Beach Trip by Cathy Holton Read Free Book Online Page B

this, the door swung open behind them and J.T. strolled out into the yard wearing a pair of torn jeans and an old T-shirt. His feet were bare. Sara immediately picked up
Middlemarch
and went back to reading.
    “George Eliot?” he asked, leaning his elbows against the back of Mel’s lounger and peering down at the novel in Sara’s lap. His eyes, in the sunlight, were sea-green.
    “Your girlfriend doesn’t think much of George,” she said, not looking at him.
    “What can I say?” he said, fondly ruffling Mel’s hair until she hit him. “She’s a postmodernist kind of girl.”
    “Don’t make it sound so dirty,” Mel said.
    “Come on,” he said. “Let’s grab some beer and head out to Sliding Rock.”
    Mel shrugged and looked at Sara. “Sliding Rock?” she said.
    “I can’t. I have a test in my Fugitive Poets class.”
    “Oh, come on. You can study later. It’s a beautiful day and we shouldn’t waste it.”
    Sliding Rock was a local park where the students went to drink beer andslide down a waterfall that cascaded over a wide, flat rock. Bedford was out in the middle of the wilderness, an hour and a half from the nearest city, which happened to be Charlotte. You had to make your own fun.
    “I’ll buy the beer,” J.T. said. He leaned his weight on the back of the lounger so that it tilted slightly and Mel said, “Stop.”
    Sara read the same sentence over and over again, trying to make it stick.
    “I’m not going if Sara won’t go,” Mel said, trying to pry his fingers off the back of her chair.
    Sara colored slightly. “Don’t drag me into this,” she said.
    “Besides,” Mel said to J.T. “Annie says you have to mop the kitchen floor.”
    “I didn’t say you had to mop the kitchen floor,” Annie shouted through the screen. “I said Mel had to.”
    J.T. shook Mel’s chair. “Let’s go.”
    “No.”
    “We won’t get many more chances like this.” He gave her his most charming smile, the one that made women stutter and forget their train of thought.
    Mel stared up at him, wondering what would happen between the two of them when she went to New York. She tried not to think too much about the future. She tried to live every day in the present, savoring each experience, knowing she’d use it one day in a novel. “Mop the floor, and we’ll go,” she promised. “Besides,” Mel said, ducking to avoid his hand as he playfully tried to pinch her nose. “You practically live here anyway. You’re practically a roommate. You should do chores like the rest of us, shouldn’t he, Sara?”
    “Sure,” Sara said, bending suddenly to collect her things. “If you say so.”
    Listening to the three of them joke around outside in the yard, Annie sat back on her heels and tried not to feel bitter. She couldn’t help it that she liked things clean and orderly but Mel sometimes made her feel like she was some kind of freak because she did. And she didn’t really care if Mel mopped the damn kitchen floor or not. She had offered, and Annie had agreed, but the truth was that Annie would rather do it herself. That way, she knew it’d get done right.
    She got up and went to get the mop, filling the pail at the kitchen sink. She stood at the window and watched as J.T. put his arms around Mel andpicked her up, and poor lovesick Sara quickly gathered her things and tried not to notice. It amazed Annie that Mel didn’t seem to know that Sara had a thing for J.T. Or maybe she did know and chose to ignore it.
    Watching Sara mope around the yard, Annie was glad she’d settled on Mitchell Stites. Her love for Mitchell was steady and dependable; it was the kind of thing you could build your whole life around. It wasn’t the wild, crazy love that Mel and J.T. shared with their endless fights and passionate reconciliations. Nor the sad, yearning kind of love that Sara seemed to feel for J.T. Everyone was always going on and on about passion, but Annie could see how passion might really screw up your life.