“Quid pro quo.” I close my eyes, fully aware of the irony now.
“I didn’t mean for things to go sideways,” he insists. “When you got fired . . . Grace told me what happened in the Hotbox. For the record, she also made some threats to my manhood that gave me a few nightmares.”
I groan. “I don’t blame you for what I did in the Hotbox. I was upset at the time, but I’ve moved past it.”
“I just want you to know that what Scott and Kenny were saying that day . . . I didn’t think it was funny. I’m not even sure why I laughed. I think it was just a nervous reaction. I felt awful afterward. I tried to text you and tell you, but you weren’t speaking to me. And then Davy happened . . .”
I sigh shakily, completely overwhelmed. “God, what a mess.”
After a second, he says, “You know, what I haven’t been able to figure out is why you lied about where you lived before you moved out here.”
“I didn’t. My mom and her husband moved from New Jersey to DC a few months before. I just never told Alex. You. Alex You. Ugh. That’s not a random screenname, is it?”
“Alex is my middle name.”
“Alexander. Like your father?”
“Yeah. It was my grandfather’s, too.” He pushes a curled lock of hair behind my ear. “You do realize this whole mishegas could have been avoided if Mink You would have just told me from the beginning that you were moving out here . . . right?”
I use his hand to cover my face. And then I uncover it and sit up, facing him, wiping away tears. “You know what? Maybe not. Let’s say I’d arranged to meet up with Alex You at the Pancake Shack when I first moved here, and that I hadn’t gotten that job at the Cave. Would we have hit it off? I don’t know. You don’t know that either. Maybe it was just the situation we were in at the Cave.”
Porter shakes his head and winds his fingers through mine. “Nope. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. Two people who lived in two different places and found each other, not once but twice? You could stick one of us in Haiti and the other in a rocket headed to the moon and we’d still eventually be doing this right now.”
I sniffle. “You really think so?”
“You know how I said you were tricky like the fog, and that I was afraid of you running back to your mom at the end of the summer? I’m not afraid anymore.”
“You’re not?”
He looks toward the ocean, dark purple with the last rays of light. “My mom says we’re all connected—people and plants and animals. We all know one another on the inside. It’s what’s on the outside that distracts. Our clothes, our words, our actions. Shark attacks. Gunshots. We spend our lives trying to find other people. Sometimes we get confused and turned around by the distractions.” He smiles at me. “But we didn’t.”
I smile back, eyes shining with happy tears. “No, we didn’t.”
“I love you, Bailey ‘Mink’ Rydell.”
I choke out a single sobbed laugh. “I love you too, Porter ‘Alex’ Roth.”
We reach for each other and meet in the middle, half kissing, half murmuring how much we’ve missed each other. It’s sloppy and wonderful, and I’ve never been hugged so tightly. I kiss him all over his neck beneath his wild curls, and he cups my head in both hands and kisses me all over my face, then wipes away my cried-out makeup drips with the edge of his T-shirt.
Applause and cheers startle both of us. I’d nearly forgotten all about the movie. Porter pulls me up with him, and we lean over the railing together to peer into the dark. Flickering light fills the beach, and the old MGM logo appears with the roaring lion. The music starts. The opening titles dart over the screen. CARY GRANT. EVA MARIE SAINT. Chills zip up and down my back.
And then I realize: I get to share all of this with Porter. All of me. All of us.
I glance up at him, and he’s emotional too.
“Hi,” he says, forehead pressed to mine.
“Hi.”
“Should we head down to the beach?” he asks, slinging an arm over my shoulder.
“I seem to remember hating the beach at some point or another.”
“That’s because you’d never been to a real one. East Coast beaches are trash beaches.”
I laugh, my heart singing with joy. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Show me a real beach, why don’t you, surfer boy. Let’s go watch a movie.”
“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”
—Meg Ryan, You’ve Got Mail (1998)
28
I blow out two quick breaths and stash my purse in the borrowed locker. Behind me, through a narrow passageway onto the main floor, I can see the crowds in the stands and the bright lights of the auditorium. Almost time to start. I twist my head to either side and crack my neck before checking my phone one more time.
Some people thrive in the spotlight; others prefer to work behind the scenes. You can’t make a movie with nothing but actors. You need writers and makeup artists, costume designers and talent agents. All of them are equally important.
I’m not a spotlight kind of girl, and I’ve made my peace with that.
These days, I’ve pretty much given up my Artful Dodger leanings. Mostly. I relapsed a little when school started a couple of months ago in the fall. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to run for senior class president like Grace. It does mean that ever since our girl talk on the beach after I let her down, I’ve tried to make good on being a dependable friend, so I helped her with all her campaigning. She won, but that was no surprise. Everyone loves Grace. I just love her a little more.
After school, I work at Video Ray-Gun, which is much less pressure than the Hotbox—not to mention less sweaty. Plus, I get first pick of the used DVDs that come through. And since Porter’s shifts at the Cave are only on the weekends now that school’s in session, I get to see him on my work breaks, because the surf shop is only a five-minute walk down the boardwalk from the video store. Win-win.
And I have to see him whenever I get the chance, because next week, he’s flying out to Hawaii with his mom. They’re meeting up with Mr. Roth to watch Lana compete in Oahu for some special surfing competition. And to talk to someone in the World League about Porter surfing in a qualifying event in January in Southern California. He’s already registered, and he’s been practicing every chance he gets. There’s crazy buzz online in the surfing community that the Roth siblings could be the next big thing; a reporter from Australia called the surf shop last week and interviewed his dad for a magazine.
It’s all exciting, and I’m thrilled to pieces that Porter finally wants to surf. He was born to do it. At the same time, I’m glad he’s not giving up on the idea of going to college. He says he can do both. I don’t think he realized that before, but I can understand why. His family’s been through a lot. It’s hard to think about next week when you’re not sure if you’ll even make it through today.
But I don’t worry about him now. And I don’t worry about him going pro like Lana, and whether he’ll be traveling all over the world for a week here and there, Australia and France, South Africa and Hawaii. Maybe sometimes I’ll get to fly out with him. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. Because he’s right. Surfing the Pipeline or rocket to the moon, we’ll find each other.