Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (19 page)

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get out of the pool for an hour— I had the sinking feeling that I’d

done more damage with her to night than good. I looked at the

pieces of the ruined suit and fi gured I would sort out what to do

with it later. I didn’t feel up to it to night.

I set the bikini aside and got into bed, snapping off the light.

I tried to lose myself in sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, all I

could see were fl ashes from the night, all embarrassing, starting

with showing up in formalwear.

But then, there had been Josh, offering to stay, helping me.

And our conversation in the car, in the moonlight. So maybe it

hadn’t been a total disaster.

I rolled over on my side, trying to put a positive spin on the

night, all those cozy clichés and sayings passing through my

thoughts as my eyes closed and I drifted closer to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day. Things will look brighter in the morn-

ing. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

But just before I drifted off, another, far less comforting say-

ing fl ashed into my mind.

Karma’s a bitch.

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I reached up into the cupboard for the vanilla, then added a tea-

spoon more to the frosting. I carefully stirred it in, then gave it

a tiny taste to make sure I hadn’t overdone it. It was the morning

after the unexpected pool party, and the house was very quiet.

Bruce, my dad, and Rosie all keeping West Coast hours meant that

they slept late, and I was the only one awake. But when I’d woken

up that morning, I’d had what seemed like the perfect idea for

how to make amends with Hallie for wrecking her bathing suit. I

would bake her what had been her favorite cupcakes when she

was younger— strawberry with vanilla icing— and spell out on

them I’M SORRY HALLIE. It was maybe a little bit of overkill for

something that had technically been the bathing suit’s fault, not

mine. But I felt like I had to do something.

And plus, my cupcakes were pretty legendary. I’d baked a lot

of them over the last two years, and they’d always been a hit at

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Teddy’s meetings. I’d even perfected a raw vegan version that

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you almost couldn’t tell wasn’t the real thing, unless, of course,

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you’d had a cooked egg-

and-

dairy-

fi lled cupcake in recent

memory.

I paused in my stirring and rested the spoon against the side

of the bowl. What Josh had said in the car last night about Teddy

lingered with me this morning. He’d implied that Teddy wasn’t

perfect, that nobody was. At the time, I’d just chalked it up to

Josh not knowing him. But now, I couldn’t help wondering if

maybe there was a tiny bit of truth in this. I’d thought of Teddy

as perfect for so long that it almost seemed impossible to think

of him any other way. But then I’d remembered the way that he’d

scoffed at the cupcakes I’d tried to bring to his meetings at fi rst,

saying that they were frivolous and a waste of resources— that is,

until he saw how much they brought in to help his causes and

how pop u lar they made the meetings. And I somehow knew that

he wouldn’t have been understanding about the bathing- suit

disaster. He would have told me that I should have read the label

before getting into the pool in the fi rst place. Which was true.

But still.

The pink cupcakes (my secret was putting pieces of real straw-

berries into the batter) were cool, so I started to ice them, trying

not to think this way. Even though Teddy had broken up with me,

it still felt like a betrayal. Instead, I concentrated on the letters,

making sure the writing was legible and accenting a few of the

cupcakes with little slivers of strawberries.

“Looks great!” I turned and saw Bruce barreling into the kitchen,

his iPad under his arm. “What’s the occasion?” He peered down at

the cupcakes. “Who’s Hallie and what did you do?”

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“Well—” I stalled, not really sure where to begin.

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Luckily, though, Bruce didn’t really seem to be waiting for an

answer, and started fl ipping through his iPad. “Listen to this!”

he said, as upbeat emo with far too many instruments fi lled the

kitchen. “It’s this band, Lenin and someone. You kids like them,

right?”

“Well . . .” I stalled again, busying myself by rinsing out the

bowls.

“Morning.” I turned around to see Rosie striding into the

kitchen and heading straight for the coffeemaker. “Those smell

great, Gem.”

“Thanks,” I said, transferring the bowls to the dishwasher. “I

really—”

“But who’s M?”

“What do you mean?” I turned back to the counter and saw

that what had spelled out I’M SORRY HALLIE now just spelled

M SORRY HALLIE. I looked at Bruce, whose mouth appeared

suspiciously full. “Bruce!”

“
Mmmph,
” Bruce said. He gave me a thumbs- up. “Good,” he

said, around what was clearly the cupcake with the
I
and the

apostrophe.

“Since when do cavemen eat cupcakes?” Rosie asked point-

edly, taking a sip of coffee. The lead singer started to wail from

Bruce’s iPad, and Rosie frowned. “Is that a lute?”

“Morning, all,” my dad said, coming in and ruffl ing my hair

as he passed on his way to the teakettle. “Did you have fun last

night, Gem?”

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“Well,” I started. Since the night had contained the amount

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of embarrassing moments that I normally hoped to space out

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over a month, “fun” wasn’t the word I’d use, despite how nice

Josh had been about everything.

“Oh?” Bruce asked, brushing cupcake crumbs off his hands.

“What did you do? Like, typical teen things? And what, exactly,

were they?”

“Leave her alone, Bruce,” Rosie said, giving me a smile. “If

you want her to consult on this movie, you’re going to have to

compensate her. And she’s not doing it for scale.”

“What is this?” my dad asked, looking around the kitchen.

“Did you bake these?”

