Welcome to Corbet's Inlet, North Carolina, where the teenagers act like adults and the adults act like teenagers. It's Griffin Connolly's favorite place in the world. And while she may not be good at making decisions when it comes to her own life, s...
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Griffin hadn't made any Fourth of July plans yet.
One, because all of her friends were either mad at her or mad at each other.
And two......because Charlie was really good at being a distraction.
A constant, constantly around, constantly indulged distraction. He'd gotten back from freshman orientation and suddenly it was hard to keep track of what day it was.
He hung out with Griffin at the Tennis Hut when she was working. They sat on the beach together when she wasn't. He fought with her over the check at Driftwood. She let him talk her into giving him serve lessons. Some nights they'd hang out for hours on Griffin's back porch until her parents' golf cart headlights pulled into the driveway. Griffin would run inside and pretend to be asleep; Charlie would sneak back down the pier, and then they'd stay up texting each other until one of them couldn't keep their eyes open anymore.
So, yeah. Griffin hadn't made any plans for the Fourth yet.
She tried to justify it by telling herself that she and her friends had done the same thing every year since the summer before high school: steal some of their parents' alcohol (usually Matty's), sneak away early from the club's 4oJ family barbecue without anyone noticing, then head down to the marina to watch the fireworks from Dr. Anderchek's sailboat. So maybe it wasn't necessary to make concrete plans? They'd just stick to tradition, right?
Because Fourth of July was important. Her friends knew that.
In the past, it was always Griffin's last night in Corbet's before tennis commitments yanked her back to Atlanta. But this year, Griffin got to stay on the island past July 5th. She had an entire month of summer after it, too—of possibly their last summer here. And with Lauren ignoring Griffin's texts, and Evan being weird, and Matty sneaking around with his boss, and Charlie being Charlie... Griffin wanted this year's Fourth to be the reset button to get things back to normal.
If something didn't change, STAT, she was going to spend it without her friends, and with nothing to do besides hang out with Charlie and wonder why he hadn't tried to kiss her again since he'd gotten back.
Which was a such a lovely way to go insane, by the way.
Griffin wanted to smack Charlie in the back of the head for every missed opportunity.
He would show up during her shifts at the Tennis Hut and lean all the way across the counter while he talked to her. He'd grip the inside lip of the kiosk and flex his forearms and dimple at her like the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign was the only thing keeping him from flirting his way inside.
He'd sit his chair right next to hers on the beach so he could take up half her armrest and badger her with a tube of sunscreen until she agreed to put it on.
He'd nudge her knee under a picnic table at Driftwood every time he changed the subject or started a new story, just to make sure he still had her attention.
