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Rikki’s day is getting off to a good start. She had invited Emma and the others over for a barbecue, and is putting the finishing touches on the day’s spread with Zane by the grill. The patio is littered with junk that Rikki hadn’t bothered to try and clear away before her friends got here. Clearly she inherited her cleanliness from her Dad, with nearly every surface cluttered, a mandolin missing its strings and a ring buoy, inexplicably, by the bench. Still, the place looks beautiful; the lush, green foliage is in full bloom, frangipanis filling the air with their intoxicating scent. The sea is sparkling sapphire, a stone’s throw away.
Yes, her day starts well. Little does she know, everything is about to go wrong. “Need any help there?” she says to Zane, setting some salsa down by the barbecue.
He flips a sausage over and says, “What, you don’t trust me with the grill?” His dark brown eyes are twinkling with mirth.
“Have you got secret pyrokinetic powers I don’t know about?” She curls her fingers at him, grinning.
“I’m going to get you for that.” With that, he sets the tongs down and starts to chase her around the grass.
She bolts in the opposite direction, giggling all the while. Zane has nearly caught up with her, and she lets out a squeal, evoking a thousand clichés from romance movies Cleo has forced her to sit through. Then, she crashes straight into Emma. The collision nearly sends them straight to the ground, but Emma is quicker, uprighting them both with a frown.
“Oh, hey guys!” says Rikki, her face flooding with colour. “You’re early.”
“Yeah, and I’ve got the bruises to show for it,” teases Emma.
Zane throws an arm over her shoulder. “I brought burger buns,” says Lewis, holding the bag up like an offering.
“Hot dog buns,” Cleo says, doing the same.
“Great. All that’s left to do is put the salad together.” Rikki turns her gaze to the only one of her friends at all enthused about vegetables, saying, “Em?”
“On it!”
Cleo and Lewis make their way to the table, taking their places in mismatched chairs, with Zane returning to the grill before the whole thing goes up in smoke. Rikki finishes setting the table. She lays the cutlery for five, the salt and pepper standing to attention, a jumbo bottle of mustard for Lewis. Emma emerges from the kitchen with the salad. They shout their orders to Zane, who takes his seat next to Rikki with a glass of cola when every plate is overflowing.
The sun glinting off his fair hair, Lewis says, “Well, let’s hope this isn’t like the last time we all hung out.”
“Ha ha.” Zane is stiff at her side. “Let’s not talk about that.”
Emma and Cleo look just as confused as Rikki feels. “Why not?” Cleo narrows her eyes at Lewis. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
Setting down his knife and fork, Lewis’s expression darkens. “You didn’t—” he says to Zane. “You were supposed to tell Rikki, remember?”
Rikki racks her brains, trying to recall what happened the last time all five of them were together. She comes up blank. “Tell me what?”
“Forget about it.” Zane is dismissive, reaching for the soda with affected nonchalance. “Who wants Fanta?”
“Zane.” She gives him her best stern look, curling her lip, trying to channel Emma’s severity.
“Okay.” He gulps. “Remember yesterday, when you guys were acting all weird around Nate, like you were… mesmerised?” He seems to be weighing his words carefully, gesturing with his cutlery. “That was kind of my fault.”
“Your fault?” Emma blinks, her face grave. “How was it your fault?”
Zane looks to Lewis, who is sheepish, barely touching his burger. “Tell them,” Lewis says.
“There’s this… stuff. It’s called ambergris. I found it on the net. It produces a mesmerising effect on mermaids.” Zane coughs self-consciously. “Now you know. Anyone want ketchup?”
Rikki feels her heart sink into her shoes. Fury flares in her chest, a spark about to become a wildfire. “Don’t tell me. You bought this ambergris stuff, somehow it got into Nate’s hands, and that’s why we all acted like we were under some love spell all day?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Zane says with a sigh.
“Wow.” Cleo is staring into the middle distance, horror and disgust mingled in her expression.
