I just blinked at Collins. Had he called me over here so that he could make fun of me? I crossed my arms over my chest, and looked back at my car, wishing I hadn’t stopped, just kept on walking. I would have been halfway home by now.
“Matt,” Frank said. His voice was serious, and this—calling Collins by his real name—seemed to focus him.
“Right!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Okay. So I have managed to make plans with the lovely Miss Gwen for tonight,” Collins said, and I noticed for the first time that a dark-haired girl was leaning against a sedan a few cars away, smoking a cigarette and talking on her phone.
“Oh,” I said, remembering what Frank had said about Collins liking the projectionist. “Um, good for you.”
“Why thank you.” He straightened his neon-green polo and smoothed down his hair. Now that I’d seen him a few times this summer, I was beginning to understand that this was his summer uniform—a slightly too-tight bright-colored polo shirt, shorts, and beaten-up flip-flops, making him somehow always look like he’d just gotten off a poorly maintained boat. He smiled at me. “My charms, they’re hard to resist.”
“Dude, she’s using you for a ride to this party,” Frank said, shaking his head.
“I believe you mean she invitedme to this party,” Collins corrected. “And asked if I could drive her. Which, being a gentleman, I agreed to do.”
Frank just sighed and looked down at the ground.
“Mike!” the projectionist yelled, stepping on her cigarette and lowering her phone. “Are we going, or what?”
“Coming,” Collins yelled, not seeming to care she’d gotten his name wrong. “Anyway,” he said, turning back to us, all business. “Emily. You can drive Porter home, right? Don’t you guys live near each other?”
“Oh,” I said, looking over at Frank, finally understanding why I’d been summoned. “Sure. No problem.”
I had barely gotten the words out before Collins grinned, slapped Frank on the back, and clicked open the sliding minivan door with a flourish, motioning for Gwen to come over. She ignored the sliding door, got into the passenger side, still carrying on another conversation, and Collins got into the van through the side. The van peeled out of the lot with a screech of tires, leaving Frank and me alone.
“Sorry about this,” Frank said, as we walked toward my Volvo, now one of the few cars left on the field.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I owe you anyway.”
“Well, I appreciate it,” he said. I unlocked the car and, when we were both inside, started the engine and headed toward the exit. I tightened my hands on the wheel, then released them, trying to figure out how to thank him for what he’d done for me. “Frank,” I started, then I looked over to see that he was staring down at his phone.
“What?” he asked, looking over at me. “Sorry. I’ve been trying to get Lissa all night. I haven’t been able to reach her, so I’m just going to shoot her a text. . . .”
“Right, of course,” I said, looking back toward the road. “Sorry.”
The faint tapping on his keypad filled the car, and I didn’t want to turn on my iPod and disturb him—not to mention the fact that I also didn’t want him to make fun of my music. Even when the texting sounds stopped, Frank was just looking down at the phone, like he was waiting for a response, and I wasn’t sure it was the right moment to interrupt him. By the time I’d reached his house, though, he’d put the phone away, and I couldn’t help but notice that I hadn’t heard the cheerful beepsound that would have meant Frank had gotten a reply back.
“Thanks, Emily,” Frank said as I pulled in the driveway.
“Sure,” I said. “It was no—” Whatever I was about to say was lost, though, as I took in the view of Frank’s house at night for the first time. The whole house was dark, but I could see that it was right on the water, something I hadn’t been able to tell before from the road. Moonlight was shining down on the house and reflecting off its chrome and glass surfaces, seeming to light the whole thing up from the inside. “Are you right on the beach?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. After a tiny pause, he added, “You want to see it?”
“Oh,” I said, sitting back in my seat a little. I suddenly worried that I’d seemed too interested, and that he felt like he had to invite me in out of politeness. “No, that’s okay. Plus, it looks like your parents are asleep.”
“Nope,” Frank said, and it sounded like he was trying to keep his voice light. I noticed this, and wondered when I’d started to be able to tell the difference. “Not home.”
“Oh.” I glanced at the clock on my iPod—the clock on my dashboard was forever stuck at 8:19. It was almost midnight, so this surprised me, but I certainly wasn’t going to comment on it.
“Yeah,” Frank said with a shrug. “My dad’s in Darien, working on a house, and my mom has a decorating project in the city. And they’re not supposed to be in the house together anyway, because . . .” He glanced at me, and suddenly I remembered his parents, red-faced and screaming at each other, Frank’s expression as he listened to it. “So that’s why nobody’s there,” Frank said in a quieter voice, and I suddenly understood what he was saying. That he was staying here alone. And even though my parents were still physically in our house, I knew what it was like to come home and have nobody be worried about you, or asking you about your day. All the stuff you can’t wait to get away from, until it’s not there anymore, and then you miss it like crazy.
“I’ll come in,” I said, surprising myself—and Frank, by the look of it. “Just for a little bit.” With any other guy, I might have been worried there was some sort of ulterior motive—asking me in, late at night, to an empty house. But that wasn’t even anything I considered with Frank—long-term boyfriend and all-around good guy—except to realize it wasn’t an issue.
“Great,” Frank said, giving me a surprised, happy smile. “Let’s go.” I followed him around to the side door he’d gone in before. When he opened the door, a loud, persistent chime started, until Frank entered a code into a keypad I hadn’t even noticed by the door. The beeping stopped and Frank moved forward, turning on lights as he went, and I followed, but then stopped short, looking around, really seeing his house for the first time, my jaw falling open.
It was beautiful. There were many other words for it, whole reams of adjectives, but at first glance, that was all I could come up with. The downstairs was open-plan, which meant I could see the entire bottom floor, the TV room blending into the study, which then became the dining area, and then an open-plan kitchen and breakfast nook. The house was light and airy, with high ceilings and lots and lots of windows, everything done in grays and blues and whites. Everything just fit together. There were tiny groupings of objects, arranged just so. I saw, on a bookshelf right by the front door, a big vase filled with long feathers. Which was arresting enough, but on the shelf above it, there was a medium vase filled with medium-size feathers. And at the top shelf was a tiny vase filled with the smallest feathers I’d ever seen. There was stuff like that, little details and perfect touches, everywhere I looked, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to just stand there and take it all in.
“Emily?” Frank called, and I realized he had crossed the room and was standing by a glass door built into an entire wall of windows, all of which looked out onto the sand and the water.
“Yeah,” I said, tearing myself away from the décor, knowing that there was a ton of stuff I wasn’t catching. Frank opened the door, and we stepped out onto a wide wooden deck that looked out to the water, with four steps that led down to the sand. The only time I’d ever been to the beach at night was for the Fourth of July fireworks, when there were tons of people and everyone jockeying for space. But this stretch of moonlit beach was empty, and I realized that Frank and I would have the whole thing to ourselves.