Summer in the City

  Like you were acting absurd? I wanted to reply, but instead I said, “Andrew, listen, you have all the moves. They just don’t do anything for me. You need a different girl.”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I thought you were different, Jamie,” he said. There was a tone of grave disappointment in his voice. “But you’re like all the other everyday girls, turned on by a stupid jock.”

  Now I was mad. “I’ll tell you what really turns me on—a guy who is there for other people—not a guy who assumes other people are there for him!”

  Andrew frowned. Perhaps the concept was too simple for his great mind.

  “I have your necklace inside. Let me get it,” I said.

  “Keep it! It’s a trinket. It’s worth nothing to me, monetarily or otherwise. Perhaps you never realized how much money my family has.”

  “I had a suspicion,” I said. “And I’m glad to keep the necklace,” I added, thinking of the way Josh’s hands had felt when he freed me of it. “In a strange way, it’s worth a lot to me.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “I know,” I said, and Andrew stomped inside the house.

  Barefoot, with just my softball glove and the rose tucked under my arm, I walked down to The Avenue. I felt better than I had for weeks, for months. Oh, I still hurt something awful over Josh, and I knew there were going to be times at camp when I’d wonder how I’d survive it. But now, seeing my own reflection in the shop windows, I felt surprisingly comfortable—surprisingly happy—with myself.

  Chapter 27

  Saturday evening, right after dinner, Mom started writing, and I could hear from the click of the keys that she was on a tear. Mona dropped by. She had called earlier and asked me to join her and Ted for a movie.

  “Ask me again next week,” I said, as I walked her to the door. “I’ll want to by then. And by the way, girlfriend, you look totally glam tonight. Poor Ted doesn’t have a chance.”

  I waved as the two of them drove away—Ted’s seatbelt alarm going off—then rested back against the steps, stoop-sitting. It was a sultry Saturday night, and down on The Avenue, neon glowed and people strolled by. Every once in a while, I’d see a pair of lovers walking slowly.

  I was glad I was spending the summer here. I felt hopeful for Ted and Mona, and excited about coaching. I was glad to be around Mom. But oh, how I ached! How can you love someone and sit alone on a summer night in the city, and not ache? What I would have done to make him want to be with me.

  I closed my eyes and rested back on my elbows. Inside the house, I heard a sudden burst of laughter. Mom was laughing again—at her own story or at one of our videos—it didn’t matter. We are getting better, I thought.

  Then I heard the screen door open behind me.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  She didn’t reply. I heard the door close, then something landed softly in my lap. I opened my eyes and looked down. The rose.

  “Next time, when you’re asked if someone special gave you that rose, say yes.”

  I didn’t turn around—didn’t breathe—I couldn’t. What was Josh doing here? Why had he come back? I picked up the rose, touching one worn satin petal with the tip of my finger.

  A second rose landed in my lap, a matching rose…. No, the matching rose. I stared at it, confused for a moment, then spun around.

  “Hi, Hon,” he said.

  I gazed in disbelief at Josh wearing a tall red wig, green cat’s-eye sunglasses, and a feathery boa.

  “Josh?”

  “Girl, these heels are killing me,” he said, then kicked off the pink mules. “Mind if sit down?” He crouched next to me on the steps, then removed his wig and slipped off the boa.

  “You?” I said, gasping for air. “You’re my Baltimore Hon?”

  “I left my leopard-skin pants and blouse at home—didn’t want to get too many catcalls between Waverly and here.”

  My head was reeling. “You—you’re my Hon?”

  “I have to tell you, girlfriend,” he said, removing the glittering sunglasses, “my grandmother was wondering what the heck you were doing with the rose from her old hat.”

  I glanced down at the roses in my lap. “I can’t believe it!”

  “She knew I lost a bet and had to dress up. She even found the shoes for me. But the roses in my hair, that was a last-minute bit of inspiration. When I split a seam putting on my outfit, Sam found the roses in her sewing box.”

  “Sam!”

  “Yeah, we thought you’d recognize him from the HonFest, since he wasn’t in drag that day, but I guess the fact that there was a whole group of guys from the team, you didn’t really notice.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Believe it,” he said. “Jamie, try and believe. Love at first sight isn’t just a fairy tale. Some people do fall head over heels—or in my case,” he added dryly, “over the street curb.”

  I dropped my head into my hands.

  “This afternoon, when Gran asked you about the person who gave you the rose, and you looked uncertain, I thought maybe I still had a chance.”

  With his hand, he gently lifted my face toward his. “Would you give me a chance?”

  “A chance?” I echoed.

  “That’s all I’m asking for.”

  “A chance?” I repeated in disbelief.

  “I’ve been taking notes. I’ve learned a few tricks in the last two weeks.”

  “You’re asking me for a chance? I am so freakin’ in love with you!” I burst out, then, realizing what I had said and how I had said it, buried my face in my hands again.

  “Are you?” Josh’s voice was soft and full of wonder.

  I raised my head and saw the gold light shimmering in his eyes.

