Page 53 of Fun at Parties
“Something bad like…”
I shrug. “Anger, frustration, sadness. Emotions that aren’t useful.”
“Emotions have to be useful?”
“I’m not saying this works for everyone,” I say. “It’s just how I think. I can’t control what happens, but I can control how I think about it. How I handle it. Like when we left L.A., it wasn’t useful for me to sit in the car and wish you weren’t there just because I felt stressed about it.”
“So you picture your feelings turning green?”
I sneak a peek at him, but there’s no skepticism on his face. Just a furrowed brow, like he wants to understand.
“Yeah. And then I figure out a better way to think about what’s bothering me so I can turn it into a positive.”
“And when I crashed your trip, the positive was…”
“That I’d have the opportunity to find closure with you. But it didn’t work. I was still upset. It hasn’t been workingat alllately. When I blew up on my last ride, I was completely overwhelmed by the situation with the video. I hit my limit, and…” I mime an explosion with my hands.
He’s quiet, thinking.
“What do you do?” I ask. “With negative feelings?”
He blows out a stream of air and stares through thewindow at the wind turbines. “I think I just…feel them? I don’t know, I have a bigger problem with good things happening. When I got the job in L.A. I spent months waiting for them to figure out I wasn’t qualified, worrying about losing it. I’ve always found it easier to expect things to go to shit.”
“But you’re going after the camp,” I point out. “There must be a secret optimist in there.”
“Optimism might be a stretch.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I realized after years of observing my bosses that I’m no less capable of running a business than they are. I’d made a bunch of choices based on one shitty thing that happened to me without realizing that I was Making Choices. Not going to college, staying at First Cove for way too long, thinking I didn’t deserve a relationship. And then somehow, without intending it or even realizing it, those choices became my personality. But I don’t want to be a sad person crying on the beach forever.”
An ache turns solid in my throat. “It was understandable. But it wasn’t your personality. You’ve always been more than that.”
Suddenly, Hilary Duff calls out to us from the speakers. It’s “What Dreams Are Made Of.”
“Bailey’s nineteenth birthday,” I remind him.
“I remember.” He steadily meets my eyes. “I remember it all.”
Warmth fills me. “Me too. I thought you hated me.”
“In my defense, you did almost kill me.”
Almost hitting Nate with my mom’s purple Range Rover is something I’ve never lived down. Beyond that, we’ve never reminisced about that weekend.
“Not then. The rest of the weekend. You were all one-word answers when I tried to make conversation. When we went to the beach, you got up and walked down to the water right in the middle of my story about the time I thought I saw Bradley Cooper in New York and asked him for a photo, and he turned out to be just some random guy. You know that’s a great story.”
“It is,” he agrees.
“But then I figured maybe it was your personality. That you were reserved and…”
“Mopey?” His mouth curves into a faint smile. “None of that was moping-related. I’d gotten into a routine: working, surfing, only hanging out with my core group of friends. And then you showed up, and you wereyou,and it caught me off guard. It took me until the night on the porch to get up the courage to look at you straight-on.”
“What? Why?”
“You were this beautiful, magnetic, fun person. I thought if we had a real conversation, you’d realize I wasn’t worth more than polite small talk, and that seemed worse than not talking to you at all.” He clears his throat. “Also, your ass. It intimidated me.”
I yelp with joy. “Did you look atthatstraight-on?”
“Yeah. And from every other angle. I’m only human.”
I’m bouncing in my seat, reveling in his candor. “The night on the porch, though. You didn’t run away from me then.”
