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Blake and I dragged so much sand into the front seat of Jesse Fletcher's beat-up Jeep that the car could've been considered a mobile island nation. I felt guilty about the mess until Blake reminded me that Jesse had a collection of empty gum wrappers and used toothpicks in the glove box, so he had no right to complain about a little sand on the floor. Still, I couldn't help but feel like a certified asshole as I dusted little grains from the crease behind my knees.

"Where are we going again?" I asked as Blake pulled the car out of the lot by the beach.

"Only the best diner in Marlin Bay," he replied, tapping the steering wheel in time to the faint beat of the pop song playing on the radio. He paused at the edge of the lot and shot a grin at me, then hit the gas and took a sharp turn onto a cliff-side road.

"Do they have burgers?" I asked.

Blake nodded, still smiling.

"Milkshakes, too," he said.

I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from moaning.

"Drive faster, please," I told him.

I sunk back into the worn leather upholstery of my seat and closed my eyes, savoring the deep, rumbling sound of Blake's laughter. For a moment, while I'd been peeling off my wetsuit and Blake had been paddling back out to tell the others we were heading off for lunch, I'd been so worried about being alone with Blake in a car, with nothing but a few feet of air between us.

The last few times we'd been sitting side by side like this, I hadn't had sand in all my nooks and crannies and my hair wasn't matted with saltwater. And I probably hadn't smelled like seaweed, either. But even if I did reek of the ocean—and look borderline homeless—Blake didn't seem to notice.

Or maybe he did, and he was too nice to point it out.

We drove for two minutes before we passed a large sign made of driftwood painted with pastel blues and greens. Marlin Bay, it read in elegant white script.

The nice thing about Blake Hamilton is that he doesn't feel the need to fill the silence with mindless small talk. He was perfectly content to keep his hands on the wheel and his mouth shut while I rolled down my window and watched the small seaside town roll by. We passed a little white stucco chapel—where a small crowd of well-dressed churchgoers were just leaving the morning sermon—and a gas station that looked like it'd fallen straight out of a fifties movie.

Blake took a turn at a fork in the road, and we started down a street lined with little shops. Marlin Bay was so different from Holden; the town felt older and more sophisticated with its redbrick façades and black wrought iron railings on the second-floor balconies. Holden was a place for tourists and rich vacationers. Marlin Bay looked like the kind of place only locals and history enthusiasts would care to see.

"Where is this diner?" I asked, my eyes scanning the shops we drove past. I didn't recognize a single one of them; they were all family-owned and local. Not a McDonald's in sight.

"Last building on the right," Blake replied.

I craned my neck.

On the corner of the block, across the street from a small parking strip perched on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean, sat a window-lined restaurant that looked like it'd dropped out of a small Midwestern town in the fifties. The exterior walls were brick and the awning over the front door was striped white and pale blue. Written on one of the awnings, in cursive script on a doily-shaped patch of orange, were the words Bayside Burgers. It was quaint, the type of place Aunt Rachel would've added to her Pinterest board in two seconds flat.

Blake pulled the Jeep into an empty space across the street, and my heart nearly did a backflip when I realized that we were separated from a fifty-foot drop into the Atlantic Ocean by only a less-than-trustworthy looking wooden guard rail.

"Is it safe to park here?" I asked warily.

"I've parked in this spot at least a thousand times," Blake replied, pulling the keys from the ignition. "Not once have I come back to find my car missing."

"There's a first time for everything," I grumbled.

I released the buckle of my seatbelt, tugged down the hem of my white T-shirt, pushed open the passenger side door, and was promptly smacked in the face by a gust of wind.

I spat hair out of my mouth as Blake exited on his side.

"Hold on one second," he called as he started towards the trunk of the Jeep. "I think Jesse has some sweatshirts back here."

I was still trying to figure out where the pieces of hair plastered to my lips were connected to my scalp when Blake came jogging around the car, a sizeable bundle of wadded-up jackets tucked under one arm. He held up the first—a navy blue crew-neck—and sent me an inquisitive look.

"Will this work?" he asked.

I grabbed the top and tugged it on over my head. The sleeves were several inches short of hitting my wrists, and the hem was so shrunken it look like a crop top on me.