  “Oh, Jamie,” he whispered, and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me tight against him. I loved the way he felt, the strength in his fingers, the roughness of his cheek. He started kissing me and kept on kissing me till I was breathless. Then he laughed, his deep, wonderful, intoxicating laugh.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought you were with Noelle. I thought you couldn’t stand me. What went wrong—how did it just go right?”

  “I think it all started when Ms. Mahler assigned you to my team,” he said. “You were right—I didn’t want you on it—but you imagined the wrong reason. Jamie, think how it was for me. After laughing all season at guys who fell for girls and couldn’t keep their minds on the game, I take one look at you and make a total ass of myself in front of my teammates. I spend all Saturday and Sunday thinking of you, thinking of nothing but you, wishing I’d had the nerve to leave my phone number with the rose. The next morning, I pull myself together and go to work. Ms. Mahler calls me over because she has a problem: You.

  “I think I’m hallucinating, but I snap out of it when you try to sneak in a guy’s stick, then check my shot.” He laughed.

  “Jamie, of course I didn’t want to be your coach! I was supposed to be watching your footwork, when all I wanted to do was admire your legs. I was telling you to drink water, and all the while wanting to kiss that little trickle running down your neck. You were making me crazy!”

  “I—I didn’t think I could do that to a guy,” I said.

  “After work, I kept busy so I wouldn’t think of you, running errands for Gran, like getting the autograph that I had totally forgotten after seeing you at HonFest. And who answers the door? You—in that sexy red thing!”

  I laughed.

  “I couldn’t resist playing basketball with you.”

  “That’s when I first”—I searched for the words—“noticed, when I first felt…when I became really aware each time we touched.”

  “Was it?” he asked softly, then the golden light in his eyes flashed hot. “And out popped good old Don Juan. Or Lord Byron—wasn’t he the stud poet who wrote ‘Don Juan’?”

  I shrugged. “I should know after all the lit lessons I’ve had lately.”

  “He made it clear that you were goin
g out with him. Good, I told myself, it’s better to know she’s taken. I was back in control on Thursday morning—until you told me about the bet.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am sorry.”

  “You so nicely explained that the reason you were betting Melanie and jeopardizing my job is that they had challenged you to seduce me, and I wasn’t your type.”

  “I was determined not to fall for a jock.”

  “When you took Hannah’s job, I didn’t know how I was going to get over you, seeing you all the time.”

  I rested my hand against his cheek. He turned his face to kiss my palm.

  “When I introduced you to Sam at lunch, it was obvious that you didn’t remember him. I made him swear not to tell you that I had been the Baltimore Hon.”

  “He kept your secret.”

  “He kept a bigger one,” Josh replied. “He figured out why I had gotten the assignments changed and told me I should fess up—he even asked Noelle to switch cleanup jobs with me so I’d end up at the gym after camp and could talk to you alone.”

  “That sneak! And here I am thinking he’s naive.”

  “Sam is naive only about himself,” Josh said. “Anyway, any chance of admitting my feelings went down the tube when Lord Byron showed up with the bouquet. I gave you one old satin rose, and he shows up with eight long-stems. I didn’t know how to deal with it. We got into an argument, and the next thing I knew you were asking me if we could just be friends.”

  The dreaded words. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead.

  “I see the headache is contagious,” Josh observed.

  I laid my head against him. It was pure happiness to be resting against his chest. “So that’s why, when I invited Sam to the baseball game, he kept pushing me to ask you.”

  Josh nodded. “Sam and Ted—two unlikely guys to be matchmaking.”

  “Ted?”

  “He called me this morning, telling me he was worried about you and Rita. Since Gran has wanted to meet your mother, I figured it was a good excuse to show up and make sure you were okay.

  “When I got here, when I looked at you, it was torture. I was just trying to get through the moment. Then I saw the rose.” Josh touched one of the satin flowers lying in my lap. “As soon as I got home, I called Mona and asked what she knew about it. Then I called Ted.”

  “I never mentioned it to them.”

  “Ted suddenly started talking. He thought Andrew was the wrong guy for you, and had decided that I was the right one. Tuesday night was a setup. Oh, he was really nervous about asking Mona out, but he had also figured that the best way to get you and me out together was to convince us that if we came, we would put Mona at ease.”

  “And I thought he was naive. That leaves just me, the last one to figure things out.”

  Josh smiled. “Mona hadn’t. She was ready to crown me Stupid Jock of the Year.”

  And dump you in her pond of princes, I thought. Aloud I said, “Caitlin told Sam that Noelle had a date Friday with a guy she had been wanting since forever. And then I saw you under the pines with her.”

  He laughed. “That was a classic.”

  “It wasn’t funny to me,” I replied, and was surprised to find how close to the surface those tears still were.

  “Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you didn’t see me kiss her.”

  “No, I left before that. You were lying there, looking so content.”

  “I was sound asleep. I had been losing a lot of it over you. By afternoon, when Noelle got to work with me, I was really grouchy. She got tired of it and chewed me out on Wednesday, then, on Thursday, tried to help me with lunch away from the dining hall. I never got lunch, I just slept.”

  I wanted to laugh, but the pain was still too fresh to me; all I could do was wrap my arms around him and hold on tight.

  “Oh, baby,” he said, and not in the way my mother did.

