“If ‘hang in your basement’ is code for fighting off whatever soccer teammate Zach has with him this week, I’ll pass, but I’ll take a rain check on the highlights,” I said.
“How ’bout a movie night?” Jazz suggested. “I reserved Pretty in Pink at the library. I could pick up something else too, make it a double feature? Big bucket of air-popped popcorn? I’ll even splurge with peanut M&M’s.”
“That sounds great, but—”
“Wait,” Mads said, “so both of you would choose cheesy, canned romance and junk food over flesh-and-blood, six-packed-out-the-ass soccer guys?”
Jazz’s dark eyes turned incredulous. “Cheesy? Canned romance? Pretty in Pink is a classic—”
“—that I’ve seen chopped up on basic cable about umpteen times.”
“Guys, I have to work,” I said, trying to snuff out their fantasy-versus-reality debate.
“What’s the fun in being the owner’s daughter if you can’t skip out now and then?” Mads asked.
“We’re booked solid this weekend. Besides, the Camelot may be my future.”
Jazz looked between Maddie and me. “Since when?”
“Weddings are big business. It wouldn’t be a bad thing, right? I wouldn’t need major math skills to run it. I could hire someone for that.”
“Sure, and then you could hire me fresh out of Pratt to give the place an overhaul,” Mads continued. “And Jazz could have her huge Bollywood-style wedding there, and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
“Why am I the one getting married in this scenario?”
“Because I’m the architect, and Wren is the business owner, and I wasn’t sure how a pediatrician would fit into the whole thing. Besides, I want to wear a sari.”
“Four years of medical school plus a residency, ha, I’ll never have time for a real romance.”
“It’s just an option I’m tossing around. Not everyone has such a clear picture of their life after high school,” I said, balling up my uneaten lunch. The PB&J squished like Play-Doh in the brown paper bag.
“What about after work, Wren? You’re usually done by eleven, no?”
“Dunno. I think I’m just gonna lay low this weekend.”
“You’ve hooked up with someone like, what, once, twice, since the Trevor hump-and-dump? Come on, ditch work for one night. You’re overdue for some fun.”
“Madison,” Jazz reprimanded her in a whisper.
I gathered my books and trash and pushed back from the table. “Stop telling me what I need, ’kay?”
“Wren, wait, sorry. Trev’s the idiot. All I’m trying to say is it’s time to get your feet wet again . . . well, among other things.”
“Mads, really,” Jazz said, chuckling.
“Use it or lose it. Zach’s friends are hot. You never know, you could be cozying up with the next David Beckham.”
“Yeah, I’ll give that some thought . . . not,” I said, walking away before either of them could say anything else.
One slight mention from Mads and—zap—Trevor DiMarco was back in my head. I was over him, but I wasn’t exactly over us. He was my first. My only. My cautionary tale.
He’d been a friend of my brother, Josh. One of the many guys that hung around our house, playing basketball in the driveway or sitting around our living room watching Comedy Central and wasting time until they figured out what sports event or party they were hitting that night. The revolving door of cute boys was a perk of having an older brother at St. Gabriel Prep, and I took full advantage during Josh’s senior year. Inventing reasons to be in the kitchen. Doing my homework on the deck. Anything to inconspicuously put myself in the middle of the action.
Trev called me Osprey. Seagull. Raven. Every bird name except Wren. But I never took his teasing to be anything more than that. Until the night I looked up from Wuthering Heights and saw that Josh and the others had left. Trev stood in front of me, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched to his ears, his blue eyes slightly timid, unsure. Something I’d never seen in him.
“Hey, Wren,” he said, taking the book out of my hand as he leaned against the island. My stomach knotted up when he said my name. I hadn’t even had the chance to bookmark my page. “I was thinking, maybe . . . would you . . . how about . . . wanna hang with me tonight?”
“Here?” My voice was tight as I drummed my fingers on the counter. He’d never made me nervous before, but now that we were one-on-one, it hit me upside the head. He was the reason I hung around so much. Trev, with his perfect sandy hair, perpetual tan, and laid-back attitude had gotten to me. He cupped his hand over mine to stop the drumming.
“Why don’t we just, you know, roll where the night takes us?”
“Roll where the night takes us” was Trev’s life philosophy, and I couldn’t get enough. Our relationship was a dizzying blitz of prom, graduation parties, and endless nights rolling wherever life took us, and while sometimes it only led us to the lumpy futon in his family room, it was exotic to me. I was gone, gone, gone—caught up in the rush of being in what felt like my first serious relationship. With Trev starting SUNY Purchase in the fall, I knew we had an expiration date, but it wasn’t something we talked about. Part of me even held on to the hope that maybe we wouldn’t have to end.
None of that was on my mind, though, as we rolled into Belmar one gorgeous day in mid-July. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool, and I was having my first-ever hand-in-hand walk down the beach in the surf with a guy I truly cared about. Then we had that conversation.
All Trev said was that he couldn’t believe he’d be at orientation in less than a month. All I said was that I couldn’t wait to visit him in the fall, how I’d work it out somehow, take a bus or a train or hitch a ride with Josh when he went up to see him. Then we walked in silence. His grip loosened slightly, and he kept looking at me like he wanted to say more. The longer the silence, the more I realized I’d said too much, but I never thought he’d dump me right then as a biplane with a banner that read One-Dollar Shots and Half-Price Apps—D’Jais! sputtered by overhead.
“Baby, no, I thought . . . well . . . I want to be free when I go to school. You should be free too. I thought that was sort of . . . understood.” The tone in his voice was sweet, almost concerned. I knew this breakup wouldn’t bother him—this was something he was just rolling with, like everything.
That was the last day I saw him.
I tried to be casual about the whole thing, worldly, but it wasn’t how I was wired. Hump-and-dump, well, yeah, that felt about right.
With my mom already at work and my dad stuck on a case at the prosecutor’s office, I had to walk the ten blocks crosstown to the Camelot. I raced down our front steps, bracing against the raw dusk air, and stared wistfully at my sister Brooke’s Altima, which sat idle in our driveway since she was away at law school. Four more months until my road test, and then it was mine. Tonight I didn’t mind the walk. At least the rain had stopped, and the exercise helped shake off my grumpy mood.
The Camelot had been in my mother’s family for forty-five years. Every celebration, from my grandparents’ golden wedding anniversary to my sweet sixteen, had been held in one of the Arthurian-inspired ballrooms. When the Camelot opened in 1967, it was the place to have a wedding. Now only the lobby retained the kitschy medieval charm, with dark wood, burgundy drapes, and an oil painting of King Arthur (which insiders knew was my great-grandfather posing as him) over a working stone fireplace. One suit of armor, a six-foot monolith Josh had named Sir Gus, presided over the entrance to our main ballroom, the Lancelot.