His eyes slide partway closed, and a stupid grin curls across his lips. “Maybe you should swim with me?”
“No thanks. I’m going back to the party.”
“You didn’t even wear a dress,” he points out, and his eyes slide down my body like he’s shocked by my appearance.
“Sorry to disappoint you.” I start to take a step around him, but he grabs hold of my arm and digs his fingers into my skin.
“You can’t just walk away.” He hiccups, closes his eyes again, then snaps them open like he’s trying to stay awake. “We haven’t swum yet.”
“I told you, I’m not getting in the water.”
“Sure you are.” He smiles playfully, like I must be enjoying this as much as he is, and begins dragging me with him into the shallows.
“Stop it.” I use my other hand to push against his chest. But he continues to lurch backward, deeper into the harbor. “Stop!” I shout this time. “Let me go.” I look up the shore to the mass of people, but they’re all too loud and drunk and distracted to hear me.
“Just one swim,” he coos, still smiling, slurring each word as they tumble from his lips.
We’ve staggered calf deep into the water, and I slam my fist against his chest. He winces briefly and then his expression changes, turns angry, and his eyes go wide.
“Now you’re going all the way in,” he announces more crisply, yanking against my arm so that I stumble several steps deeper, up to my knees. Not deep enough to risk being taken by a Swan sister, but still my heart begins to thump, fear pushing the blood out to my extremities and sending panic racing down my veins. I raise my arm again, ready to punch him directly in the face to keep him from dragging me in any farther, when someone appears to my left; someone I don’t recognize.
It all happens in an instant: The stranger shoves a hand against Lon’s chest; Lon’s throat lets out a short wheezing sound. His grip on my arm releases at the same time he loses his balance, and suddenly he’s careening backward, falling all the way into the water, arms flailing.
I take a staggering step back, sucking in air, and the person who pushed Lon off of me touches my arm to steady me. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod, my heart rate not yet receding.
Lon, a few feet away, stands up from the waist-deep water, gagging and coughing and wiping seawater from his face. His bright orange shirt is now sopping wet. “What the fuck?” he yells, looking directly at the stranger standing beside me. “Who do you think you are?” Lon demands, marching toward us. And for the first time I really look up at the face of the stranger, trying to place him—the rigid angle of his cheekbones and the straight slope of his nose. And then I know: It’s him, the boy from the dock who was looking for work—the outsider. He’s wearing the same black sweatshirt and dark jeans, but he’s standing closer now, and I can clearly see the features of his face. The small scar by his left eye; the way his lips come together in a flat line; his short dark hair flecked with droplets of mist from the sea air. His gaze is still hard and unflinching, but in the moonlight he seems more exposed, like I might be able to read some clue in the rim of his eyes or the shiver of his throat when he swallows.
But I don’t have time to ask him what he’s doing out here because Lon is suddenly in his face, shouting about what an asshole he is and how he’s going to get his face punched in for having the nerve to shove Lon into the water like that. But the boy doesn’t even flinch. His gaze looks down at Lon—who is a good six inches shorter than him—and even though the muscles in his neck tense, he seems wholly unconcerned by Lon’s threats of an ass-kicking.
When Lon finally takes a breath, the boy raises an eyebrow, like he wants to be sure Lon is done babbling before he responds. “Forcing a girl to do anything she doesn’t want to is reason enough to kick your ass,” he begins, his voice level. “So I suggest you apologize to her and save yourself a trip to the ER for stitches and a raging headache in the morning.”
Lon blinks, opens his mouth to speak—to spew some rebuttal that would probably involve more cuss words than actual substance—but then thinks better of it and snaps his jaw shut. Standing beside the two of them, it’s obvious Lon is outweighed, outmuscled, and probably outexperienced. And he must see it too, because he turns his head to face me, swallows his pride, and mutters, “I’m sorry.” I can tell it pains him to say it, his expression twisting in disgust, the words sharp and foreign in his mouth. He’s probably never apologized to a girl in his life . . . maybe never apologized to anyone ever.
Then, he turns and slogs up the beach back to the group, trailing seawater from his soaked clothes.
“Thank you,” I say, wading out of the shallow water. My shoes and the lower half of my white jeans are drenched.
The boy’s shoulders relax for the first time. “That guy wasn’t your boyfriend, was he?”
“God, no,” I snap, shaking my head. “Just some self-entitled prick from school. I’ve never even talked to him before.”
He gives me a half nod and glances past me to the party in full swing. Music thumps; girls squeal and skip along the edge of the waterline; boys wrestle and crush empty beer cans between their palms.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, squinting up at him, tracing the arc of his eyebrows where they pinch together.
“I came down to sleep on the beach. I didn’t realize there was a party.”
“You’re sleeping out here?”
“Planned to, up beside the rocks.” His eyes flick up the shoreline to where the cliff rises, steep and jagged—an abrupt end to the beach.
I assume he checked the bed-and-breakfasts in town but there were no vacancies, or perhaps he couldn’t afford to rent a room. “You can’t sleep out here,” I tell him.
“Why not?”
“High tide will be in at two a.m., and that whole stretch of beach by the cliff will be underwater.”
His dark green eyes taper at the edges. But instead of asking where he should move his makeshift campsite to, he asks, “What’s with the party? Something to do with June first?”
“It’s the Swan party, for the Swan sisters.”
“Who are they?”
“You’ve really never heard of them?” I ask. I think it’s truly the first time I’ve met an outsider who came to Sparrow with no clue about what goes on here.
He shakes his head then looks down at my waterlogged shoes, my toes swimming in seawater. “You should get dry by the fire,” he says.
“You’re soaked too,” I point out. He went into the water just as far as I did.
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re sleeping outside tonight, you should probably get dry so you don’t freeze to death.”
He glances up the beach to the dark cliff wall, where he’d planned to sleep, then nods.
Together, we walk to the bonfire.
* * *
It’s late.
Everyone is drunk.
The stars sway and slip out of alignment overhead, reconfiguring themselves. My head thrums; my skin itches from the salt water.
We find a place to sit on an open log, and I untie my shoes, leaning them against the ring of rocks encircling the bonfire. My cheeks already feel flushed, and my toes tingle as the blood circulates back through my feet. The fire licks at the sky, licks at my palms.
“Thank you again,” I say, looking at him from the corner of my eye. “For the rescue.”
“Right place at the right time, I guess.”
“Most guys aren’t so chivalrous around here.” I rub my palms together, trying to warm them, my fingers cold to the bone. “The town might be required to give you a parade.”