“And you were gonna tell us this,” says Emma, seething, “when?”
“Now, I guess.” Lewis’s face is making the fire in Rikki’s chest burn everything in its path. “But we got rid of it, all of it, yesterday.”
“Yes,” says Zane, all sincerity, “and nothing like this will ever happen again.” He looks at each of them in turn. “Promise.”
Emma scoffs, folding her arms across her chest. She is positively emanating disdain. Rikki knows just how she feels. “So we’re just supposed to trust you after you did that to us?” she says to Zane.
“How are we supposed to feel safe around you after you'd even think of using something like this ambergris?” says Cleo. Even her curls look mad.
“Well, it wasn’t for you. It was for Rikki.” Zane looks at her. She is closer to speechless than she’s ever been. It’s like she’s above her body, looking down in disbelief. “Rikki? Back me up here?”
“I need to go.” It’s as if her voice belongs to someone else. She feels herself rising to her feet, feels her legs carry her away of their own accord. She has been angry before, hundreds of times, but never like this.
“Rikki, wait!” Zane calls after her. He matches her pace, catching up to her in seconds. He grabs her wrist when she reaches the surf, saying, “Where are you going?”
She shakes him off like his touch burned her, rage coursing through her veins, searing hot. “Far away from you. How could you even think to do this to us? To put me in danger like that?”
“Come on,” he says, laughing—laughing!— “I didn’t think it’d—”
“Save it.” The wind whipping through her hair, she takes a step forward, hoping to hurt him like he hurt her. “You really think I’d want to spend even another second with you, after you put us all at risk like that?”
He’s still smiling, saying, “It wasn’t like that, I just—” he shrugs, the gesture setting Rikki’s anger ablaze— “wanted to see what it would do. That’s all.”
“This mermaid stuff isn’t a joke, Zane. It’s not some game. This is my life you’re talking about.” Realisation dawns as she stares him down. “You really wanted me totally mesmerised? Completely under your control?”
“No! I mean…” He trails off, raking his hands through his hair.
All at once, all the rage and shame and humiliation is just too much. “I’m going.” Rikki turns on her heel and towards the water.
“Rikki!” he says. “You can’t storm off from your own barbecue.”
“Well, that’s how mad I am!”
Then, she takes to the sea, leaving Zane behind.
Three days, a dozen text messages, and twenty missed calls later, Rikki has just about had it with Zane’s attempts to apologise. Apparently, he had even reached out to Emma and Cleo to try and get through to her. On Rikki’s instruction, they fervently ignored all his attempts to contact them, though neither seem quite as angry at him as she is. ‘Angry,’ she thinks, is too mild a word; ‘furious,’ ‘incandescent,’ or ‘violently enraged’ might be more appropriate. Lewis is staying out of it. He always was the smart one.
Rikki rises from the sofa when the sound of the doorbell cuts through her simmering rage. By the time she makes it to the door, the delivery guy is long gone. She marches to the bottom of the steps with a frown.
Next to her Dad’s bike is a mountain of red roses, turning their faces to the sun and taking up the whole garden. She can hardly count the number of bouquets, red petals swaying in the breeze, their leaves vibrant green. A heady perfume fills the air, overwhelming her senses with its sweetness.
She reaches out to read the note attached to the bouquet at her feet, towering to her knees: ‘326 long-stemmed red roses, one for every day I have known and loved you. I'm sorry, Zane.’ At the sight of his handwriting, its script messy and near-illegible, her pulse skyrockets with fury. Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly be any more angry with him, he goes and pulls a stunt like this.
Then, an idea springs to mind, Rikki’s lips curling upward at the thought. She knows Zane’s address, knows where her Dad keeps the good scissors. Her smile stays on her face as she cuts up the roses into bright, red mulch, stuffing the petals into a cardboard box and taping it up with a flourish. She scrawls Zane’s name on the outside in black marker, putting her plan into motion. 326 long-stemmed red roses, one for every day Zane has known and loved her, cut to pieces.