"It's a little small," Blake snorted.

I shot a glare up at him, but it was really hard to be mad when he was grinning at me like that.

I sighed and pulled the crewneck back over my head, cringing as I realized my hair was probably starting to resemble some form of wildlife.

Blake was smart enough not to comment on it as I handed him back the jacket.

"Jesse really needs to clean out his car," he said, wedging the navy crewneck back under his arm with the others, "I'm pretty sure that was Lena's when she was, like, eight."

Blake handed me a faded dark grey sweatshirt with a hood—one that was big enough to slip on over my massive tangle of windblown hair—and frayed drawstrings. The sleeves were just a little long and the hem hit so close to the bottom of Rachel's shorts that I was sure, from one angle or another, it probably looked like I wasn't wearing any pants. But the sweatshirt was thick and warm and, compared to the crewneck, it fit pretty well.

"That one works," Blake said, his tone odd.

"Who do you think this one belonged to?" I said, patting down the front pocket. It was only then that I noticed the little white logo on the left breast of the sweatshirt, the unmistakable lifeguard cross.

Damn. I looked so legit.

"It was mine," Blake said.

My head shot up, but all I got was an eyeful of Blake's wide, t-shirt covered back as he walked around to the trunk and tossed the rest of the jackets into their designated spot. He tugged a dark green crewneck on over his head, mussing up his already windblown hair in the process, and slammed the trunk shut. Then he turned to me and smiled.

"You ready to have the best burger of your life?" he asked.

I was a little caught off guard by how utterly happy Blake Hamilton looked. I'd sort of been worried that he didn't want me wearing his old sweatshirt, which in turn led me to worry about whether or not he wanted to be seen in public with me. During my first couple of days in Holden, Blake had made it perfectly clear that he didn't want to be seen with me. But maybe, just maybe, he considered us friends now.

The thought made me smile back.

"Bring it on," I said, rubbing my ice-cold palms together.

Blake nodded and spun on his heels, starting across the tiny parking strip and towards the crosswalk. I trailed one step behind him, so when he stopped abruptly to look both ways for oncoming cars, I managed to step on the back of his shoe and smack him in the back with my right shoulder.

"Sorry," I mumbled, wincing.

Could I go, like, five minutes without fucking up? Although by that point, Blake had already learned from experience that I had all the grace and coordination of an obese giraffe attempting on-pointe ballet, so there really was no recovering.

Blake chuckled, the sound coming from somewhere deep in the barrel of his chest. I stood so close that I could feel the heat radiating off his back. But then he stepped forward into the street, and cold air flooded the place where he'd previously been. Blake's hand drifted back towards me, as if he were going to make a move to hold my hand, but then, suddenly, he straightened his back and shoved both of his hands in the pocket of his crewneck.

I shivered and hurried after him.

Bayside Burgers looked like the kind of ice-cream parlor you'd see in an old black and white film. There was an L-shaped bar that took up most of the restaurant, and behind the white marble counters and large menu placards hanging from the high ceilings, I could just make out the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. The interior of the shop was warm and smelled like some enchanted combination of chocolate sauce and hamburger patties. There were two families and a group of elderly women in some of the booths along the windows, and a handful of individuals scattered around the bar.

Blake strode right up to the hostess' podium, his hands still tucked into his pockets. The woman standing there looked to be in her late sixties, although her bright eyes gave the illusion of youth, and was incredibly short. When she saw Blake, she smiled the kind of smile a grandmother would use to greet her favorite grandson.

"Well, look at you!" she chirped.

"Hi, Carol," Blake grinned back at her.

He pulled his hands out of his pockets as the woman—Carol, according to the golden nametag pinned to her apron and Blake's greeting—stepped around the podium and gave him an appraising once-over. She tucked a piece of pale gray hair behind her ear and I caught a flash of her pearl earring.

Carol pursed her lips and frowned.

"You're too thin," she chided, reaching out to prod Blake's sweatshirt-covered abdomen. "This is what happens when you don't visit me often enough."

"I was here last weekend."

"And you didn't order any dessert," Carol said, resting her hands on her hips and tilting her head back so she could look Blake in the eye. He was well over six feet tall. She, on the other hand, looked like she couldn't be over four foot ten.

