Oops. I jog to catch up.
“Get ahold of yourself,” Theo says under his breath, wearing a teasing smile as he falls into step with me.
The four of us spread out our beach towels on the sand. We’re positioned a few feet from where the tide is reaching. Theo and Anastasia are in the middle, Ariel and I flank them on either side. We shed our clothes so we’re in our bathing suits, and we lather ourselves in sunscreen. The sun is still playing peekaboo with us from behind a stubborn cloud.
“What if it rains?” Anastasia says. This is something she tends to do, point out a worst-case scenario.
“It’s not going to rain,” Ariel says, rolling her eyes.
Theo laughs and says, “So what if it does?” I’ve heard him say this to Anastasia on more than one occasion, and I think this is a testament to how deeply he understands her—he knows that she needs to hear a response akin to “So what? It will be okay,” instead of being told how unlikely it is that her worry will come to fruition.
I scoot to the edge of my towel, sitting with my knees bent and my feet in the sand.
“Joyce’s suit is so tacky,” Anastasia says.
“Her style as usual. She’s always a walking designer label,” Ariel says.
“And here you both noticed her, so everything’s going according to her plan.” Theo picks up a handful of sand and lets it run through his fingers. “Hey, Anastasia, remember your suit two years ago at that Fourth of July party in Martha’s Vineyard?”
The three of them start laughing.
“Untangle me, untangle me!” Ariel flails as she mimics Anastasia in this particular memory.
Anastasia says, “Shut up! It was not that funny!” But she is laughing, too.
Theo leans my way. “So her suit looked like bondage—something ridiculous her mother bought her in Saint-Tropez.” He launches into the rest of the tale about how Anastasia got stuck in her swimming suit, and somehow this segues into a chronicle of the best parties they’ve ever attended at Martha’s Vineyard. I think part of the reason they don’t mind me hanging out with them is that when they reminisce, they get an excuse to tell their stories to someone who’s never heard them before. It makes me miss Cadence and Meghan from back home, and I wish I had a reason to talk about them. When I told them I was enrolling at Rutherford, they couldn’t understand why I’d want to go, and I didn’t know how to explain it to them, not when there was so much I’d have to omit. It made a distance between us even before I left, like they could tell I was keeping something from them, a part of me closed off.
“Heads up!” someone calls, and a football flies at us. Theo reaches out his arm and catches it.
“Nice one, Theo. You’re making us look bad.” The owner of the ball is Sebastian Guerrero. Aside from being a known playboy, Sebastian also has a reputation for being shameless.
“What do you want, Sebastian?” Theo asks, making no attempt to hand the ball back.
Sebastian laughs. “Just enjoying a day on the beach. If only that cloud would move.”
“You could’ve walked up to us like a normal person if you wanted to talk to us. You didn’t need to endanger our safety as an excuse,” Ariel says. Anastasia nods.
“I like to make an entrance,” Sebastian says.
“Nice tan lines,” Ariel says.
He looks himself up and down. His eyes stop on the dark lines around the front of his legs, where the skin is noticeably lighter. A shin guard tan. “What can I say? This is the price of playing soccer in São Paulo for the last half of the summer.”
“I love it there so much,” Anastasia says.
“Have you been?” Sebastian first looks at Ariel, who shakes her head, then at Theo—same response. He stops on me next. “Hey, you’re new—Collins Pruitt, right?”
This is the first time Sebastian’s spoken to me since I arrived, but I’ve heard about how he’s enchanting—hypnotizing, even. And it’s not only because he’s what my friends from back home would refer to as a stone-cold fox. It’s that when he looks at you, he really looks at you.
“That’s me,” I say. He smiles.
“So how do you like it here so far, Collins Pruitt?” He’s got his eyes locked on me as though I’m the most entrancing girl on the planet.
“Are you going to keep calling her by her full name like that?” Ariel says.
His eyes still don’t waver from mine. “Maybe. Depending on if Collins Pruitt likes it or not.”
Blast my mouth, my smile is so big. Ariel and Anastasia are probably immune to this kind of blatant flirting, and they probably know exactly how to hold themselves together when others are there to witness it. But I do not have that kind of control. It’s so flattering, not only that someone I find handsome would want to flirt with me in the first place but that he is doing it so openly, so publicly.
“What’s your impression of Rutherford?” he says again, lowering his voice as though that makes the conversation qualify as being only between us.
I shrug. This seems like a better move than actually speaking.
“Some things will have to remain a mystery, I guess. For now. You’re not off the hook yet, Collins Pruitt.”
Theo tosses the ball at him to dismiss him. Sebastian takes the hint. He smiles and waves at us as he takes a few steps backward, watching us—watching me—before he turns and starts running toward the group he was playing catch with. He never makes it, though; Joyce intercepts him.
“Well, don’t they look chummy,” Anastasia says, nodding toward Sebastian and Joyce. Joyce, for whatever reason, is on her hit list this morning.
“Must be that killer bathing suit.” Theo puts his hands up in surrender, already anticipating how this comment is going to annoy Anastasia.
“Did you hear her father was caught with a prostitute over the summer?” Anastasia says. “Her mother is divorcing him. Ruby told me, but it was, like, in the regular news, too. Her father’s East Coast–famous.”
“What happens to his company if this is what’s in the news, I wonder,” Theo says.
“He’s ruined for life,” Anastasia says.
“He’ll probably have to appoint someone else as CEO, take a back seat for a while,” I say.
“That’s what your dad would do?” Theo asks. “For the companies he manages?”
I nod.
“Whatever,” Anastasia says, “Joyce’s mom is going to take him for all he’s worth to keep that designer swimwear lifestyle. Joyce is out there laughing and flirting like nothing is wrong.”
“Lay off her for a while, will you?” Theo says.
We watch as Sebastian and Joyce splash each other in the surf.
“Sebastian likes shiny objects, but he bores quickly,” Anastasia says.
“He is a shiny object,” Theo says. “You’d never go back for seconds?”
“Don’t you mean fourths?” Anastasia says.
It takes me a moment to realize Anastasia and Theo are talking to Ariel, because Ariel doesn’t answer right away. Like she’s considering this.
Finally, she says, “I have zero interest in dating him ever again.”