wasn’t a big deal. But I still felt my heart pound as the boys turned away so that Dawn and I could run in.
“Ready?” I asked, looking at her.