The corners of Blake's lips quirked upwards.

"I wasn't that hungry," he defended.

"You'll be skin and bones before long," Carol scolded. "Don't you dare turn into one of those skinny little hipsters, you hear me?"

Blake's reply was a single burst of laughter.

"I promise we'll order the monster sundae today," he said.

At his use of pronoun, Carol's gaze shifted and settled on me. I straightened my spine and tried my best to smile, but I felt more nervous than I'd been to sit down and take my AP Biology test just a couple months earlier. And I was horrible at biology.

I wondered, briefly, if this was what meeting your boyfriend's parents felt like.

Shut up, I scolded myself, this isn't a date.

"Hi," I offered up, my voice a little higher pitched than usual.

Carol blinked at me.

"Oh, uh, this is my friend Waverly," Blake told her, shifting a couple steps to stand so close our shoulders bumped. "She's visiting for the summer. Her aunt is Rachel Lyons."

"The artist working on that mural over by the hospital?"

"That's her."

Carol took a moment to stare at me, her gaze assessing, before she looked over to Blake. Her eyes scanned his face for a moment before making their way back onto me, but not before focusing in on the lack of air between our touching shoulders.

The corners of her lips quirked upwards.

"Well," she said, "it's very nice to meet you, Waverly."

I took her outstretched hand and shook it, praying to God that my palm wasn't too clammy or anything.

"It's nice to meet you, too, Carol," I returned.

Carol beamed at me. I felt Blake shift beside me, tugging at the sleeves of his crewneck, as Carol hurried back around the podium. She returned with two laminated menus tucked under her arm.

"Table, booth or bar?" she asked.

"Booth, please," Blake responded immediately.

Carol started across the restaurant, the short heels of her shoes clicking lightly against the black and white marble tiles of the floor. Blake tilted his head, motioning for me to follow after her, and fell in line behind me. We passed several perfectly decent looking tables, but Carol didn't stop until we reached the booth tucked into the very farthest corner of Bayside Burgers. She slapped the menus down on the table and turned to face us, smiling like a toddler proud of her crayon masterpiece on mommy and daddy's bedroom wall.

"Thanks, Carol," Blake mumbled.

Carol nodded and hurried around him to attend to a man at the bar who had his empty coffee mug raised, her lips flattened into a thin line as if she was trying to hold back a laugh.

I slipped into the booth, choosing the bench with a better view out through the windows so I could keep an eye on Jesse's precariously parked Jeep. But the second Blake Hamilton dropped onto the opposite bench, his bare knees brushing mine underneath the table, I was pretty sure that the car outside could've burst into a giant ball of flames and billowy, black smoke and I wouldn't have noticed.

God, he was big.

And I don't mean big in a fat sort of way, or even a muscular please-put-down-the-protein-shake way. His shoulders were broad, and his long legs didn't seem to fit all that well under the table—especially not when my too-long legs were occupying the same space—and his hands looked a little bit huge as he plucked up one of the laminated menus Carol had left for us.

Blake was a physically imposing presence.

I grabbed my own menu and willed my heartbeat to stop fluttering around like a trapped bird. There was no reason to be nervous. Blake was my friend now. He'd said so himself, to Carol. So I'd be better off in the end if I tried to remember that this was not a date, Blake was not interested, and I was not going to get any action anytime soon.

I sighed heavily and overdramatically.

Blake glanced up from his menu and quirked an eyebrow.

That one little motion held so much humor in it. I couldn't help but think back to the first time Blake and I had been forced into association, at the bonfire party, and how he'd quirked his eyebrow at me at least five times that night. Each time, it had been the kind of subtle expression you make when another driver cuts you off only to ease up off the gas until he's doing twenty under the speed limit. It was the kind of move that said you're kidding me, with just a dash of fuck you.

Now, it was sarcastic and teasing.

What had changed so drastically in just a handful of weeks?

I tugged at the sleeve of my sweatshirt, pursing my lips as I tried to select my next couple of words as carefully as possible.

"Hey, Blake?" I asked, almost in a whisper.

He leaned in over the table just the slightest bit.

"Yeah?" he whispered back.

