I watched his Adam’s apple bob and heard him gulp. He glanced down at the ground between us.
He might still be angry, but I could feel the regret pouring off him in waves.
“I’m not gonna fight about this here,” I told him. “Not today, Noah. I’ll…I’m gonna go congratulate Levi on his win. I’m gonna go see my friends. I’ll see you back home.”
I didn’t walk too quickly. I wondered if he would followme.
I kept walking, slowing almost to a stop as I got back to the track.
I heard Noah’s heavy footsteps—but they were going in the other direction.
Fine.If that was how he was going to be, well,fine.
After I’d congratulated Levi, given him a hug, and mussed his matted hair, telling him he’d better take good care of my old trophy, Lee pulled me aside.
“Everything okay?”
I wasn’t so sure, but I beamed at him and grabbed his shoulders. “Okay? Lee, we just pulled offrace day.Why wouldn’t everything be okay? We did it, Lee! We pulled it off!”
He gave in, grinning back at me before wrapping me into a hug and shaking me. “Hell yeah, we did! And you deserve full credit for this one, Shelly. The water park was your idea. I don’t know how we would’ve managed all this without that.”
“Hey, you two. Mario and Peach.”
We both turned to see Will approaching, beaming. He clapped us on the shoulders. “That was incredible, you guys! Totally epic. The footage we got was amazing. It’s already got a few thousand hits on Facebook Live!”
“Whoa!”
“And I’ll email you guys the video, as promised.”
“Thanks, Will.”
He sighed, looking around the track. A couple of staff had appeared to clean up the whipped cream and slime and collect the red blocks that had been thrown. One guy was pulling the karts back inside. The crowd was gradually filtering away, for regular business to resume on the go-kart track.
“I am so fucking glad nobody got hurt.” Will sighed, smiling as he walked off.
Lee laughed. When he looked back at me, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Hey. I’ve got an idea. I promise it’ll cheer you up. It’s not a bucket-list thing, but I think you’re going to love it. How about we get out of here? Rachel and Amanda can meet us back at the beach house later. And…” He sighed, glancing toward the changing rooms. “And Noah, if he’s not off somewhere drinking himself into oblivion and trying to forget what a ginormous douchebag he is.”
I hated the idea that Lee might be right, that that might be exactly what Noah was doing.
But no, screw him. Let him wallow. Let him get over this whole stupid thing. Let him realize what a jackass he was being.
So I nodded. “That sounds great, Lee. Whatever it is, count me in.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Where—”
Lee shushed me, and my confusion only grew as he led me down the boardwalk. The sun was still shining, but a couple of clouds had gathered now, so it wasn’t quite as sticky and sweltering as it had been a few hours ago at the water park. The breeze coming in off the sea was a welcome relief.
The smell of the boardwalk took me right back to my childhood. The smell of cheap hot dogs, cotton candy, and salt water. I breathed in deep. A Ferris wheel turned slowly up ahead. Bike bells rang out, children racing each other. A couple of kids on their skateboards swerved around the pedestrians, pulling stunts.
“So Noah seemed pretty upset,” Lee said lightly, with a breezy, conversational manner, like he was commenting on the weather. I cut him a look, but he kept up the pretense.
“It was stupid,” I muttered. “He’s beingstupid.”
“Three guesses what it was about,” Lee said, snorting a little. I frowned at him until he sighed, his resolve breaking. “Well, obviously he was mad about Levi.”
Itwasobvious, I supposed: the way they’d been going at each other on the track, Noah refusing to shake his hand…
