Learning to Swim by Annie Cosby Read Free Book Online Page B

day?”
    “Yes,” I said (lied). “Yes, I do.”
    Owen was smirking at me, challenging my lie. But he said nothing, instead finding amusement in the bimbo’s adoration. Perhaps I had underestimated Owen Carlton after all.
    I later found myself sitting in a quiet nook of the gathering, next to Owen. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and said, “What about your father? Old or new?”
    Owen laughed. “What?”
    “Money,” I clarified.
    He laughed again. “Old. The only good kind, right?”
    I laughed with him.
    “What about yours?” he asked.
    “It’s my mom’s father’s business,” I explained.
    “Ah, smart guy, your dad, marry into it,” Owen said with a teasing smile.
    “Yeah, he’d be happier if I had any interest in it whatsoever. I don’t. Lucky for him, my mother never did, either. Otherwise he never would have gotten to run the show. The way she was, though, my grandpa was only very happy to pass it down to a son-in-law. He didn’t have any sons of his own.”
    “It looks like it’s going that way again,” Owen said. He didn’t sound sarcastic, as I would have, or domineering as most boys would when speaking of such things. My grandfather’s business, and his daughter’s and granddaughter’s complete lack of involvement or interest in it, made for some very happy relatives of mine.
    “Yeah,” I said. “I have a cousin who’s being groomed for the business—just in case I never succeed in the husband hunt.”
    Owen laughed and nodded. It wasn’t a gesture disgusted with this system, like I was, or outraged by it—simply accepting. This was how things went. Fathers made businesses to hand down to sons, and daughters were made to marry other sons from other families with businesses. He seemed oddly, and even refreshingly, placid. For a reason I couldn’t place, it was comforting to find someone like that. So unlike myself, he wasn’t pure angst and outrage, and so unlike other boys, he wasn’t pure arrogant pride. I wondered what business Owen would inherit.
    “Well, I know a kid born into the Heel Warehouse franchise. We could set up a merger and the two of you would have a monopoly on the American shoe market.”
    I laughed, a real laugh. One that started in my belly.
    “A real shoe dynasty. I can set it up if you like.” He was grinning and for one glorious moment, I forgot to dislike him.
     

     
    I was delightfully surprised to find that, at the end of the night, Owen insisted on walking me home. Well, at the time of night when I got tired of the drunken roaring of the Huston kid and others like him and announced that I was hitting the sack.
    There had been a few groans—I was magically, suddenly, not-so-mysteriously popular. Of course this had nothing at all to do with the Fullington Factory rainbow shoelace craze of the 1990’s. It had made the company a pop culture icon.
    I might have otherwise been bitter, but Owen had eagerly jumped up to walk me home and I felt oddly chatty.
    “There’s not much to do around here, is there?” I said as we made our way down the boardwalk.
    He laughed. “No, not really. You can tan, swim, go shopping, tan, go shopping, and tan.”
    I laughed. “I haven’t been doing a lot of that. But I have been walking a lot. The boardwalk gets more interesting over there.” I waved in the vague direction of my pier.
    Owen looked at me quizzically. “That would give my mom a heart attack to hear.”
    I laughed. “It’s kind of interesting. There’s a really old-looking pier down there. It’s kind of deserted; I wonder what it was ever used for.”
    Owen shrugged.
    “Have you ever met an old lady that lives over by the resort?” I tried again. It hit me as a stinging realization that I still didn’t know her name. “I-I don’t—I don’t know her name, but she lives in this dumpy little house near the resort.”
    I made a mental note to ask the old woman her name the very next time I saw her.
    Owen shook his head. “We