Where the Stars Still Shine (10 page)

“I can’t get over your hair,” she says, as I fold a pair of denim shorts into a drawer. She’s repeated it about a million times since I had my hair cut earlier at the mall, but now the tangles, brassy ends, and dreadlocked bits are gone, and the curls are full and soft. It doesn’t even feel like my hair. “It looks amazing. I’m so jealous.”

“Thanks. For—everything,” I say. “And I’m sorry about what I said earlier.”

“Ooh! That reminds me.” Kat ignores my apology and rummages through the pile of bags for the small one she said was a surprise. Inside is a box of tiny white star-shaped Christmas lights. “Every girl needs a string
of these for her room,” she says. “Not only are they beautiful, but when you have fairy lights, you’re never completely in the dark.”

The lump in my throat won’t let me speak, but she doesn’t wait for a reply. Instead she hands me one end of the string. “Let’s hang them now.”

We loop them around the curtain rod on the window beside my bed. It takes only a minute and when we finish, Kat plugs her end into the outlet. With daylight still streaming in through the window, the stars are pale yellow and weak.

“Well, okay, they don’t seem very special at the moment,” she says. “But later? They’ll be spectacular.”

Following my ugly outburst in the hallway earlier, I’m dreading dinner. Although I’m not certain I owe Greg and Phoebe an apology for my feelings, I should probably apologize for being such a bitch. I don’t want to face them, though, so I drag my feet until the last minute, looking at my new shirts, paging through books I can’t wait to read, and smelling the new pomegranate-scented body wash that came from the store selling nothing but lotions and soaps.

There is no one in the kitchen when I go inside, but it’s still warm from the oven and I hear voices in the dining room. I round the corner, going through the doorway, and stop abruptly.

Alex Kosta is sitting at the dining-room table.

He looks up and his eyes go wide for a split second,
then he levels that devastating grin at me and my whole body feels as if it’s about to spontaneously combust, leaving me a pile of embarrassed ash on the carpet. What the hell is he doing here?

“Hey, Callie.” Greg’s tone is pleasant, as if this morning never happened. Right now, though, I think I’d prefer an uncomfortably silent meal with him, over one with the last person to see me naked. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you this morning that we’d be having company for dinner. This is Phoebe’s brother, Alex.”

Oh my God. Her
brother
? Has he known all along?

Alex stands politely as I come around the table to the empty place beside him. Although his eyes follow me the whole time, his expression is inscrutable. It’s only his neck below his curls—flushed pink the way my face must surely be—that gives away his embarrassment at the awkwardness of this moment.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, as I sit down, and I’m torn between wanting to punch him in the mouth, and wanting to drag him under the table and kiss his face off. Instead, I mumble a hello and turn spreading my napkin on my lap into an Olympic event.

“Callie, your hair looks gorgeous,” Phoebe says, breaking bits of roasted chicken into a small bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy for Joe.

“You look like Super Mario,” Tucker says.

Alex laughs as he takes a dinner roll and hands me the basket. “Do you mean Princess Peach, buddy?”

Tucker nods. “Yeah, only Callie’s hair is not yellow and she doesn’t wear a pink dress that’s long.”

Joe giggles and points a tiny finger at me. “Peach.”

“I’d take that as a compliment,” Greg says. “Tuck doesn’t have a broad basis for comparison and Peach
is
pretty cute, as far as video-game girls go. And if Joe agrees? It’s some seriously good hair.”

All of them are looking at me and it makes me want to hide. “Thanks.”

“Kat didn’t go crazy with my credit card today, did she?” Greg asks.

I think about all those bags. It never occurred to me that she was paying for everything with his money, but of course, it makes sense. How else would she have been able to afford it all? “I, um—”

“I’m kidding, Callie,” he says. “Did you get everything you needed?”

“I think so.”

The room goes quiet for a moment, the only sound the clinking of silverware against plates.

