Summer Rental (47 page)

“Don’t start,” Ellis warned, when she saw Julia’s disapproving frown. “I’ve already packed everything else except what I’m wearing in the morning. And I am not borrowing any more of your clothes tonight. This is who I am. I’m not Julia Capelli. I don’t wear spike heels or black lace bras as tops. I am Ellis Sullivan. Boring, predictable, safe Ellis Sullivan. So deal with it!”

“I was just gonna ask if I could borrow your silver hoop earrings,” Julia said, seating herself on the edge of the bed. “But if you’re gonna go all postal on me, never mind.”

“Earrings? That’s all you want?”

“Yeah. What did you think I wanted?”

Ellis reached into the pink satin jewelry roll that sat on top of her dresser and fished out the silver hoops. “You didn’t come in here to try and get me all skanked up tonight before we go to Caddie’s?”

“Nope,” Julia said.

“And you’re not gonna try and talk me out of leaving tomorrow? Instead of staying here, with Ty?”

“Nope,” Julia said. She held out her hand. “Just a pair of earrings. That’s all I need. Oh yeah, Dorie asked me to come up here and tell you she needs you down in the laundry room. She can’t figure out which towels are yours and which ones stay in the house.”

“The fugly gray and maroon towels stay here,” Ellis said, turning back to the mirror.

“Yeah, but she said there’s some other laundry, she can’t figure out who it belongs to. Extra sheets and pillowcases. You know Dorie, she gets flustered by the least little thing.”

“Oh all right,” Ellis said, running a brush through her dark hair. “I’ll go.”

“Great.”

Julia followed Ellis to the stairway. She waited until Ellis was halfway down the stairs before she darted back to her room. She picked up Ellis’s purse, fished out her cell phone and car keys and pocketed them quickly, before heading back to her own bedroom.

*   *   *

He had his back to the bar while he poured tequila into the blender, but Ellis knew that muscled back. She knew those wide shoulders, the narrow hips. She caught her breath and took a step backwards, but Dorie grabbed her arm.

“Come on, Ellis,” Dorie said. “You don’t even have to talk to him. We’ll find a table in the far corner.”

“You guys,” Ellis pleaded. “Don’t make me do this.”

“Do what?” Madison said, hooking her hand through Ellis’s elbow. “Come on, Ellis. It’s ladies’ night. Our last night. You don’t want to spoil Julia’s birthday, do you?”

“Anyway, this place is jammed,” Julia pointed out as they maneuvered through the crowd. “He’ll never even know you’re here.”

“I’ll know,” Ellis said darkly, but she allowed herself to be towed to a table near the tiny stage, and then, reluctantly, to be talked into a lemontini. And then another. The music got louder, and then the karaoke mistress stood up and began taking requests.

First up were a pair of leather-clad biker dudes, one short and round, the other a foot taller, with an impressive beer belly and an even more impressive handlebar mustache.

“‘Hotel California,’” Julia predicted. “I guarantee.” And when the two launched into the Eagles classic, the women shared high-fives all around.

A pudgy brunette in too-tight white jeans, her breasts spilling out of a white tube top, clambered to the stage next, and shocked the crowd by singing a rendition of “Crazy” so pitch perfect, the women all swore she was Patsy Cline come back to life.

While they all stood, giving the Patsy wannabe a standing ovation, Ellis glanced over at the bar. Ty was clapping, whistling. In a split second, his eyes caught hers. He nodded, smiled, as though nothing had happened. Ellis felt her face flush, and she looked away.

Two songs later, Dorie stood and announced, “I’m taking a potty break. Anybody need anything?”

“Potty break and a Connor break, right?” Julia teased. “You think we didn’t see you watching the door to see if he was working tonight?”

“I have to pee every thirty minutes,” Dorie said. “Can I help it if the ladies’ room is right by the bouncer’s booth?”

Twenty minutes later, she was back, a tray of drinks in hand, with the karaoke catalog tucked under her arm.

“Ty sent these over,” she announced, distributing the cups. “He saw me talking to Connor, and insisted that he wanted to buy us all a round of drinks since tomorrow’s our last day. He says we’re the best tenants he’s ever had. Isn’t that so sweet?”

“Adorable!” Julia said, staring at Ellis, who nodded mutely, and then knocked her drink back in one long guzzle.

Dorie and Julia exchanged a worried glance.

