Page 22 of No One But Us

“I’ve seen Ginny’s pictures. Elle looks exactly like her mother.”

“That doesn’t mean she is her mother. Remember what a nice little kid she was? It’s no more fair to hate her because of her parents now than it would’ve been then. Besides, you know what a shitty situation she’s in.”

“Her situation doesn’t surprise me at all. I don’t believe for a minute that there was nothing going on with Edward Ferris. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

I am skating on thin ice, and beneath that ice lies the thing we never talk about: the real reason she hates the Graysons so much. I didn’t want to hear it from my dad, and I wouldn’t dream of asking my mom because it takes so little to set her off.

“Mom, Elle is nothing like that. At all. There isn’t a chance in the world she was having an affair with Ferris.”

“Are you sure?” she snaps. “Or maybe she’s got you wrapped around her finger the way her mom does every other man alive.”

“I really hope you’re not implying what I think you are.”

There’s a long pause. “James, I know you wouldn’t... Just don’t underestimate her. Women like that have this power over men. They just snap their fingers to get anyone and anything they want.”

Given how much time Elle is inside my head, I’m hard pressed to argue with her. She’s so fucking compelling, she could convince you all the things you’d have to give up to be with her don’t matter. For the first time, I am capable of truly imagining that my father cheated. Because Elle makes me want all manner of inadvisable things.

“Mom, she’s a kid. You’re worrying about nothing,” I tell her before we hang up.

Maybe it’s a lie. Maybe it’s not nothing. But I’m going to make sure it doesn’t go any farther than it has.

One of us has to leave the beach, but I refuse to let it be her.

Chapter 15

ELLE

He didn’t even say goodbye. It wasn’t until I got to work that I learned James had gone to DC. And that’s when I learned he might stay.

“Do you know why he took off like that?” I ask Ginny.

I don’t want to believe this could have something to do with me, but the timing of it is troubling. Did he realize I fell in his lap by accident, or does he think it was a ploy of some kind? Doesn’t he know me better than that? Of course he doesn’t. He hasn’t seen me in five years, and I came back here looking just like someone with a very different reputation.

“He said he had an interview there,” she says. “I told him it had better be at a damn law firm. At the rate he’s going, he’ll wind up tending bar like Max for the rest of his life.”

“An interview? So he’ll, like, stay there?”

She shrugs. “I have no idea. He’ll have to at least come back for his stuff, because if he thinks I’m packing all his shit before school starts, he’s dead wrong. He asked Brian for the whole week off, though, so I assume he’ll be gone that long at the very least.”

I’d have thought a reprieve from his recent belligerence would be welcome, but it’s not. The night drags on without him behind the bar. By the second day, I am a mess, troubled as much by his absence as the realization that only a total masochist would prefer the sting of rejection over nothing at all. On the third day, I don’t even want to be here anymore.

Ginny and I get back after work on the fourth night and find him sitting on the back deck like he never left. It feels like the sun has just burst out after the longest winter.

“You came back early,” I say. “Or are you just here to get your stuff?”

He looks at me, holding my gaze longer than he ever has before. “No, I’m staying. Did you miss me?”

“We didn’t even know you were gone,” replies Ginny, though the question was clearly addressed to me. “Why are you back so soon? I thought you were staying there a week at least.”

He glances at me again and looks away. “There’s something about the beach. I just couldn’t imagine staying away.”

“To answer your previous question,” I say softly, “yes, we missed you.”

He closes his eyes, leaning his head against the back of his chair and sighing. “I missed you too.” He says it as if it’s a bad thing, but all night long, every word he speaks seems addressed to me.

* * *

He goes back to being a dick the very next day.