Page 39 of Beachside Kisses With My Enemy

The brush hovers over her nails. My best friend is even more perceptive than I’ve given her credit for. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“What happened? I know about your fight after the funeral. Last week, Blake apologized for how he left, how he wasn’t here. He admitted that you were right.”

Did he now? “That’s great.” I lift my chin, wink at her. All bluster and tease. Because I don’t want to show how much that news elates me. How warmth is flooding my heart. To know not just that he thinks I was right—I don’t care about being right for being right’s sake—but also that his relationship with his sister is important enough for him to make amends. That he recognizes what his leaving did to her.

“It is great.” Marilee reaches toward my hand, snatching the polish brush back. “So you guys can be friends again. Not just tolerate each other for my sake. Right?”

I choke out a cough. “Yeah. Right.”

“You sound so convincing.” Marilee sighs and recaps the nail polish, her toes only half painted. Then she spears me with a look. “Time to come clean, Luce. What happened between the two of you in high school?”

“Nothing.” I sputter. And sigh. “And that’s the problem.”

Now it’s her turn for an eyebrow lift. “Care to explain?”

“Um, not really.” But maybe it would be good to get it off my chest. To just…I don’t know. Release it into the ether. Bottling up the emotions for so long hasn’t really done much for me, has it? I’ve tried making lemonade out of those lemons, but clearly (based on my reaction to Blake tonight) my old crush is rearing its ugly head.

I just need to spit out what happened in the past so that someone else can reassure me that he never had feelings for me. Because that would be easier, honestly. If it all was truly in my head, then nothing is Blake’s fault. Then it’s not like he chose big-city life over me. If it all was truly in my head, then I wasn’t part of the equation at all.

And that’s better.

So I tell her everything. About what I considered flirtation—all of those little moments, interactions—sophomore year while I lived in Hallmark Beach. What I thought might have been an almost kiss on my seventeenth birthday, just before junior year. The conversation I overheard between Blake and his dad later that night.

And how I felt that whole year after he left for college, when I didn’t hear a word from him.

How I wrestled with feeling abandoned. Feeling stupid. First, for falling for him. Second, for thinking he cared about me as more than his sister’s friend.

When I’m finished, I get the courage to look at Marilee again, praying her next words are reassurance that I misunderstood everything. That I was just a foolish teen girl with her head in the clouds, seeing things that weren’t there.

But that’s not what I see in her eyes.

Instead, there’s pity there. She tilts her head, and her messy bun lilts to the side. “I’m sorry, friend.” She squeezes my knee. “I kind of want to murder my brother for how he played around with your heart. For what it’s worth, I think he did care about you. But I also know how persuasive our dad could be when he had strong opinions about something.”

My stupid heart sparks hope in my chest. Sweet macaroni. Nope. Nooooo. Cannot let that little ember turn into a flame.

I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I got over him a long time ago.”

She shoots me a skeptical look.

I wave my hand in dismissal. “And now that I know the two of you are truly good, he and I will be good. Promise.”

And because I’m not a liar, I’m going to have to make it so.

I’m going to have to do more than “make nice” with Blake.

I’m going to have to be friends with him again—and somehow, this time, not fall for my best friend’s brother.

thirteen

BLAKE

I am officially an idiot.

And, once again, an eavesdropper. Curse the thin walls of my parents’ home!

“Ugh,” I say as I fling several boxes of graham crackers into my tiny cart at Al’s Grocery.

“Blake? You with me?” Dale’s voice barrels into me from the phone cradled between my cheek and shoulder as I navigate the small grocer at eight-thirty in the morning. For a moment, I forgot I was talking to him.

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