Courting Carlyn Read online

  He stands up from getting a ball and leans in, lowering his voice. “It means, if you run around here in a bikini, I might get distracted, and we’ve still got a long summer ahead of us.”

  I’m usually a quick thinker, but it takes me a minute to process the fact that Vaughn Yarborough may possibly be envisioning me in a bikini to the point that he thinks that might be distracting for him. I, and every other girl at the club, by the way, have had a secret crush on him since about age twelve. The idea of him finding me attractive or even thinking about me in a bikini when he usually dates famous actresses, pop stars, or otherwise totally hot girls who I’ve never even considered myself on the same planet with is an unexpected ego boost.

  A stray tennis ball catches my eye, so I casually go over and pick it up. I stroll to the ball machine where Vaughn is and lean in toward him. “My bikini and I are going swimming. If you care to join us, we’ll try our best not to maul you.”

  I drop the ball in the hop and walk away.

  Chapter Four

  Vaughn

  I sit in my cabin, trying to read a book one of my favorite podcasters wrote, but I keep getting to the end of the page and realizing I didn’t comprehend a single word. I glance out the window in the direction of the tree line, thinking about Carlyn on the other side swimming in the lake. I love reading and can usually do it anywhere from a busy airport to the locker room ten minutes before my match is about to start, but for some reason, Carlyn has me so distracted I can’t even finish a page. I finally say screw it and put on my trunks.

  As I approach the lake, I blink Carlyn into focus. She floats through the water doing the backstroke like a mermaid, and I feel that familiar burn in my chest when I think a girl’s hot. She’s always been cute in sort of a geeky kind of way, but she’s grown up or something since last summer. Her body’s stretched out, her weight having settled into all the right spots.

  I walk to the end of the dock and sit, letting my legs dangle off.

  She opens her eyes. “Is this allowed? Fred may be around.”

  I watch my feet alternate, moving back and forth, my calves scraping against the wood. “I’m a risk-taker.”

  She smiles and goes under, coming back up with her blond hair slicked back. “Will you hand me that inner tube behind you, please?”

  I point to a big rubber float with handles. “This thing?”

  “Yep. Thanks.”

  I toss it in her direction and realize it’s tied to the dock with a rope. She pulls herself up onto it and lies back, holding on to the handles. “Here’s where you’ll find me anytime we have a break.”

  I can’t help a little smile. “Noted.”

  “You won’t get in?”

  It’s not that I’m weird about it. It’s more that I like the current view. “I’m good.”

  She eyes me, sort of like she’s considering something.

  “What?”

  “So your image problem…I assume this has something to do with the famous girls you date.”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “How do you meet them?”

  I glance around at the woods and the water. “I don’t know. I’ve been to Wimbledon a few times. There’s usually parties going on that celebrities come to. Charity tournaments. Jeffrey knows people. I met Andrea at my hotel in London.”

  She gives me a look. “Andrea? I assume you mean Andrea Iverson?”

  “Yeah.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “I’m not name dropping. She’s my friend.”

  “Okay,” she says with a chuckle.

  “I’m serious. She’s a normal person just like you and me.”

  She looks down, running her finger through the lake water. “How long did you date her?”

  “We didn’t date.”

  She cocks her head to the side. “I saw the video, Vaughn.”

  “Oh, so you’re cyber-stalking me?”

  “No,” she says quickly. “I mean, everyone at the club was talking about it. We all watched it.”

  “Well, watch it again. It’s totally innocent.”

  “Please.”

  I push up off the dock to stretch out my arms, and maybe flex my muscles a little for her.

  “How does that work?” she asks. “Dating on the road?”

  I let myself drop back to the dock. “Difficult.”

  “Have you ever had a girlfriend?” she asks. It’s a little forward, but I kind of like it.

  “Define girlfriend?”

  She gives me an exhausted look. “You would know if you’d had one, don’t you think?”

  I shrug. “I’ve had repeat dates.”

  “What’s the most dates you’ve been on with one girl?”

  “You can’t expect me to remember that.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “What about you? Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

  She lifts an eyebrow. “We were talking about you.”

  “And now we’re talking about you.”

  She rolls her eyes, but with a little smile. She’s cute when she does that. “I was in a long-distance relationship for a while.”

  “Oh, yeah? Who with?” I ask.

  “Just this guy I knew from this…circuit I’m a part of.”

  “Circuit? What kind of circuit?”

  She cuts her eyes at me and then covers her stomach with her arms. “I’m sort of on the speedcubing circuit.”

  “Speedcubing?”

  “Yeah, like, the Rubik’s Cube. Solving it really fast.”

  “Like how fast?”

  “The fastest in the world is less than five seconds.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s impressive.”

  “You can YouTube the video of it. It’s really amazing.”

  “How fast are you?’

  “Oh, nothing like that.”

  “How fast?”

  She adjusts herself on the float. “I’m not that good. My best is like fourteen seconds.”

  “Are you telling me that you can solve one of those colored cubes in fourteen seconds?”

  She lets a proud grin show through, just barely. “Yeah, well, probably not fourteen, but definitely in the fifteen range.”