“Hey, slow it down,” Julia said. “You don’t wanna be driving with a hangover tomorrow, do you?”

Ellis tossed her hair. “I think I know what I’m doing.”

“So. What are we gonna sing?” Dorie asked, flipping the catalog open.

“We? There is no we,” Madison said.

“I thought we’d do a group number,” Dorie said, looking around at the others. “What’ll it be?”

“How ’bout ‘It’s Raining Men’?” Julia asked.

“Or what about ‘Love Shack,’ you know, since the B-52s are from Georgia, like us,” Dorie suggested. “What do you think, Madison?”

Madison glanced down at the book, turned the page. “I don’t do karaoke, as I think I mentioned previously,” she said. “But if I did, I’d have to say we should do ‘I Will Survive.’”

“Oooh, good one,” Ellis had to admit. “I think that could be the theme song for all of us, right?”

Dorie nodded absentmindedly, still turning the pages of the book. “No. I got it. This is it. The one.” She pointed at Julia, Ellis, and Madison. “And we are all gonna sing it. Together. Every single one of us. Because it’s Julia’s birthday. Right, Julia?”

Julia craned her neck to see what song Dorie had chosen. “Right. I’m the birthday princess and you all have to do what I say. So, what are we singing?”

“You’ll see,” Dorie said, slamming the book shut. “When it’s our turn.”

*   *   *

He’d found the house with little difficulty, thanks to the faded
EBBTIDE
sign by the mailbox. He’d cruised past half a dozen times during the day, but there was a surprising amount of activity, some kind of construction project going on, with cars and trucks coming and going. At one point, he’d even ventured down the driveway, simply following a caravan of pickup trucks full of workers. He’d spotted Maryn’s Volvo, parked off to the side of the house, and smiled to himself. She was still here.

After six, when the workers left for the day, it was easy to pull into the lot next door, and hide his vehicle behind the foundation of a burnt-out old house.

It had been ungodly hot, waiting, but finally, darkness fell, and he could see silhouettes of the women moving around inside the house. So far, he hadn’t spotted Maryn, but it didn’t matter. She was there, he knew that. And he could afford to be patient.

Finally, close to nine o’clock, he saw the lights in the house being switched off, one by one. He got out of his vehicle, crept to the edge of the stack of lumber that had been unloaded only hours earlier, and watched while the women filed out of the decrepit old house and piled into a red van. The other three women were dressed stylishly, as if for a night out, but not her. He smiled, seeing Maryn dressed incongruously in cheap jeans and an oversized
T-shirt, with her hair tucked up beneath a long-billed baseball cap. As though that would make her unrecognizable to anybody who knew the real Maryn.

Ebbtide was a ramshackle old wreck of a house, with thick beams, walls of cedar planks, and solid wooden doors. The locks, however, were a different matter. He’d easily jimmied the rusted lock on the kitchen door at the back of the house. Once inside, he’d quickly moved through all the bedrooms to ascertain which one was Maryn’s. He’d cursed silently when he discovered that she, alone among the women, had locked her bedroom door. Not that it had slowed him down much. He’d seen the open window from the beach side of the house, and the old-fashioned catwalk that led to it from
another third-floor door. It had been easy enough to find the door to the attic, and the corresponding window. And somebody, it appeared, had recently taken that same route to Maryn’s room, judging by the fresh-looking splinters on the attic access door.

And how convenient, he marveled, that he’d been provided such a neat and convenient escape route—the steel spiral staircase leading directly from Maryn’s room to the ground floor, and the burnt-out skeleton of the house next to Ebbtide, where his vehicle awaited, behind a clump of shrubbery.

From the looks of things, his timing was impeccable. Their departure was imminent. Maryn’s duffle bag was packed. It took him only a moment to find the laptop case, shoved to the back of the shelf in the closet. He sat down on the room’s only chair to wait. He had all the time in the world.

*   *   *

Eleven o’clock came and went. Julia caught Dorie’s eye and glanced meaningfully at her watch. “Hey, Dorie,” she said. “How much longer before our number comes up?”

“Oh,” Dorie said, catching the meaning. “Uh, well, there were a bunch of requests in front of mine.”

Ellis picked up Julia’s drink and took a sip. “What’s the hurry? The party’s just getting started.”

Julia reached over and put her hand to Ellis’s forehead. “Are you hallucinating? I can’t believe you’re not champing at the bit to get home and finish packing. You didn’t even want to come tonight.”