“I did,” I said. “These

were cupcakes for a friend, until

Bruce—” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rosie’s hand dart out

and grab a cupcake from the other side of the sentence. “Rosie!”

I cried, hovering protectively over the remaining ones. Honestly,

I had expected more from her.

“Sorry, Gem,” Rosie said, taking a bite out of what I now saw

was the
E
at the end of “Hallie.” “But you can’t just leave cup-

cakes out and not expect us to eat them. Your dad understands.”

I whipped around to see my dad with a cupcake halfway to his

mouth.

“Um,” he said, cradling it protectively and taking a few steps

back. “I just wanted to make sure the frosting was still good.

That it hadn’t, you know, spoiled. I’m watching out for you, kid.” I

looked down and saw that my dad had snatched the other
I
. The

cupcakes now spelled MSORRYHALL.

“Oh, darn,” Bruce said, moving closer until I glared at him

and he backed off. “Do you need to make a new batch now, or

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something? Maybe chocolate this time?”

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The emo wailing and the lute was interrupted by the familiar

bong!
of Bruce’s Skype, and a moment later, Ford appeared on the

screen.

Startled, I took a step out of his viewing range. For most of

our childhood, Ford had been a little short and chubby, taking

after Bruce, and not his mom, who was a former Miss Hawaii.

He’d also spent most of his time— when he wasn’t surfi ng— playing

with video games and reprogramming Bruce’s laptop, which

was pretty much the reason that he was a computer genius now

and went to school with other computer geniuses. But in the last

few years, Ford had grown tall and lanky, gotten rid of the braces,

and swapped his thick glasses for hipster- cool square frames. It

had been disconcerting for me to realize, when I’d seen him last

year, that Ford was suddenly cute in a way the rest of the world,

and not just me, would recognize. But I’d always had a crush on

him, even before he morphed into a hottie. He had black- black

hair, tan skin, and dark brown eyes, and he’d been my fi rst kiss,

on my birthday the year I turned thirteen.

“Hey,” he said, “morning, Pops. Did I see Gemma dart out of

frame?”

I leaned in and waved. “Hi, Ford.” Ford’s tan skin was already

its summer golden hue, and though I couldn’t see the message,

it looked like he was wearing one of his signature you- have- to-

be- a-tech- geek- to- get- the- punchline T-shirts. I noticed that his

glasses looked new, the frames tortoiseshell, not black, and they

brought out his eyes.

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“
Aloha,
” he said, stretching out the vowels. Ford could adopt

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a fl at, surfer- dude Hawaiian cadence when he wanted to, usually

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when he needed to lull people into not suspecting him of some-

thing he’d done.

My dad and Rosie leaned in to say hi, and I stepped away

again and tried to look nonchalant, like I hadn’t just been check-

ing Ford out in front of his dad, and mine.

“So how are things going in the Hamptons?” he asked. “How’s

that cute baby ocean of yours?” Ford had been surfi ng his whole

life, and didn’t consider any of the East Coast’s waves legitimate.

When I’d told him that the beaches of Putnam were on Long Is-

land Sound, and that we didn’t even
have
waves, he had laughed

for about fi ve minutes straight.

“Things are good,” Bruce said, leaning closer to talk to his

son. “Tell me, do you and your friends like this band, Lenin and

whatsit? Their manager owes me a favor.”

Rosie shook her head. “You mean a favor beyond getting them

to play your accountant’s kid’s bar mitzvah?”

Bruce waved this away and focused on his son. “So do you like

them? I’m thinking about getting them for the sound track of

this new movie.”

Ford raised an eyebrow, just one, a talent I’d always envied.

“Not that script you sent me to read,” he said. “Dad, really? It was

awful.”

“I know,” Bruce said, not even reacting to this. “But what

about that band?”

Another
beep
sounded, and Rosie looked down at her phone,

then sprang into action. “Bruce, we have a conference call in

three,” she said. “I’ll get it set up in your offi ce.” She waved to

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Ford and tapped my dad on the arm as she passed him. “You

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might want to be in the room too, Paul. Just so you can hear that

I’m not making these notes up to torture you.”

My dad nodded and followed her out of the kitchen, eating

the cupcake as he went.

“I’ll call you later,” Bruce was saying as he reached toward the

remaining cupcakes and I slapped his hand away. “Tell your sis-

ter hi for me.”

“Bye,” Ford said. Bruce left the kitchen and Ford looked around.

“Gem, you still there?”

I stepped back into frame and pulled up one of the kitchen

stools to the counter, so it was like I was sitting across from him.

“Here,” I said.

“What’s going on there?” Ford asked, leaning forward. “Did

you make cupcakes?”

“Kind of,” I said. I picked up the iPad and panned around so

that he could see them better.

“What are the letters supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Nothing, now,” I said, then remembered that Ford had a

talent for anagrams. It was just the way his very logical brain

worked— he was great at puzzles, patterns, mysteries. He’d actu-

ally told me once that it was the reason he was better at surfi ng

than he deserved to be— he could see the mathematical proper-

ties of the curves of the waves in ways other surfers couldn’t. Who

knew if this was true, but the anagram thing defi nitely was— I

had been dismayed when he told me that an anagram of Gemma

Tucker was actually Make Cut Germ. And when I tried to make

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this better by adding my middle name, Rose, all I’d ended up