"Can I ask my first question?"

Blake's back stiffened and he slid his elbows off the table. He leaned back in the opposite bench—trying to get as far away from me as physically possible, I guess—and eyed me warily. For several seconds, his eyebrows remained furrowed as he tried to figure out what sort of intrusive, malevolent questions I might've come up with.

"Yeah, I guess," he croaked out.

Carol chose that exact moment to appear with a glass of ice water in each hand. The moment she set them down, Blake snatched up his glass and started to chug it. Carol turned to me.

"Can I get the two of you anything else to drink?" she asked.

I shot a glance over at Blake.

"Water's fine," I said.

"Are y'all about ready to order?"

"I think I need another minute to choose," I admitted, smiling a little sheepishly. I hadn't even started to read the menu. I was too busy staring into a certain pair of electric blue eyes across the table.

"Sure thing, dear." Carol shot me a smile.

She was halfway across the restaurant before Blake finally slammed down his glass, rattling the ice inside of it.

"You good?" I asked.

Okay, I probably could've sounded less amused. The poor guy probably thought I was about to ask something super intrusive or devastatingly embarrassing.

"Fantastic," he nodded, "so, what's the question?"

I took a moment to review the wording in my head, then nodded and set my hands on the table—fingers clasped—like I was about to interview Blake for the executive position as my new friend.

"Why did you hate me when we first met?"

Blake blinked for a second, and then his face scrunched up.

"I didn't hate you," he protested.

"Yes, you did."

He was reaching for the ice water again. I slid my hand across the table and snatched it away before he could use it as an excuse to further evade my question.

"I honestly didn't," Blake insisted, sighing as he propped his elbows up on the table again. "I mean, I know I probably acted a little like an asshole—"

"A lot," I corrected under my breath.

Blake winced.

"Okay, a lot. I was a really big asshole. But I didn't hate you."

It was my turn to eye him warily.

"But you—"

Carol materialized at the side of the table, almost out of nowhere, and I was cut off halfway through my rebuttal. The older waitress beamed at us, seemingly delighted at the way the two of us were both bent over the table and speaking in hushed voices.

"Y'all ready to order?" she asked.

I felt my cheeks flush as I opened my mouth to tell her I'd need just a little more time, but Blake spoke first.

"She'll have the signature burger," he said, shooting a glance at me to make sure that was alright. "I'll have the same. And we'd like one monster sundae to split, please."

Carol was grinning as she jotted down our order and collected our laminated menus.

"It'll be ten minutes, tops," she told us.

I waited until she'd disappeared into the kitchen area behind the bar to turn back to Blake. The hopeless romantic inside of me was swooning about the fact that he'd ordered for me, like a true gentleman. The more logical part of my brain realized that he was just trying to save poor Carol another trip to our table, since I couldn't seem to get my shit together long enough to read the menu.

"You were saying?" Blake prompted, reaching across the table to snatch up his glass of water before I could stop him.

"I was saying," I scooted forward on the bench, back to business, "that you acted like you hated me at the bonfire party. And on the drive home, too, but you were pretty hammered, so I don't think you remember it that well."

"I don't," Blake admitted.

"Which is sort of a bummer, because I was hoping someone would be able to vouch for my awesome driving skills."

"I'm sure you're NASCAR material."

"Thank you," I said, trying my absolute hardest not to smile. "But don't distract me. You hated me, and I know it. You couldn't even look at me without glaring. And I just want to know what I did wrong."

Blake looked down at the table again, tracing his fingertips over the grain in the faux wood.

"You didn't do anything," he mumbled.

"See, that's exactly what you said in the car."

I remembered that part vividly. He'd said something about how I'd ruined his night—there'd been an expletive in there, somewhere—and I'd told him I hadn't done anything to warrant his hostility. His reply had been one word, peremptory.

Exactly.

As if, somehow, the whole situation made perfect sense in the world of teenage boy logic.

Blake fidgeted on the other side of the booth, his knees knocking against mine underneath the table. Leave it to Carol to put us in what had to be the smallest booth in the entire restaurant. Blake's presence was nerve-wracking enough when I didn't have to feel the heat of his skin against mine.

