Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend by Katie Finn Read Free Book Online Page A

just
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    starting to get dark outside. The air smelled familiar— fresh and
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    clean, with the faintest scent of salt water and ocean behind it.
    The parking lot had a few cars idling in it, and I looked around
    for my father, which was made a little more diffi cult because
    I had no idea what he’d be driving out here. But at any rate, no-
    body waved or honked at me, so it didn’t seem like he was here
    yet.
    Josh looked around as well, but didn’t make a move toward
    any of the cars. The last idling car picked up its passenger and
    left the parking lot, leaving just the two of us and the occasional
    chirps of the cicadas.
    “We may be stranded,” he said cheerfully. It didn’t seem like
    the prospect bothered him all that much.
    “And we don’t even know where we’re headed,” I said, shaking
    my head in mock seriousness. “We’re in trouble.”
    “Well,” he said, with a slightly ner vous smile, “maybe if we
    ever get where we’re going, I could call you sometime. I don’t know
    a ton of people here.”
    “Oh,” I said, and my brain suddenly went into hyperdrive.
    Was he asking me out? Because then I’d have to tell him that I
    was in a mourning period, couldn’t even think about dating. But
    then it was like the second part of the sentence sank in . . . he
    didn’t know many people. He wanted to be friends, I realized, re-
    lieved. And I had a feeling I might be able to use a friend, since
    the only people my age I knew here were Bruce’s kids, and I wasn’t
    even sure they would be around for the summer. “Sure,” I said,
    giving him a quick smile. “That’d be great.”
    Josh pulled out his cell phone, which looked like the very new-
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    est model, and paused, just staring at the screen for a moment.
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    “Sorry,” he said. “I just got this, and I’m still fi guring it out.” But
    a few seconds later, he located the right feature, and he punched
    in my numbers as I recited them. A second later, my phone rang.
    I pressed the button to save the contact, and then looked up at
    him.
    “What did you say your last name was again?”
    He smiled at that. “I don’t think I did. But it’s Bridges.”
    My own smile was extinguished as suddenly as if someone
    had dumped a bucket of cold water over me— which was actually
    pretty close to how I was feeling at the moment. “Josh . . . Bridges,”
    I repeated, hoping against hope that maybe he’d tell me that his
    real fi rst name was actually something I had never heard paired
    with Bridges. Hershel or Donovan or Fred.
    But Josh just nodded. “You’ve got it.”
    I tried to tell myself it was just a coincidence. After all, Bridges
    was a common enough name. It didn’t necessarily mean he was
    the Josh Bridges I’d known briefl y, the one who was Hallie’s brother.
    He hadn’t been around much that summer, so I hadn’t spent a ton
    of time with him.
    Which, I realized with a sinking feeling in my stomach, was
    pretty much what he’d told me himself about his fi rst visit to the
    Hamptons. “Oh,” I said, weakly, trying to get my bearings.
    The quiet of the night was shattered when an open Jeep sped
    into the parking lot, tires kicking up gravel, the song that had
    been playing on the radio nonstop recently— a song about how it
    would be the summer, summer, summer to remember — turned up
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    loud. There was a girl driving the car, a girl who looked my age,
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    with long blond hair.
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    No, I thought as hard as I could as she killed the engine.
    Please no.
    “Hey!” she called across to us. “Joshie!”
    My thoughts still spinning, I handed Josh his backpack, and
    he set my duffel at my feet. I was trying to