Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry Read Free Book Online

her nose, and placed a steaming cup of skinny latte—Riley’s afternoon habit—onto the counter. “Hey, Riley.”
    Riley picked up the coffee, took a long swallow. “You’ve got angel glaze on your nose.”
    “Ah, I made an Angel of Truth for my friend whose husband seems to tell everything but . . .”
    “Truth . . .” Riley said, and then did her quick and every-afternoon inventory of the store, making sure everything was in its place. The stationery section was orderly and appealing with handmade cards, journals and small gifts for customers on their way to a baby shower, birthday party or wedding. Anne wrapped these trinkets in the finest hand-blocked paper, and whenever someone received a gift in the Driftwood Cottage Bookstore’s signature brown-and-blue paper, they knew they’d received a high-quality or handmade gift.
    When Riley finished her bookstore routine, she walked Brayden to the pier, where a group of boys waved him to the end of the long wooden structure. She knew better than to kiss him goodbye, watched him run to his friends and then stood for a moment taking in the scene. Humidity had moved in for the season, but the summer people hadn’t arrived quite yet and the beach was largely deserted, the tide high. Riley relished this time before the summer rush, when traffic was light and the sounds of the sea more audible.
    Soon enough the two-lane main road would be jammed with the returning crowds. She and her sisters used to love waiting for their summer friends. Every year she’d stood at the end of this very pier, waiting for the arrival of the Logan family, for Mack to sneak up behind her while she fished and slap her on the back, half trying to knock her off her feet. One time, two weeks into summer, he’d found her in the dark on the edge of the pier. . . .
     
    The day had ended as most days did that summer for twelve-year-old Riley—nightfall arriving without her noticing until she was the only one left on the dock. Low clouds pregnant with rain covered the moon and hid the stars.
    Then Mack joined her. They lay back on the dock, life seeming simple in its small graces: an evening crafted from the sound of slapping waves, the cooling comfort of shaved ice amidst a heat wave, a mist from unshed rain, a foghorn sounding far off.
    They’d stared into the darkness. Their arms and legs touched, sticky with salt sweat, without any self-consciousness. Mack’s knobby elbow poked against the soft inside of Riley’s arm; she felt his rough scab from last week’s skateboard fall. His legs were moist against hers, his left foot underneath her right. His upper arm rested against hers. Suddenly it was as if they had become one body; she couldn’t feel where hers stopped and his began. Fear prickled the edge of her thoughts—what if she became lost in feeling him and never felt like her separate self again?
    Despite this fear, she couldn’t move, the tangle of arms and legs more important than the loss her own being.
    He spoke first. “It’s so dark.”
    “I know,” she said, her whisper all at once that of someone older.
    “It feels like there’s only one of us,” he said.
    She didn’t speak again, knowing that this was what she wanted—this oneness—but not able to understand how or why. Time dissolved, and she didn’t know how long they stayed that way, only that she didn’t speak until he did.
    “I’m sorry I punched Candler today,” he said.
    “Don’t be sorry,” she said, beginning to feel her own toes, her own skin. Relieved, yet noting the loss, too.
    They didn’t move for moments longer.
    “I know he’s a friend of yours from school and all, but damn, he’s not allowed to pick on you like that.”
    “He’s done that since he moved here a few years ago—I just think he hates that I beat him at everything.”
    “He still can’t . . . do that. He hit you, Riley. No one is ever allowed to hit you.”
    “I know, but I would have punched him back.”
    He moved