That’ll show him.
“I’m sorry, how many times do I have to say it? I am so sorry, Rikki. Please, will you just talk to me?”
“Hey, Cleo.” Rikki stabs her straw into her Banana Beatbox. “Do you hear an annoying buzzing sound?”
“That’s funny,” Cleo says, through her teeth. “I don’t hear anything at all.”
Behind the counter, Emma makes a face, then goes to help a customer. Her tidy ponytail swishes back-and-forth with every step. Zane is still standing before them, remorseful. Infuriatingly so. If he got her, ahem, delivery the other day, he doesn’t mention it. He’s all wide brown eyes and bottom lip jutting out, a pout that could rival Cleo’s on a bad day. Scratch that, his sulk is worse than Cleo’s when she sees Charlotte. He must have practised it in the mirror, she thinks.
“Okay, I thought you might be like this. Cleo, I got you something to apologise properly.” Rikki just ignores him as he reaches inside his satchel bag.
Cleo does a double take when she sees what he’s holding. In an instant, she’s snatched the book from his hands. “Where did you get this? It’s sold out everywhere!” She leafs through the pages as her brows climb towards her hairline. “I’ve been to four different libraries and ten bookshops, no one can get it.”
The ghost of a smile plays on Zane’s lips. It makes Rikki feel ill. “My Dad is friends with the publisher. Look, I even got it signed by the author.” She watches as Cleo pores over the book, a pair of dolphins on the cover leaping over the sea, graceful and lithe.
“‘To Cleo.’” She looks up, and Rikki can tell by her expression that Zane has got her, hook, line, and sinker. “Do you really think she means it?”
“Spare me,” Rikki says to no one in particular.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Cleo hops down from her stool and pulls Zane into a one-armed hug. He pats her shoulder, once. “Apology accepted.”
“You’re welcome.” Zane gulps, catching Rikki’s eye before he turns back to Cleo. “And hey, for what it’s worth, I’m really, really—”
“So you think you can just buy your way out of this?” says Rikki. A thunderbolt of anger strikes her, singeing everything in its path. Suddenly, she is all but shaking with rage. “Where’s my bribe? Emma’s?”
“Rikki,” says Cleo, conciliatory.
“No, I'm not falling for it. You can’t just buy some expensive gift and expect us all to cave.” She forces herself to fix Zane with her glare, to impress her contempt upon him. “You messed up, big time. Deal with it.”
“What is it gonna take for you to forgive me?” Somehow, the regret in his expression fans the flames of her fury, and the very blood in her veins runs hot.
“I don’t know,” she hisses, furious, “you could go back in time and stop your idiot self from buying that stupid perfume in the first place. Or maybe you could stop Nate from spraying it, and totally humiliating all of us! Or maybe none of that would work. Maybe you just need to stay as far away from me as humanly possible.”
With that, Rikki turns on her heel, leaving Zane and the heartbroken look on his face behind.
When a teddy bear as tall as her shows up to her place, along with an apology note, Rikki doesn’t have the heart to cut it into pieces. Instead, she tucks the bear under her arm and takes it to Zane’s new school. She scales the fence and sneaks in while the janitor waxes the floors, the door unlocked as if for her own convenience. With a cursory glance to check for anyone who might catch her red-handed, she makes her way down the hallway, climbing the stairs two at a time.
She’s visited Zane at school once or twice, brought him lunch or a banana shake from the JuiceNet when she had a day off and he didn’t. As such, she finds his locker like she knows it by heart, his initials carved in red pen on the door. His combination is her birthday. She can’t help but roll her eyes.
Inside are a few books, some scrap paper, a leaky pen and a calendar with the dates crossed off. A photo of the pair of them at the dance last year is tacked up inside, stupid grins on their faces. She won’t let this tug on her heartstrings, stuffing the enormous bear into the empty space, slamming the door shut before the teddy falls down on top of her. With that, she turns on her heel and makes herself scarce. After all, the students will start to show up soon.