Ellis pushed her hand away. “I changed my mind. Is that a crime?” She turned to Dorie. “Hey, pass me that karaoke thing.”

Dorie rolled her eyes. “Really? You? You’re going to do karaoke? By yourself?”

But Ellis was flipping through the pages of the catalog, pausing only when she came to the next to the last page. She looked up and glanced over at the bar, and she was sure Ty looked away.

“Yep, this is the one,” she said, getting to her feet. She grabbed a wad of bills from her pocketbook and pushed her way through the crowd towards the karaoke mistress.

“Is she drunk?” Madison asked, looking from Dorie to Julia.

“Drunk or in love. Either way, this ain’t the Ellis we know,” Julia said grimly, and Dorie nodded in agreement.

When Ellis got back to the table, she had another drink. As soon as she wasn’t looking, Julia dumped most of the contents of Ellis’s cup into her own.

Two songs later, the emcee called out, “Ellis. Ellis, baby, where you at?”

A moment later, an Ellis they’d never seen before was prancing around the vest-pocket-sized stage, doing her best to channel Cyndi Lauper singing the anthem that had been theirs in parochial school, when they’d prance around Julia’s princess pink bedroom in their Our Lady of Angels Peter Pan blouses and blue-plaid jumpers, pretend microphones in hand, warbling about how “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Despite dissolving into a fit of nervous hysterical laughter halfway through the first verse when she forgot the words, Ellis’s enthusiasm and confidence grew with every beat, so that by the end of the song, seemingly every woman in the club was on her feet, snaking around the dance floor in an impromptu conga line, chanting over and over, “they just wanna, they just wanna-uh-uh-uh…”

Stuck behind the bar, Ty had to scramble on top of an empty bar stool to catch a glimpse of her. When he did, the slow grin spread across his face again. “Attagirl,” he said softly, to nobody in particular.

When Ellis made it back to their table, pink faced and sweat drenched, the three women stood and applauded. Ellis collapsed into her chair. “I did it!”

“You sure did,” Julia agreed, glancing at her watch. “Now we really probably need to get you home.”

“No!” Dorie cried. “We are not leaving here tonight until we all do our group number.” She gave Julia an accusatory look. “You promised.”

“Fine,” Julia said. She plucked a ten-dollar bill from her pocketbook and strode towards the karaoke mistress.

“Think you could move Dorie and friends in the lineup?” she asked, cupping her hands to the woman’s ear. “One of the girls is pregnant, and we need to get her home pretty soon. And it’s our last night at the beach. Our swan song, you might say.”

The karaoke mistress palmed the bill. “No problem,” she said. “One more song, and you guys are on.”

Julia nodded her thanks and went back to the table, nonchalantly glancing in the direction of the bar. To her satisfaction, she saw Ty, deep in conversation with an older, blond woman. He was gesturing angrily at his watch. She was shaking her head, but a moment later, Julia saw Ty head for the front door.

“We’re next,” Julia announced.

But Ellis wasn’t listening. She’d been surreptitiously watching the bar, wondering if Ty would approach the table, maybe try to catch her attention, or even draw her outside to talk. Now though, she saw him scurrying for the front door, and her heart sank. He hadn’t come anywhere near the house all day. As far as Ty was concerned, she thought bitterly, they’d already said their good-byes.

She picked up her neglected drink and knocked back half its watery contents, then turned her attention back to the stage, where a gaggle of drunken chicks were inexpertly grinding away at The Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha.”

And then the karaoke mistress was calling. “Dorie and friends! All the way from Savannah, Georgia. Come on up here, girls, and show ’em how it’s done!”

Madison crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. But Julia Capelli was having none of it.

“Let’s go,” she said, jerking Madison’s chair backwards. “Showtime!”

Ellis looked at Madison and shrugged. “Come on,” she said. “It’s our last night. Might as well get it over with.”

Dorie herded them all onstage, and they heard the distinctive introductory bass thumps. “Okay,” she said, taking charge. “Julia and I will do the Travolta part. Ellis, you and Madison do Olivia Newton-John.”

And the next moment, the four of them were sashaying across the stage, warbling “Summer Nights” from
Grease
. And when it came to the part about how summer flings don’t mean a thing, Ellis Sullivan sang that verse with newfound wisdom.

50

“That was awesome!” Dorie cried, throwing her arms around her friends at the end of the song.