“Great. That means you’ll give me more time, which might mean you’ll give me your home phone number.”
“Let’s leave it the way it is for right now,” I said. I embraced my knees and looked down at the sand.
“Boy, why do I have the feeling there’s a ton you’re not telling me about yourself?”
“Can’t imagine,” I said, smiling.
“Your sister Elsa is, please pardon the expression, a piece of work.”
I was quiet a moment, and then I turned to him and said, “Her name is not Elsa.”
“I know,” he said.
“You know?”
“Yeah. I was just waiting to see how long you would keep up the lie.”
“How did you find out the truth?”
“I checked with someone in one of her classes. Her name is Ava Patio. I pretended to believe her, because I didn’t want to get her angry with me or something. I thought as long as she spoke to me, I had a chance of meeting you again. I searched the Internet to find your phone number. I called more than twenty Patios, but no one named Patio had a daughter named Ava.”
“That’s why you spend time talking to her and being with her at school?”
“That’s it, solely it,” he said. “Why, does she think otherwise?”
I smiled.
“What?”
“Let’s just say Ava has no cracks in her wall of self-confidence.”
He laughed. “Will you go out with me this weekend?”
“I don’t know our schedule yet.”
“Our schedule? What are you, a private jet pilot?”
“I’ll go out with you one night if you promise me one thing.”
“I’m ready to sign my name in blood,” he said, sitting up.
“I don’t want you talking to or having anything at all to do with Ava. If she asks you to go somewhere with her, say no, especially if she wants you to go out with her. Will you promise me that?”
“Sure, but what is this, some kind of sibling rivalry?”
I smiled. “You can call it that. Do I have your solemn promise?”
He raised his right hand. “I, Buddy Gilroy, do hereby swear not to have anything to do with Ava Patio. If she’s walking easterly, I’ll go westerly. If she’s within ten feet of me, I’ll immediately make it twenty feet. If she speaks to me, I’ll be deaf. If she looks at me, I’ll be invisible, and if she touches me, I’ll scream like I was burned and walk or run to the nearest exit.” He lowered his hand. “How’s that?”
“It’s fine if you really follow it,” I said. I looked at him with steely eyes. “And I’ll know almost immediately if you don’t.”
“Okay,” he said, losing his joking smile. He looked down the beach. “You want to walk a little more?”
“Yes,” I said, rising.
He picked up his jacket, and we walked silently on the darker, harder, cooler sand. The wind combed the waves and hit us with some spray, but it felt wonderful. We both laughed and trotted a little farther from the water. He took my hand again, and for a moment, we just looked at each other. Then, very slowly but smoothly, he brought his lips to mine. It wasn’t a quick, friendly peck on the mouth, either. His lips lingered as if he were a bee drawing nectar from mine. Neither of us spoke. We walked along, silent again, but somehow hearing each other’s voice, each other’s heartbeat.
“Are you an only child?” I asked. “You never mentioned any brothers or sisters.”