The mental image of Zane opening his locker to an attack from a giant, stuffed bear plays on a loop in her mind, all the way home.
Rikki and Cleo are in Emma’s the next time she sees Zane. She studies Emma’s nail polish collection with avidity, laid out on the Gilbert’s pristine coffee table. Mint green and heather purple and rainbow glitter bottles stand to attention, an array of colours and finishes, more than she could count. Cleo eyes a turquoise polish and says, “Have you talked to Zane yet?”
From her spot on the expensive rug, Rikki sighs. “No. I might never talk to him again.”
“You’re going to have to forgive him eventually,” says Cleo. Her tone suggests that her innumerable subscriptions to teen magazines makes her an expert on such matters.
“Just because your forgiveness can be bought with some moronic book on dolphins,” says Rikki, picking up a ruby-red polish, “doesn’t mean I’m the same.” She reads the shade name on the bottom of the bottle: ‘Fiery.’ How appropriate.
“Rikki!” says Emma. She looks up from filing her nails to glower at her.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Cleo softens at her apology. “I’m just so angry, still.”
“It’s okay, I forgive you.” Her lips are turning up at the corners. “Hey, that gives me an idea.”
Emma winces. “Don’t say it—”
“You should forgive Zane!” says Cleo in a sing-song voice.
“I warned you not to say it,” Emma says from her spot on the sofa.
Rikki watches Cleo shrink under her stare.
Then, the doorbell chimes, cutting through the relative quiet. Emma jumps to her feet to answer it. “Zane!” she says. Rikki should have known. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.” Rikki feels his eyes on her. “All of you.”
“Hi, Zane!” Cleo cranes her neck to look towards the hallway.
“No one wants you here, Zane.” Rikki’s words are somewhat contradicted by Cleo’s cheerful greeting. Still, she feigns fascination with a metallic gold polish, saying, “You should just leave, before you trick us all into taking poison or something.”
“I’m sorry,” he says for the umpteenth time. Rikki feels her fist curl around the bottle of nail polish. “Worth a shot?”
Cleo nods. “What’s that?”
Rikki looks up, an involuntary gesture. Zane is carrying something large and oblong-shaped, covered with a sheet, held to his chest. “I actually have something for Emma.” His face turns sheepish.
“Zane, forget it.” Rikki glows with pride. She knew she could count on Emma not to fall for one of Zane’s tricks. “If you think some elaborate present is gonna make me accept y— Aunt Caroline’s dollhouse?”
“Yep,” Zane is saying. “All yours.”
“How?!” Emma carries the dollhouse to the coffee table. It is decorated in pastel, with tiny plastic furniture, pink tiles on the roof and a miniature chimney. There’s even a little fruit bowl on the kitchen table, plastic designed to look like ceramic. Rikki can’t decide if her seven-year-old self would have loved it, or thrown it straight into the fire, silicone bath bubbles and all.
Zane is hovering by the hall. “Well, my cousin Annabelle is moving away for university. They found it clearing out the attic the other day. I thought I could give it a new home. If you still want it, of course.”
“Of course I still want it! I’ve been dreaming about this since I was six.” Emma fusses with the dining room curtains, setting the time right on the kitchen clock. “Aunt Caroline’s dollhouse, in my living room. I’ll never be the same.”
Torn between dizzying anger and stupefying confusion, Rikki simply shakes her head. “Aunt who’s, what now? Can someone bring me up to speed here?”
“When we were kids, we used to play at my Aunt Caroline’s. My cousin Annabelle always used to hog the dollhouse,” Zane says to his shoes. “Emma never got to play with it, much and all as she wanted to.”
“And now it’s all mine!” Emma says, overjoyed. She stands and pulls Zane into a hug, nearly knocking him off his feet in the process. Sometimes, she forgets how strong Emma is. “How can I ever repay you?”
