Page 77 of Surfside Sisters

Keely tried not to sound too delighted about Mae-Brit. Calmly, she replied, “Well, that’s intriguing. What’s one of your favorite things?” She imagined sailing or walking on a beach.

“Let me pick you up tomorrow at two and you’ll find out.”

“Aren’t you Mr. Mysterious. Okay, I’ll be ready at two.”

“Dress casually.”

So it was going to be sailing, Keely decided. Fine. She’d be glad to swim with the sharks if it meant doing it with Sebastian.

Her cell buzzed again.

“Hey,” Janine said, “listen, Keely, a bunch of us are going out to Surfside this afternoon to drink margaritas and eat chips and gossip. Want to come?”

Keely laughed. “What can I bring?”

It had been a long time since Keely had hung out with her high school friends, and she’d forgotten how much fun it was, especially after her first margarita. They set up beach chairs in the sand, or tossed down towels to lie on for a maximum effect tan in the late afternoon sun. They had bowls of chips and dips and young radishes with salt and bluefish pâté Norah had made from fish her husband had caught. Keely thought they’d want to know all about her life in the big city. Instead, they regaled her with all the gossip she’d missed since she’d been gone. Two married—and sexy even if they were thirty-eight—teachers ran off with two other married and not quite so sexy teachers and no one could understand why. Stanley Keene had embezzled ten million dollars from his boss’s real estate business and was now serving time in jail. Cathy Higgins, a girl from their class, had married an older man with a house in Squam and a house in Boston and had gotten divorced a year later. Nothing was too terrible, and the fresh sea air and the sun glancing off the tips of the waves made it all seem material for laughter. When Sarah B. finally asked Keely about life in New York, she told them about Gray. Actually, she bragged about Gray, and brought out her phone to show them photos of the two of them together in their evening dress, and everyone screamed with admiration and jealousy.

“Marry him!” Norah ordered. “Marry him and make him buy a house on the island!”

Keely laughed. “I’ll have to wait for him to ask me first.”

Later that evening, as she showered off the sand and shampooed her hair and checked out the healthy glow on her cheeks from the sun, Keely couldn’t help laughing, and she didn’t know why. She was, quite simply, happy.

—

Sebastian arrived the next day in his ancient, rattling, but beloved Jeep, the one he’d bought with his own money in high school. He wore board shorts and a T-shirt. Keely wore capris and a T-shirt, too, one of the three thousand tees she’d tried on that morning to find the most attractive one that also seemed less flirtatious. All of which was a lot to ask from a T-shirt.

He didn’t just honk his horn, but came to the door and knocked. Keely was waiting. She called, “Goodbye, Mom!” and squeezed outside before Sebastian could get a look at her mother ensconced in her recliner in front of the TV.

“Hey,” Sebastian said, and kissed Keely’s cheek.

“Hey.” As they walked to the Jeep, she said, “So now will you tell me what we’re doing today?”

“Nope. But I guarantee you’ll love it.”

He drove from Keely’s house, away from town and down the road to Madaket.

“Hmm,” Keely said. “I don’t think you have a boat moored out there.”

“Nope.”

“You’re driving us to Take It or Leave It to treasure hunt.”

“Uh-uh. That will be our next date.”

After that remark, Keely didn’t speak, because she couldn’t get her breath. Sebastian thought there would be another date? She sneaked a sideways look at him. Yup, as gorgeous as always. Maybe even more so, now that an early tan set off his blue eyes and blond hair. Had his legs always been so long or was it simply that she hadn’t seen him in board shorts for a while?

He turned off onto Crooked Lane, a short, winding street leading to Cliff Road.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Keely said.

He made a left turn and pulled into the parking lot of the animal hospital.

“You’re going to have a chip put in my neck so you can find me whenever you want me,” Keely joked.

Sebastian looked her right in the eye and grinned. “Nope, but that’s not a bad idea.”

Once again, she was breathless.

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