"I just thought, you know, that you'd tell everybody at the bonfire about what you saw. You know, when Chloe yelled at me."

His words startled me.

I had to sit still for a moment to process them.

"When she grounded you and took your phone?" I asked, frowning.

Blake winced.

"Yeah, that," he mumbled. "I just had this idea that you'd want some sort of icebreaker, you know, so you could talk to people. I thought you'd be all like, do you know that kid Blake? I just watched him get his ass handed to him by a four-foot-eleven blonde chick."

"She's really four foot eleven?"

Blake shot me an incredulous look.

"Sorry, sorry," I said, straightening in my seat and reaching for my glass of water. I didn't bring it up to my mouth to sip it, though. I just wanted something to occupy my hands. "Jeez, you really thought I'd do that to you? Talk shit on you and your family?"

Blake shrugged.

There was such defeat in the hang of his head, the slump of his shoulders. It made me furious.

"Who the fuck even does that?" I growled.

Blake must've thought my anger was directed towards him, because he straightened suddenly and looked me dead in the eyes.

"I'm sorry, really, I am," he told me. "I realized once I saw you talking with Lena... I mean, I guess I figured out that you weren't going to do that to me. That you wouldn't. And by then I'd already had a couple of drinks, and I was still pretty pissed about the whole thing with Chloe, and then on top of that I was mad at myself for being such an asshole to you, and then Ethan came over and, well, you know Ethan."

I nodded.

"I want to punch him when I'm sober," I offered.

"The urge is only intensified when you're drunk," Blake replied. "I shouldn't have bothered with him, though. I was more mad at myself than anything else. He was just there."

"Wasn't he hooking up with Alissa, though?" I asked.

Way to rub salt in the wound, you dumbass, I chided myself the moment the words had left my mouth.

Blake shrugged and reached for his water.

"But I knew about that already," he admitted, then tipped his glass back and took a long drink.

Carol arrived with two large, white, porcelain plates balanced on the crook of her arm. I tried to focus on smiling appreciatively and saying thank you the appropriate number of times, but my head was still reeling from Blake's admission. He'd known Alissa and Ethan were having some sort of relationship on the side, and he didn't seem all that upset about it. Where was the cringing in heartbroken agony, the stares into the distance as he reminisced, the clench of his fists as he imagined making contact with Ethan's nose?

Blake seemed pretty unperturbed for a guy who was talking about his ex-girlfriend's infidelity. In fact, he looked nothing less than thrilled as he thanked Carol and turned his attention to the massive burger sitting on the plate in front of him.

I watched him pop a couple of French fries in his mouth.

Apparently, I was gawking at him like he'd just told me he had a part-time job working for the Russian mafia, because Blake met my gaze and frowned.

"What?" he asked.

"So, you never hated me?" I asked again, just to be sure.

"No, never."

He said it with such conviction, I had to believe him.

And so, with the matter of Blake's initial attitude towards me finally settled, I was able to focus my attention on more important matters. Namely, how fantastic the burger in front of me smelled.

The next few minutes were filled by the same sort of pleasant, comfortable silence we'd experienced on the car ride up to Marlin Bay. Blake and I were actually pretty good at the art of silent communication. When he lifted the top bun off his burger, I'd already grabbed the bottle of ketchup and passed it his way. When I felt a dollop of mustard perched on my bottom lip threaten to slide down my chin, Blake already had a napkin held out. I tried not to focus on how pretty his eyes were, or how his smile made something in my stomach feel light and fluttery, but instead on how nice it felt to have a friend by my side.

A friend I wanted to have push me up against the nearest wall and kiss me so hard it'd make a romance novelist blush.

Damn it.

And I'd been doing so well at keeping my mind out of the gutter.

Twenty-five minutes later, Blake had polished off everything on his plate, garnishes included, and I'd given in to his longing gazes and offered him a handful of my fries. Carol gave us a satisfied nod when she came to collect our plates—both of them empty—and said she'd bring out the monster sundae in just a moment.

"I don't think I can eat any more," I admitted.

"Fine," Blake shrugged, "more for me, then."