Zane runs his hands through his hair, like he always does when he’s nervous. “Well—”
“Say no more.” Emma holds his shoulders, pure, unadulterated happiness on her face. “All is forgiven.”
“Come on!” says Rikki, unthinking, on her feet again. “I expected this crap from Cleo, but you, Em?”
“Hey!” Cleo is crestfallen, blowing on her painted nails.
“Sorry, but she’s had it out for Zane since day one,” says Rikki, gesticulating widely. “I never thought you’d fold so easily. You’re really gonna accept his apology, just like that?”
“Rikki. The toilets actually flush.” Emma goes to sit on the edge of the coffee table. She reaches out and turns a dial in the bathroom. Sure enough, a flushing effect fills the room with its sound, Emma’s expression startling in its sincerity. “What are you not getting here?”
“That’s it.” Rikki’s rage propels her forward, carrying her out of the living room, straight to the door. “I’m out of here.”
“Rikki,” Zane says, predictable as ever, “will you hold on a minute?”
“No, Zane!” she cries. A lump is forming in her throat. “Just let me go.”
This time, he does.
Four days later, three raps on Rikki’s front door come in quick succession. Rikki is lounging on the sofa reading a graphic novel. She would bet her entire CD collection she knows who it is. “If that’s who I think it is,” she calls to her Dad, “you can tell him to shove his apology up his—”
“Rikki!” Her Dad pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “You’re really not going to forgive him for whatever it is he’s done?”
She had filled her Dad in on the bare minimum details from her fight with Zane. After all, divulging the truth about the ambergris disaster would mean sharing her mermaid identity with him, something she would sooner avoid. Her Dad is quick to anger like she is, but slower to hold a grudge. His campaign to get Rikki to accept her boyfriend’s apology is, so far, proving unsuccessful.
“Nope,” she says, without looking up from the pages. “And trust me, before you ask, you don’t want to know. You might be more upset than me if you did.”
Three knocks, hard and insistent, sound from the door. “Better go tell him to buzz off,” says Rikki without missing a beat. “If he asks, I’m not here.”
He heaves a sigh. “You’re just like your mother, you know that?” he says, but his voice is filled with exasperated affection. He goes to answer the door, and Rikki strains her ears to hear.
“Hi, Terry.” She shrinks into the couch so Zane won’t see her. “Is Rikki here?”
“Er…” Her Dad looks right at her, eyes blown wide. Rikki shakes her head emphatically. “I don’t think she wants to see you right now.”
It takes everything in her not to slap her forehead in frustration. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chadwick, but I’m coming in,” says Zane. Her Dad acquiesces, clearing the way for him, and then Zane is standing in her living room. “Rikki—”
“No!” Rikki says. Shouts, really. She jumps up from the sofa and starts in the opposite direction.
“Please, will you just come outside for one minute?” says Zane, all but begging. “Please?”
Rikki looks from Zane, to her Dad, and back again. Her poor Dad looks like he is one more flower delivery away from ending up in a straitjacket. She just breaks. For him, and him only, Rikki says, “Fine! You have twenty seconds. Ask for even one more, and I’m calling the police.”
Her Dad has to stifle a laugh. Zane’s shoulders dropping, he says, “Twenty seconds is all I need.” He leads her out the front and points upwards.
She follows his gaze to the sky. Written in the pale blue expanse are the words ‘Rikki, I’m sorry,’ cloud-white streaks thousands of feet above. An aeroplane is descending at the bottom of the ‘y.’ For a moment, Rikki’s breath stills in her throat at the sight. She catches herself just in time. Irritation flares in her chest, Zane still standing before her with a hopeful expression. It’s like he thinks he’s fixed everything.
“‘Rikki, I’m sorry,’” she reads as the letters begin to fade. “Wow. Haven’t heard that one before.”
“I’ve still got fifteen seconds,” Zane says, defensive.