“Alex,” Phoebe says, “Callie’s going to start working for Theo tomorrow at the shop. Maybe after dinner you could give her a crash course in sponges, so when the tourists ask questions, she’ll be able to answer.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “No problem.”

Another silence falls, broken only when Joe points and calls me Peach again. Everyone chuckles nervously and fails to make eye contact. This is a million times worse than the dinner I’d imagined.

“So, Alex, what happened to your face?” Phoebe asks.

It’s only then I notice a deep pink splotch—a bruise so new it hasn’t had the chance to turn black and blue yet—on his cheekbone.

“Bumped into a fist,” he says. “But you should see the other guy.” He laughs it off, but his eyes are grim. He’s hiding something, but I don’t think Phoebe notices because her mouth is too occupied with frowning.

“You know Mom would not approve of this behavior,” she says. “You should be in college, not wasting your life and getting in bar fights.”

“Well, I’m not.” The muscles in his left arm flex and he puts down his silverware. “Did you invite me over to nag me again? Because I’ve got some leftover pizza back on the boat.”

I focus on buttering my dinner roll.

“I just worry about you,” she says.

“Don’t,” Alex says. “I’m fine.”

“Mom asked about you today. She misses you.”

“Phoebs—” There’s a warning in his tone and he looks as if he’s ready to push away from the table.

“I’m sorry,” Phoebe says quickly. “I’m sorry. Don’t go. Please.”

Alex doesn’t leave, but the rest of the meal seems to stretch into forever. The tension zig-zags across the table, connecting us all like an invisible spiderweb. When we’ve finished eating and there’s no more excuse not to talk, I stand and start gathering the plates. “I’ll do the dishes.”

“Thank you, Callie.” Phoebe removes Joe from his high chair. “Come on, little man, time for a bath.”

As I fill the kitchen sink with soapy water, I hear Greg tell Tucker that it’s his bath time, too.

“Can Uncle Alex read me a bedtime story?”

Alex’s response is muted, but from the delighted sound Tucker makes, I can guess the answer. A few moments later, Alex comes into the kitchen with the remaining plates. “So that was all kinds of awkward, huh?”

I scrub at a bit of food stuck to one of the plates but don’t look at him. “Did you know?”

“No.” He adds the plates to the water, then takes a drying towel from one of the drawers. He stands beside me and I can feel the warmth from his body spanning the space between us. “But when Phoebe asked me over for dinner to meet Greg’s daughter, Callie, I finally put it all together.”

I rinse a bowl and shove it at him. “You really expect me to believe that?”

“Yeah, I do.” The bowl drips water onto the floor as he looks at me. “I’ve been sponging full-time since I was seventeen, and for the past year I’ve been working two jobs. I don’t even have time for my
own
life, let alone time to pay attention to all the little details of Greg’s life.”

I wonder if I should be insulted that he considers me a little detail, but I decide I’m kind of flattered that he’s the only person for whom my coming back here is not a big deal. I hand him the next plate. “Why did you lie to Phoebe about your face?”

His eyebrows pull together. “What makes you think I was lying?”

“I’ve spent a lifetime keeping secrets,” I say. “I know a lie when I hear one.”

Alex puts the plate on the counter and hooks his finger through a belt loop on my new jeans, pulling me against him. Someone could walk into the room at any minute, but when his mouth finds mine, caring isn’t even a consideration. He lifts me onto the counter, wedging himself between my knees.

“We should not be doing this,” I whisper, sinking my fingers into his curls.

“No, we shouldn’t.” He slides his hands up my thighs
to my hips, his thumbs grazing the bare skin at the top of my jeans, under the hem of my shirt. “We should get out of here.”

My mouth is about to form the word “yes,” when the sound of giggling boys drifts out from the bathroom. Alex pulls away from me, blinking as if he’s surfaced from sleep. He runs his fingers through his hair, making that one curl spring out in a random direction. “Wow.”

I reach up and put it in place. “You forgot about story time, didn’t you,
Uncle Alex
?”

