She grabs my arm tightly. “Oh, but it is a big deal. And it is important. We have a reputation to uphold, and people are starting to wonder what’s going on with you. You know that, right? They don’t know what to think about your recent behavior. First, you break up with the prom king, and he’s so upset he dyed his hair! Then, you’re sneaking off with Cush in the middle of the day? He’s carrying you down the hall? Now today, you sit with the freaking soccer boys? I mean the lacrosse team, maybe, but soccer? Seriously? It looks bad. It looks like you aren’t part of our group anymore. Is that what you want? What are you thinking?”
“Uh, I’m . . . not, really.”
“I’d say that’s pretty fucking obvious. Well, you’re lucky I’m thinking about it. You and Cush better get your asses to our lunch table tomorrow and stay there. I will not let you ruin us. Do you understand?”
“I just don’t get what the big deal is. It was one day.”
“Instead of pondering that, why don’t you think about this? How are you going to feel if I tell everyone your relationship with Sander was a sham? How are you going to feel when I tell people that you’re probably really a lesbian, and that’s why you’ve never found a guy to fuck you. People will believe it. You are on the soccer team.”
I close my eyes, take a calming breath, and remind myself that school is almost out for the summer. Sit where you’re supposed to, and figure out later what you want to do about next year.
“Fine. I’ll be there.”
She gives me a satisfied smile. “Very well.”
I get in the car and drive off.
“God, I hate her. It’s bad enough she wants to tell people I’ve never done it, but a lesbian? Seriously? I hate her!” I yell to the ceiling of my car.
When I get home, I don’t even bother to go in the house. I’m too pissed to be nice to anyone. I walk through the side gate, slam it shut, throw my shoes onto the sidewalk, and kick my way across the sand. I’m just past Brooklyn’s house when I notice Vincent sitting on the beach up ahead. His head is down, and his shoulders are slumped forward.
I gently touch his shoulder. “Are you okay? Did you not get the house?” I quietly ask.
“We’re still negotiating,” he says.
I sit down in the sand next to him. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes are brimming with tears. He shakes his head and barely gets out the words. “My grandmother passed away.”
I give his forearm a gentle squeeze. “Oh, Vincent, I’m so sorry! Were you really close?”
He nods his head. “I didn’t have the best childhood. My mother, well, she was slutty.” He frowns. “Slutty is a nice word compared to what she was. She was wild. Had me at sixteen. I never knew my father. Honestly, I don’t think she knew who my father was. She married five times between my being born and my turning twelve. Guys one through five were low-life scumbags. One beat her. And sometimes me. I hated her for it. The sixth husband was a major upgrade. She saw dollar signs, so even though he didn’t want a kid, she married him. Then she dropped me on Grandmother’s doorstep and left.”
“But that was good for you, right?”
He smiles a little, but then he looks teary again. “It was very good for me. Grandmother was amazing, beautiful, a lady, and nothing at all like my mother. She was a film star in the early sixties. Back when stars were real stars. She was classy, glamorous, and always in full makeup. No running around in yoga pants and Ugg boots, you know?”
“She sounds amazing. What was her name?”
“Viviane Sharpe.”
“Oh my gosh. I know her! I mean, I know who she is, and I met her at the Academy awards when I was fourteen. She was in that timeless love story, From Here to Forever. It’s one of my mom’s favorites. She’ll be so sad to hear she passed away.”
“She respected your mom.”
“Really? Why?”
“There are a lot of women in Hollywood that will do anything to get a role. Sleep with anyone. Take off their clothes for a few seconds of fame. She admired the fact that your mom has never done that. She requested your mom be the presenter when she was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.”
“Had she been sick?”
“No, not at all. She had a massive heart attack and died in her sleep.”
I start to get tears in my eyes. I feel really bad for Vincent.
“She’s why I wanted to buy a house here.” He fills his hand with sand and watches it slowly trickle back onto the beach. “She and my grandfather met on this very beach. They had a whirlwind courtship, and he bought her a beach house as a wedding present. She said it was the happiest time of her life. She’s been a widow for more than twenty years, but he’s all she ever talked about. The house I’m trying to buy sits where they used to live.” He tears up and chokes out, “Her birthday is next month. I wanted to surprise her with the house.”
I pull Vincent into a hug. “I’m so sorry. She would have loved it. When is the funeral?”
He takes in a deep breath and composes himself. “She didn’t want a funeral. She left very specific instructions for me. He reaches down on the other side of him and pulls an urn I hadn’t noticed before out of the sand. “She wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread here. Where she was the happiest in her life. That’s why I’m here. The lawyer told me it’s illegal to spread ashes on the beach now, but what am I supposed to do? It’s what she wanted, and I know I need to do it, but I’m not really ready to say goodbye to her yet.”
“I know losing her sucks, but she’s happy now. She’s in heaven with him,” I say, mimicking what my mom told me when Dad died. He’s is heaven, watching over you.
He rakes his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I know. Still, I just wasn’t ready for this. She was only seventy-one. And she seemed so healthy. She could walk further on the treadmill than I can.”
“I know I keep saying it, but I’m sorry. I’ll help you if you want. Or I can go. Like, if you want to be alone.”
He grabs my arm like it’s a life raft, and he’s drowning. “No. Stay. Please.” He smiles. “I think she’d like it. She was always trying to marry me off. She’d love to know that I did this with a girl. Especially you, being Abby’s daughter and all.”
He gets up off the sand and looks around. “I’ve never done anything like this before. When my mom died, I didn’t really care. Grandma had a funeral for her, but I refused to go.”
“What happened to your mom?”
“She and husband six were killed in a mugging, they think. No one knows for sure what happened.”
He smiles a cold little smile. I think he’s glad about his mother’s fate. And who could blame him? Sounds like she didn’t treat him very well.
I stand up next to him. “Should we say something?”
“Would you?”
“Um, sure,” I say, but I have no idea what to say, so I think about her classic movie. It was a movie about great love. The kind of love I dream about. The kind of love she wanted Vincent to find.
He opens the urn and slowly shakes the ashes out.
He doesn’t look at the ashes falling into the sand; instead he looks into my eyes.
I grab one of his hands, squeeze it tightly, and quietly pray. “Today we bring Viviane back to where she met the love of her life. Where she was the happiest she had ever been. We pray that she has been reunited with her great love in heaven, and they are now on their own version of this perfect stretch of beach. And we pray that her grandson, Vincent, is able to find that same kind of love someday. Amen.”
I can’t help it. I cry more. For Viviane. For Vincent. For myself.
Selfishly, mostly for myself, because the guy I thought was my great love, who I met on this very same beach, hasn’t spoken to me in days.
Vincent throws the urn way out into the ocean, then he turns, wraps his arms around me in a big hug, and lays his head on my shoulder.