Read Slow Dancing on Price's Pier for Free Online

you?”
    â€œEww. Shut up.”
    â€œYou pervert. You want to put your tongue right down Thea’s throat.”
    â€œI said, shut up!”
    There was no faster way to get on Jonathan’s nerves than to accuse him of wanting to mess around with Thea, who—in all ways but one—was just one of the guys. If Jonathan wouldn’t leave Garret alone while he was watching television, Garret would threaten to tell their parents that Jonathan and Thea were having sex. If Jonathan wouldn’t agree to go to the movies instead of to mini golf, Garret would say, “That’s because you want to do Thea behind the waterfall.” Sometimes Jonathan would fight him, viciously. Black eyes and bruised ribs and mangled egos would end with them both being grounded for days.
    But Garret’s taunting had an unexpected consequence as well.
    His mother pulled him aside one day, leaving Garret to watch as Jonathan and Thea went tripping out the door, as fast as their legs would carry them toward their bicycles. Garret twisted out of his mother’s grip.
    â€œYou’ve got to be careful with her, Garret.”
    â€œWith who?”
    â€œYou know who,” his mother said, her voice dark with warning. “And you know exactly what I mean.”
    Garret’s skin had prickled. How had his mother known?
    That evening as the three of them sat on the big rocks along the water’s edge, Garret had been relentless, unmerciful in his teasing. Jonathan deserved to be embarrassed—for ratting him out. For being a coward. For making it look like Thea was the one who was uncomfortable when, as far as Garret could tell, she didn’t care.
    With the waves crashing against the jagged rocks and a buoy bobbing in the rough surf, Garret pulled out all the stops: he thought of every nasty thing he’d ever heard of people doing. He used every dirty word in his vocabulary. Jonathan pelted him in the head with a stone and broke the skin above his eyebrow, but still, Garret couldn’t stop being angry. Wildly, powerfully angry. The taunts just kept coming, each worse than the one before. He hardly noticed Thea at all—not until she stood up from the rock where she sat, marched up to him, and said, “That’s enough.”
    She stood before him, the last summer she was an inch taller, in her boxy gray T-shirt, her wind-mussed ponytail, her dorky white tennis shoes. He’d seen her walk up to the meanest teacher in school and insist he’d graded her test unfairly. He’d seen her split open her knee on the pavement and refuse to cry. But that night, her eyes had gone red, filled up with tears, and her lips pulled into a frown.
    â€œThea . . .”
    She turned away and ran as quickly as she could toward the road, where their bikes were kicked over on their sides in the dust. He saw her hair, caught in a long black ponytail, wagging at him as she ran away.
    â€œNice job, dilhole,” Jonathan said. And he punched him hard in the chest, almost knocking the wind out of him.
    Garret rubbed the spot absentmindedly, his own eyes beginning to water. Shame and guilt warred. “It’s not my fault you’re a couple of prudes. I was just joking around . . .”
    â€œReal funny,” Jonathan said. “Don’t follow us. We don’t want to see you.”
    And Garret realized that Thea was at the top of the hill, a silhouette in the fading light, waiting, but not for him.
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    Thea stumbled through the darkness of the kitchen to the door, and when she opened it, Garret was there. Behind him, the street was quiet and still, holding its breath. The streetlight cast his shadow in blurry orange on the ground. Irina was settled against his chest, her arms around his neck, her back folded gently forward.
    â€œGarret.”
    He held a finger up to his lips. “Shhh.”
    He turned sideways as he slid through the doorway, past her, and Thea saw her daughter’s