Just A Summer Love

Chapter 12: Friends all OVER AGAIN!

Ange slept fitfully that night, but by the next morning she seemed to have recovered. So had the weather.

Ange awoke to a clear, cloudless, brilliantly sunny sky. She raced to the beach and spent the better part of the day there.

Ronnie studiously ignored her all morning and afternoon, but that evening she came over to Moonrise House just as Ange was heading out for the ice cream stand.

Ange couldn't imagine why she had come over. "Austin's not here," she said. "He and Michael went to the bay."

Ronnie looked at the ground. "I didn't come for Austin. I came to see you."

"Me? The summer spoilsport? The one who's using you?"

"Ange, I came to apologize. I'm really sorry I said all those things. I didn't mean them. Well, maybe I thought I did at the time, but I didn't really. I mean.... Oh, you know what I mean. I'm sorry."

Ange smiled. "Want to go get ice cream?"

Ronnie pulled a dollar bill out of the pocket of her sweatpants. "I was hoping you'd ask. I came prepared."

The girls bought their cones at the stand, then walked out to the end of one of the docks in the bay. It was the same dock where Harry had found Ange four nights earlier, but Ange didn't tell Ronnie that.

They sat on the ed, their feet hanging over the side, and licked at their cones. "You know what's funny?" said Ange. "I'm fourteen and you're fourteen, but you've always seemed older than me. More sophisticated, I guess. You look older, too."

"So?" Ronnie prompted her.

"So sin't it funny that I'd be the first one of us to find a boyfr-- a boy I like?"

Ronnie looked at her wavery reflection in the lapping water. "Yeah."

"Have you ever liked a boy?" asked Ange.

"I dmon't know."

"How can you not know?"

Ronnie shrugged. "I just don't know."

"Well, have you ever been interested in a boy?"

"I don't really want to talk about this, okay?"

Ange took a long look at Ronnie, who sat with her head bent, toying with the remainder ice cream cone. "Hey, Ronnie, you're not afraid of boys, are you?"

Another shrug. "It's not so much that I'm afraid of them. It's more that I'm afraid they won't like me."

"How could anyone not like you?"

"Oh, Ange, that is such a mother thing to say. Talk to me as a friend, not as a mother. One mother is enough. You know perfectly well how someone could not like me."

"But you're so sophisticated. I mean, you dress the same way in New York that you do here, don't you? And I just wear jeans and sweats and stuff, and Harry likes me."

"Somehow I think there's more to it than that. You know how to talk to people, which I guess includes boy people. And I don't.... Do you think Harry is going to change us?"

"Change you and me?" asked Ange. "Well--"

"I mean, boys are bound to come up sometime. ANd I suppose one of us was bound to be ready for them before the other one..."

"It's not easy," said ANge slowly. "And I guess maybe Harry-- or hoever-- will change things between us. But we'll always be friends, won't we?"

"Oh, I hope so," Ronnie said, finally turning to look at Ange. "I hope so."