  “I gotta see that.”

  She shrugs as if it’s no big deal, but I can tell this is something really important to her…which makes me wonder. “So the guy you were in the relationship with, is he the under five seconds guy?”

  She laughs. “Oh God no. I mean that guy is awesome, and actually really cute, but no. It was another guy.”

  “How long did you date the guy?”

  “A little over a year, I think. But we weren’t like super exclusive or anything.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “California…San Diego area. We met at a competition in Vegas my dad took me to.”

  “You competed?”

  “Oh, no. Not at fourteen seconds. But I went to see it…be a part of it all.”

  I pick up my phone off the dock and google speedcubing, which pulls up the video she was talking about. She’s right. It’s nothing short of amazing watching this guy solve the puzzle in less than five seconds. I back up so I can see his face this time. She thinks this guy’s cute. I’m better looking than him, aren’t I?

  “Is the guy you dated in any of these videos?”

  “Yeah.” She tells me how to pull him up, and then I watch. An East Asian kid does his competition, coming in at 6.1 seconds.

  “Damn,” I say, more impressed with the guy who did it in under five, but I don’t tell her that. I guess you’d have to be smart to do this. So she dates smart guys, just like her. Figures. “How often did you see him?”

  “A few times, actually. My dad and I sort of got a little obsessed with the competitions for a while. We traveled to Dallas, St. Louis, and once to Seattle. My dad had like a gazillion miles from some credit card he’d been using for years, so we found cheap flights and stayed in really crappy hotels.”

  The smile o
n her face indicates just how much she enjoyed those trips, and I have to wonder if it was to see her boyfriend or if it was the time spent with her dad. I try to imagine a world where my dad would take off from work and his other family and take me on a trip just to spend time with me. Hysterical.

  “So do you still talk to this guy?”

  She frowns. “Not like we used to. Not since we hooked up last February.”

  I really wish my generation would come up with a more specific term than hookup to describe sex, because it could also mean they just hooked up and talked…or they hooked up and kissed and went over the shirt. Not that it matters, of course.

  “So how did high school work?” she asks. “You were based out of Cedar Prep, right?”

  “Yeah. I went there when I was home, but I was gone so much, it was almost like a homeschool program.”

  “Was it hard, focusing on schoolwork with the pressure of matches bearing down?”

  I shrug. School’s always been sort of like a bee buzzing around my head that I couldn’t swat away, but with her being a brain, she probably wouldn’t get that. “I guess.”

  “What do you want to study at Avery?” she asks.

  I huff a laugh. “I have no idea. I’ve always been so focused on tennis.”

  She gives me half a smile and averts her gaze like something I said made her nervous. She looks back in my direction, but not right at me. “Did you miss out on a lot with all your travel?”

  I shrug. “Probably. I missed my senior prom.”

  “Oh, wow. I’m so sorry.” she says, her expression turning serious.

  I wave her off, because she looks sad for me, and I’m okay about it, I guess. “It’s fine. I didn’t want to go, anyway. Kids just go to get drunk and lose their virginity, and I didn’t need to do either of those.”

  “Well nobody needs to get drunk. Do you drink?”

  “I shouldn’t. It happens sometimes, though.”

  “What, the alcohol leaps into your mouth?”

  I narrow my gaze at her. “You’re not going to let me get away with much of anything this summer, are you?”

  She grins down at her feet, pulling them up flat on the float, knees to the sky.

  “Did you go to yours?” I ask.

  She tries to reduce her grin, but she’s having trouble holding it in. “Yeah.”

  “Man, you must have had a really good time.”

  “Why would you say that?” she asks, looking guiltier than a kid with chocolate all over her mouth.

  I smile. “I can see that by the look on your face. Tell me about it. Where was it?”

  She waves me off. “Just at our school…in the gym.”

  “Who’d you go with? Cube guy?”

  “Just friends…a group.”

  “C’mon, give me more. Give me your experience.”

  She stares at me, looking from one of my eyes to the other, like she can find some sort of permission in them. “It was…neat.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “This was the funnest night of your life, and all you’re giving me is neat?”

  “Okay, it was epic, like a fairy tale except without Prince Charming.”

  “You didn’t like your date?”

  “No, I liked him fine. He was very much a gentleman.” She says it like the matter is closed, but there’s something in her expression that says more.

  I lean in. “Do you wish he wasn’t?”

  She rolls her eyes, trying to hold back a grin. “Stay away from me, you perv,” she says, and then rolls off the float and into the water.

  “That’s going to be kind of hard,” I shout as she swims away from me.

  Damn, this summer’s going to be tougher to survive than I thought.

  Chapter Five

  Vaughn

  I lay in bed, the light of the old-school digital alarm clock next to me the only illumination of the room. I’m not sure the last time I was in such utter and complete darkness. A defunct light sits high on a pole between the two cabins. I radioed Fred with the walkie he gave me tonight to make him aware that the bulb needed changing, but since a sixty-year-old man on a ladder in the pitch-black dark isn’t the smartest scenario, it’s going to be tomorrow morning before he can get to it.