  I tried to keep my voice steady: “When I saw you giving back her clothes on Friday morning…”

  He pulled back and looked at me. “You thought we had been together? Jamie, no!” he said, pulling me against him. “No, no, no!”

  “But the expression on your face—you looked as if I had caught you.”

  “Because I thought you had. I thought you’d figured out that I was the guy from HonFest. Noelle’s sister had lent me the clothes, but I was too bulky for them. I was finally returning the outfit.”

  “But our kiss,” I persisted. “You said it wasn’t anything like Andrew’s poem. You just walked away after it. Just walked away!”

  “Andrew’s poem didn’t leave my hands shaking. Andrew’s images didn’t make me feel like my heart was about to explode. His words didn’t make me feel like the world was caving in on me because you weren’t really mine to kiss. I had to get away—it hurt so bad!”

  I pressed my face against Josh’s chest. One by one he kissed away the tears. He kissed both eyelids and traced my mouth with the tip of his finger.

  “I love you, Jamie. God, how I love you.”

  Chapter 28

  June, one year later

  “Comfy?” I asked, lying on a blanket with Josh, on earth made soft by pine needles.

  “Mmmm,” Josh replied.

  “I love it under these trees.”

  “Mhmmn.”

  “I love holding you close.”

  “Me too,” Josh said softly.

  “I get so turned on when you read organic chemistry.”

  “Me too,” Josh murmured, then suddenly raised his head from where it had been resting on my stomach. “What?”

  I laughed at him.

  He closed the book and turned his head to kiss me on the tummy. I stopped laughing when his kiss traveled up my arm to that special place on my neck.

  “We have a meeting to go to,” I reminded him.

  “I’m in an important one now,” Josh replied, his lips targeting that one place on my neck, teasing me.

  “You know what happens when you kiss me there,” I said, sounding a little breathless.

  “That’s why I’m kissing you there.”

  I wrapped my arms around him, happily giving in, and heard him getting a little breathless, when a car turned into the lot near the pines. I sighed. “It’s probably Ms. Mahler.”

  “Don’t worry. She and I are a thing of the past.”

  “Josh!”

  He laughed and rolled off of me.

  We were waiting for the first meeting of Stonegate’s summer camp. Most of us had come back for another year, but some things were going to be different. Mona was coaching girls’ varsity lacrosse. Josh was spending mornings at Hopkins, having switched his major to pre-med, and needing to hunker down on the toughest courses when he wasn’t playing lacrosse. Noelle was traveling, heading to Greece with her boyfriend and his family—no, not the guy she had been waiting to go out with since forever; that had lasted two weeks. And not the guy after him. After a while, Mona and I had lost track of all her boyfriends, but anyway, she wasn’t returning to camp.

  Ted was working at the lab again this summer. With Mona having won a lacrosse scholarship to Duke, they were saving money for the commute between North Carolina and Maryland. I knew something that Mona didn’t: He was going to show up at the dining hall next week bearing a huge bouquet of roses to celebrate their one-year anniversary. I couldn’t wait to see her face.

  Sam was returning and would keep Josh laughing when he got too intense about school. Todd and Jake were back, and at the last minute, Caitlin had signed on.

  “Hi, guys!”

  “Caitlin!” I greeted her, as she entered the shady pines from the parking lot. “It’s great to see you.”

  She smiled, her cheeks turning a little pink. She was wearing cool sunglasses, which she had pushed up on her head, making her red hair cascade down her back, and a shirt like the one she had made Mona, her own design.

  “You’re looking good,” I said, “really good.”

  “Thanks. I got my braces
off.”

  “Braces? I didn’t know you had them.”

  “Because I always smiled with my mouth closed,” she replied. The confidence and glow I had seen a moment ago dimmed a little, shyness taking over.

  “Well, you look terrific,” Josh told her. “Heard you’re going to the Corcoran next year for art.”

  That dazzling smile again. “I’m really excited. It’s like a dream come true. Listen,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, “before the others come, there’s something I need to ask you guys.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ve been thinking about it since last June. I thought maybe I’d forget over the winter, but I didn’t.”

  “Go on,” Josh prompted.

  “You won’t tell anybody I asked you this.”

  “No, not if you don’t want us to,” I replied.

  “Okay. This is really dumb. Even if I get the right answer, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. I mean, I know what I should do, but anyway…”

  “Spit it out, Caitlin.”

  “Is Sam dating anyone?”

  “Sam?”

  Josh turned to me, a slow, conspiratorial smile lighting his face.

  “Do you like baseball, Caitlin?” I asked. “Do you like the harbor at night and water taxi rides when everything’s sparkling?”

  Ah, summer in the city.

  About the Author

  ELIZABETH CHANDLER has written picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, and young adult romances (including the popular Kissed by an Angel trilogy) under a variety of names. As Mary Claire Helldorfer, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and loves stories, cats, baseball, and Bob—not necessarily in that order.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Credits

  Cover art © 2006 by Sasha Illingworth

  Cover design by Karin Paprochi

  Copyright

  SUMMER IN THE CITY. Copyright © 2006 by Mary Claire Helldorfer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.