“Completely.” He slides me down from the counter-top, holding me against him. He draws his thumb across my lower lip as if he’s thinking about kissing me again. I hold my breath, waiting to see if he does. “We could still make a break for it,” he says.

“We could—”

Alex releases me and bends to pick up the towel he dropped. There are damp handprints—my handprints—on the back of his T-shirt, and I feel an inexplicable surge of possessiveness, as if I’ve marked him as mine. Which is ridiculous, because soon the prints will be dry and no one will ever know. I return to the task of washing the dishes and, except for still being able to feel the imprint of his lips on mine, it’s as if we weren’t just making out.

“—only I’m grounded from the last time we, um—”

He laughs. “Already?”

Tucker shuffles into the kitchen a short time later wearing space-themed footed pajamas and carrying a book about Spider-Man. Alex scrubs a hand over his face and only I hear the groan.

“Spider-Man, again?” He swings Tucker up onto his shoulders. “Come on, buddy, let’s go pick out something we haven’t read yet.”

I finish up the dishes by myself and stand alone in the kitchen. I consider joining Greg and Phoebe in the living room, where I can hear them discussing which on-demand movie they should watch. I don’t want to sit through any more awkward silences. And when I think about Alex, reading bedtime stories to Tucker and Joe, I’m not sure I can maintain the charade of pretending we’ve never met. So I slip out the back door.

The fairy lights glow strong and white now that it’s dark outside. It’s odd that such a small thing can make such a big difference, but Kat was right—the lights make everything seem softer, prettier, and they keep the darkness at bay. I think about reading one of my new books—maybe the Hiaasen novel I bought so I can understand why Alex keeps five of them in his
sink—but I don’t. I think about taking my guitar out of its case, where it’s been since I arrived in Tarpon Springs—but I don’t do that, either. I strip down to my bra and underwear—new ones that didn’t come in a sack with seven other pairs—and lie on my bed, looking up at the string of electric lights and remembering the feel of his hands on my skin. I trace the edge of my lower lip with my fingertip, but it’s not the same as kissing.

I’m not sure what time it is when I hear a soft knock on my door, but all the lights in the house are off so the whole family is probably asleep for the night. I don’t bother getting dressed because I’m almost certain I know who it is.

I let him in.

“Jesus, Callie.” Alex stares at me and there’s something in his eyes I can’t name. It makes me nervous and live-wire exposed, and I reach for him to make him stop looking at me that way. As his arms come around me, he whispers in my ear, “You are so damn beautiful.”

My face flushes, but in the glow of the fairy lights I don’t think he can tell. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know.”

My new bra has a clasp in the front instead of the back, but as he kisses me, Alex seems to already know this. He slides the bra off and lets it drop to the floor, then does the same with my underwear. This is not the
same as last time when our clothes were being shed quickly, and at the same time. He’s still wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and it makes me uncomfortable. I yank the end of the sheet around me, holding it closed over my nakedness. “Take off your clothes.”

He laughs a little, then his face goes serious when he sees my hand shaking. “Callie? What’s wrong?”

“I would feel better if you took off your clothes.”

He probably thinks I’m a complete freak, but I can’t tell him that Frank would remove my pajamas and sometimes open his pants to rub himself, but he never, ever took off his clothes. I wouldn’t blame Alex if he left right now and never returned. Except he tilts his head and looks at me as if I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve—and then he takes off his clothes.

We have to start all over from the beginning, and I’m not sure why he even bothers when he could easily go find someone less damaged to have sex with him, but Alex kisses me and slides his fingers through my hair in a way that makes me feel as beautiful as he claims I am, until I release my grip on the sheet.

“You wanna get ice cream?” he asks later, as I lie with my head on his chest. My eyes don’t want to stay open, so I close them and listen to the thump of his heartbeat as it returns to its normal pace beneath my ear. His fingers move through my hair, making me shiver.