But when the sundae did arrive, I found myself reaching for a spoon and leaning forward to calculate the perfect first bite. It was the biggest ice-cream monstrosity I'd ever seen in my life. There were at least three chocolate-chip cookies wedged into the side of a mountain of chocolate and vanilla scoops, and, if I wasn't mistaken, it looked like there was a giant, gooey brownie at the bottom of the large, glass dish the sundae was served in.

I told myself I wasn't going to pig out.

I told myself I was only going to have a few bites.

Three minutes later, the dish was empty, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had half of what'd been on it.

"I can't believe I just ate that," I moaned, pressing my forehead against the table. Blake was too busy licking hot fudge sauce off his spoon to comment on my state of distress. "Oh, God. I need a nap."

"You can sleep in the car," he offered.

I tilted my head so I could peer out the window. Jesse's beat-up Jeep hadn't gone rolling off the cliff during our meal, but it did look pretty far away in my current state.

"I'm not carrying you," Blake said, as if he could read my mind.

I sat up and reached across the table to smack him on the shoulder, but he just chuckled at my efforts. His laughter proved contagious, because by the time Carol came striding up to our table with the check, Blake and I were snickering like five-year-olds.

"Here you go," Carol announced.

It wasn't until Blake reached for his wallet that I realized I didn't have any money with me

"I'll pay you back," I declared as Blake pulled out a credit card and tucked it into the black booklet with the check.

Blake shook his head.

"No you won't," he said.

"Yes, I will. I swear, I'll write this down so I don't forget—"

"I mean I'm not letting you."

Blake slid the check onto the edge of the table. A moment later, Carol walked by and plucked it up. I clasped my hands together in my lap, trying to bite down the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.

I'm just like mom.

She never paid for anything, either. She always seemed to have a friend to help us out with our taxes, or that new flat-screen television, or her birthday dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town. These friends were always men, and they always ended up spending the night for a couple of weeks before mom had a different friend she wanted to introduce me to. My mother had always asked me not to tell dad about her special friends when it was his week to have custody. So, I never bothered to tell her that dad had a couple of his own special friends, and they all had much bigger boobs than mom did.

"I'm paying you back," I insisted, my voice small.

Blake looked like he wanted to fight me again on it, but Carol came back to the table to return his credit card, so he let it go. He signed the merchant's copy of our receipt and handed it to Carol.

"Thank you," he told her, "it was delicious, as usual."

"So you'll be back and visit me next week, then?" she grinned, casting a look in my direction that seemed to ask, and you'll come, too?

"I've got the day off on Thursday," Blake replied.

"It's a date!" Carol chirped.

I felt my cheeks flush at her choice of words.

Not helping, Carol.

"Goodness, boy, I wish you'd quit that lifeguard job," she continued as she gathered up our empty sundae plate. "You're too busy, and it's too dangerous. I don't like those Holden beaches."

"I'm always careful, Carol," he insisted.

Carol paused for a moment, her lips pursed into a tight, lipstick-stained line as she gazed down at him with a sort of maternal worry I hadn't seen in person in a long time. She reached out a wrinkled hand and brushed her thumb across the pale white scar above Blake's left eyebrow, her eyes flashing with untouchable melancholy. She blinked, as if to collect herself, and the pain was replaced with a teasing glint.

"Do me a favor and get yourself a haircut before Thursday," Carol scolded, flicking at the locks of dark hair that'd fallen over his forehead, and then she was gone.

Blake was still smiling, the gesture a little sad and his eyes a little unfocused, when we stepped out of Bayside Burgers and back into the gusting wind, which had picked up strength considerably during lunch. I trailed along at Blake's side as we crossed the street and made our way to Jesse's Jeep, my brain working in overtime as a second question took form in my head.

Blue eyes, not like George's or Chloe's.

That little white scar above his eyebrow.

The way he'd completely panicked at the pool a few weeks ago, when he'd seemed so convinced that I'd drown in four feet of water, and had sputtered about some big secret.

It was all so obvious. But I wanted to hear it from him.

So when Blake turned to me from the driver's seat of Jesse's car, smiling contentedly and patting his stomach, and asked, "Didn't I tell you that was gonna be the best burger of your life?"

I replied with, "Your mom drowned, didn't she?"

Presenting Waverly Lyons, Queen of Tact.

Bow down.

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