“And you’re determined to waste every one of them. Seriously, do you know how bad planes are for the environment? You may as well have just dumped a litre of petrol into some poor dolphin’s mouth.” She folds her arms across her chest, her vision swimming with red.
For a second, indignation flashes in his eyes. “That’s not fair.”
“No, you know what’s not fair, Zane? How you still don’t seem to get why I’m so mad about any of this.” Her feet carry her closer to him as if of their own volition. “How you think roses and stuffed toys and writing in the sky is gonna fix everything, it’s not!”
“What am I not getting, then?” The breeze ruffles his night-dark hair, and he throws his hands up, defeated. “Explain it to me, please, ‘cause I’m all out of ideas!”
“Fine!” It all comes out, then, erupting like a volcano spitting out hot lava. “It’s not even the way you cared so little about my safety—our safety—that you would practically drug us, just for something to do. It’s the humiliation of it all.”
His face goes through a familiar set of gymnastics, illuminated in the last of the daylight. It settles on confusion. “You’re embarrassed?”
Bright flags of colour rise to Rikki’s cheeks. Suddenly, she is avidly fascinated with the grass at her feet, looking anywhere else but at Zane. She doesn’t know if she could explain it, but she has to try, saying, “When Lewis told us how we acted around Nate… how I acted, following him around like some lovesick puppy? I wanted a hole to open up in the ground so it could swallow me up.
“You don’t understand. You never could.” She shakes her head at him, anger sparking again as she tries to see through the gaps in her memory, his face impassive. “Just like how I can never take back how humiliated I am about all this.”
“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “You know I am.” He edges nearer to her. She keeps her feet firmly planted on the ground. “What can I do, to make it up to you? I’ll do anything.”
Crimson clouds her vision. The sun edges towards the horizon, searing red. Rikki looks at Zane and says, “Figure it out.”
They are walking across the grassy quad the next day when Emma says, “You know you’re going to have to talk to Zane, eventually?” Her voice is dripping— no, overflowing with sanctimony.
“I don’t see why that has to be true.” Rikki shuffles the books under her arm and sniffs the air. “My Mum and Dad spent most of their relationship not talking to one another. It worked out pretty well for them.”
She had shared this chapter of her sob story with the girls one blue afternoon, long ago in the moon pool. A fellow child of divorce, Cleo narrows her sea green eyes and says, “Ha, ha. Seriously, Rikki. You can’t keep on punishing him forever. One of these days you’re going to have to—”
Cleo claps her hands over her mouth. Emma gasps. “Oh my—”
“What?” says Rikki, following their gazes to the edge of the grass.
“Hi, Rikki!” Zane calls. Rikki’s jaw drops to the floor.
Her stupid boyfriend is standing on top of his motorbike for all to see, keeping a precarious balance. With a megaphone in hand, his voice is magnified tenfold, and he has the dopiest smile on his face.
Oh, and he’s wearing a hotdog costume. The sun is reflecting off the zig-zag of mustard all down the front, nestled in a fabric bun, red sausage framing his face. It matches his motorbike. She’s surprised it took her so long to spot him; now, she’s sure she could see him from a mile away.
“He doesn’t even go to school here anymore,” says Rikki, seething. She picks up the pace as Cleo and Emma giggle behind her.
“Maybe that’s the point?” says Emma between bouts of laughter.
Other students have started to gather in the quad: Nate and Tiffany sharing whispers, Charlotte and Lewis with matching grins, Amber laughing by the lockers. A girl from the swim team snaps a photo on her camera phone as Zane just stands there, beaming brightly. Her biology teacher is idling by the flower beds, as if waiting for something to happen.
She makes it to Zane’s side, but is not quick enough to snatch the megaphone out of his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen of South Coast High, my name is Zane Bennett, and I have an announcement to make!” This close, the volume is nearly deafening.
“Zane, get down from there!” Rikki hisses. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“Kind of the point, babe,” he says, just for her, before speaking into the megaphone again. “I stand before you today, dressed as a sandwich, to apologise to someone I hurt. Rikki, I’m sorry for what I did. I would do anything to make it up to you, including but not limited to humiliating myself in public for your benefit. I love you. Can you ever forgive me?”
