Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [90]
It was really annoying, in a way. But then, it was good to be loved.
Carmabelle: Will you pack the green tube top, so I can be extremely tricky and steal it the first minute you turn away?
Tibberon: Sure. But how am I going to figure out who took it?
Carmabelle: I’m excited.
Tibberon: I’m excited too.
For three long days, Bridget left Eric alone so his thoughts would go straight. And at the end of the third day, just when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, his head, thoughts and all, appeared by her bed, where she lay.
“Would you mind taking a walk with me?” he whispered.
She jumped out of bed. She followed him out of her cabin in her T-shirt and boxers. Suddenly she remembered something Carmen had said in the beginning of the summer. “Can you wait for me for one second?”
She left him outside and went back into the cabin. She found her white halter dress from the senior party still balled up in the bottom of her duffel bag. She hadn’t thought she would be wearing it. She shed her clothes and pulled the dress over her head. Luckily, the silky material didn’t hold its wrinkles.
The Pants would have been her first choice, of course, but she’d had to send them back to Lena. And besides, she didn’t want to be greedy. She’d already gotten what she needed from them.
“Okay,” she said, reappearing beside him in the darkness. Her feet were still bare and her hair was loose.
He blinked and took a step back to get a better look at her. “God, Bee,” he murmured. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she wasn’t going to press him on it.
They walked side by side down toward the lake. She tried not to bounce on her feet, but she couldn’t really help it. She was happy. Her hand collided with his briefly and it set her nerves singing. After all they had been through together, all the things they’d felt and now spoken, they didn’t even know how to touch each other.
They took their usual spots at the dock. Bridget could practically see the warmth they’d left on the weathered planks from last time. She swung her legs over the water, loving the empty air under her bare toes. Their bodies made no shadows tonight; they were fully contained.
Eric pulled a little closer. His expression was wistful. “You know what?”
“What?”
“When I saw your name on that list of coaches before the summer started, I had a premonition. I knew you were going to turn my life inside out again.” He didn’t sound so sorry about it.
“If I had seen that list, I wonder if I would have come,” Bridget mused.
He let out a breath. “Did you dislike me so much?”
“Uhhhh. Dislike?” She smiled a little. “No. That’s not the word. I was afraid of you. I didn’t want to feel like that again.”
“It was hard, wasn’t it?” He was sorry, she knew.
“I was a little out of control.”
“You’ve grown up since then.”
“Some. I like to think so.”
“You have. You are different. And also not.”
She shrugged. That sounded about right.
“I’m sorry I disappeared,” he said sorrowfully. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t know if you felt what I felt. I was worried it was just me.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Now I know.”
They considered these things.
“I’m glad I didn’t read the coach list. I’m glad I did come,” she said after a while.
“Me too. We had to find each other eventually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We were meant to be.”
She loved that idea. “You think?”
“I do.”
“Is that what your thoughts told you? When they went straight?” she asked. Her heart was swelling inside her ribs.
He smiled, but he looked serious too. “Yeah. It is. Maybe that doesn’t sound so straight. Maybe that’s not what I was expecting them to tell me. But they did. So there you go.”
“How did they know?”
“Because when I lay with you in my bed, there was a moment when I could feel everything you had been through, and I had this idea that if I could make you happy, then I would be happy, too.”
Bridget was too full to talk. She leaned her head against him. He put his arms