  I text Jamison what’s up, and nothing is, so that’s that. I wonder what Carlyn’s doing in her cabin. Is she reading? Solving that cube? Sleeping?

  I sit upright at a knock at the door. It’s not even a loud knock, but unexpected. I imagine Fred in his boxers, his belly hanging over the waistband, with a lantern to set on the picnic table or something.

  I flip on the bedside lamp and go to the door in my own boxers, shirtless. From what I’ve already come to know about him, I imagine it’s tough to offend him. But I open the door to find Carlyn standing in front of me wearing pajama pants that pool at her bare feet and a hoodie, her arms crossed over her chest.

  She blinks with her mouth hanging open, her gaze drawn to my abs. I grip the door, flexing my biceps, secretly thanking Jeffrey for making me do all those pushups. “What’s up?”

  She glances around the yard. “What are those noises?”

  I shrug. “Crickets, frogs, cicadas.”

  “No, I mean the howling.”

  “There’s howling?”

  “Hell yeah, there’s howling.”

  I smile. I’ve never heard her cuss before. She must be pretty freaked out. I open the door farther and crane my neck toward the house, which looks still as a rock. “Get inside before Fred sees you standing with me in my underwear.”

  She steps inside and shakes her arms out. “It’s warm in here. Don’t you have your air conditioner on?”

  “It’s busted, or it needs Freon, or something.” I pull a pair of gym shorts out of the dresser and put them on. “What’s up?”

  She closes her arms over her chest. “Nothing.”

  I stand there looking her up and down, not an inch of skin showing anywhere. “Well, I think if you would have come in here to hook up with me you would have worn less clothes. So why are you here really?”

  Her expression goes tight, and she sort of glares at me. “I’m not here to hook up with you. You’ve drawn a very clear line about that, I believe.” She turns her back to me, walking over to the air conditioner and putting her hands in front of it.

  “Are you scared?” I ask.

  She jerks her head around. “No. I just wondered what that howling was. Why is it so dark out here?”

  “Why don’t you sleep with your light on?”

  “I can’t sleep with the lights on.” She frowns. “I tried.”

  I hold my hand out to one of the beds. “You want to sit down?”

  She sits on the edge of the mattress, eyeing the pile of folded sheets and pillowcase on the end of the bed.

  “Do you want to sleep in here tonight?” I ask, hoping she’ll say no, but sort of wanting her to say yes.

  She releases her tightened shoulders. “Oh. No, thanks.” She taps her heels a mile a minute.

  “Get up,” I say.

  “What?”

  “I’m making this bed for you.”

  “No, don’t. I can’t. You can’t.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll set the alarm for five o’clock so you can get back to your cabin before Fred wakes up.”

  “No, seriously. I’ll mess up the sheets.”

  “Do you really think the boys coming to stay here are going to be offended that a beautiful girl slept in one of the beds? Hell, they’d be arm wrestling for this one if they knew.” Color seeps through her cheeks, and she looks down at her feet, trying to contain a grin. I go to the bed closest to mine. “Fine, I’ll make up this one.”

  She doesn’t argue. “It’s so dark out there,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen darkness like this.”

  “I know. You don’t realize how dark the night can be until you’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I’ll be fine when the other girls arrive. It’s just, the s
ecurity guard isn’t here yet, and with the light out, and it being my first night here, and the howling. What was that howling? Wolves?”

  I tuck the fitted sheet under the mattress. “Wolves aren’t indigenous to this area. I’m sure it was a bear.”

  “A bear? Do bears howl?”

  I let out a chuckle. “You are way too easy.”

  She shoots me a glare. “What was it, seriously?”

  “Probably a coyote.”

  “What do coyotes do?”

  “Walk around, forage for food. I’ve heard they have a sweet tooth for speedcubers.”

  “Ha. Ha.” She stands and goes to sit on my bed, leaning down to the bottom of my nightstand where I have my books lined up. I get a little uneasy feeling as she stares at them. There’s something very personal to me about someone else looking through my bookshelf. What I read is a piece of who I am…sort of like a list of stuff I like that reveals something about me to someone else without words, and leaves me open to their judgment. I saw her bookshelf earlier today, though, so I guess we’re even.

  She looks at me with a big smile. “You brought these for the kids, didn’t you?” She shakes her head looking off at the wall. “God, I’m so selfish. Why didn’t I think to do that?”

  I shake a pillow into the case and lay it on the bed, warmth spreading from my neck up to my ears. “Mm-hmm,” I lie.

  “I loved Freak the Mighty. We read that in Mrs. Howell’s class in sixth grade.” She scans the shelf, a smile on her face. “Are there any you haven’t read yet?”

  “Yeah, a few.”

  “Which are your favorites?”

  I shrug. “I like The Giver.”

  She picks it out and turns it over in her hand. “That’s a good one. I liked the movie even better.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “You’re kidding. You’ve got to.” She picks up another one. “Oh my gosh, I love this book.” She holds up The Outsiders. “She was sixteen when she wrote this.”

  I blink. I had no idea S.E. Hinton was a girl. “Hmm,” I mutter.

  “A Clockwork Orange,” she says. “Have you read this one?”