Blood rushes hot to Rikki’s face. If she squints, she swears she can make out the same scarlet on Zane’s cheeks beneath his suit. “If you get down from there, I will,” she says, hands on her hips.
“I can’t hear you!” he says, the megaphone crackling with feedback. Someone in the gathering crowd—Nate, probably—whoops and cheers. Zane has to be loving this, almost as much as she knows he hates it.
“I forgive you!” she says, raising her voice. Scattered applause sounds amongst the spectators. “Now get down from there,” she adds, smiling, “before someone sees you.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” says Zane, setting down the megaphone. He hops down from his bike and lands at her feet. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Rikki’s cheeks are aching from the stretch of her smile.
“Have I embarrassed myself enough for you?” he says, all sincerity.
“You’re an idiot. I’m in love with an idiot.” With that, she closes the distance between them and captures his lips with hers. He deepens the kiss, his hands skimming her waist, and she has to draw back to catch her breath, laying her forehead against his.
He pulls away, but takes both of her hands in his. Dark eyes softening, he says, “I will never, ever—”
“I know,” she says, accepting his apology. His answering look is pure joy. “Come on. Let’s go burn that hotdog costume.”
With an ear-splitting grin, he says, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Rikki swings her legs over the back of the motorbike. Zane revs the engine, and then they are riding away, Rikki wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on tight. Well, wrapping her arms around a hotdog’s waist, really.
She hasn’t laughed like this in weeks.
Rikki’s day is getting off to a great start. Lewis offers her the last of the salad, but she just shakes her head, her stomach full and bloated from the afternoon’s spread. At her side, Zane takes a sip of fizzy cola. Emma’s hair sways in the breeze, warm as bathwater, the old ring buoy blowing against the bench. Cleo’s knee knocks against hers. The blue gem of the sea is still sparkling. The air smells of sweet honeysuckle and brine and the smoke from the grill.
“I really thought you were never going to forgive him,” Cleo is saying, draining the dregs of her lemonade.
“Honestly, I’m still mulling it over.” Zane’s answering look is comedy gold. “Kidding!” Rikki says, tucking herself under his arm. Now, his look is all fondness, and her heart leaps in her chest at the sight.
“Seriously,” says Emma, gesturing with her cutlery, “I’ve seen you angry before—”
“Who hasn’t?” says Zane, under his breath. Rikki elbows him in the ribs. He just flashes his teeth at her.
“But that was…” Emma shakes her head.
“That was something else,” says Lewis.
Zane squeezes her shoulder. “I’ll say.”
“Well, you definitely earned my forgiveness,” says Rikki. “Once you never do anything to make me mad ever again, we’re square.” She tilts her head up at him and grins.
“Good luck, Zane,” Cleo says, laughing.
“Yeah,” says Emma, “you’re gonna need it.”
Instead of tossing the remains of her hotdog bun at Emma, Rikki says, “Come off it. I wasn’t that bad. You guys were mad, too, before he bribed you with presents.”
“Remind me, again, how Lewis got off so easy?” says Zane. “He was the one who left the perfume on the table for Nate, and he wanted to keep it after to run some ‘experiments.’” He makes little quotation marks in the air with his fingers, his expression sceptical.
“Oh, no,” Lewis says through a mouthful of burger, “we’re not doing this. I can’t afford a costume like that. Or a motorbike.”
Rikki barks out a laugh. “Not everyone can pull it off,” she says to her boyfriend.
“It takes a special type of moron. Right, Zane?” Emma winks at him.
“Right, Em,” says Zane, slurping his soda.
Over by the barbecue, her Dad is grilling up sausages, turning them over with a flourish. “Anyone want another hotdog?” he calls.
Four pairs of eyes land on Zane, and then they are all laughing, together.