Page 11 of Under the Stars

Meredith had never felt more alive than when she was acting in one of Aunt Miranda’s plays.

One year they did The Wizard of Oz (this was when the kids were little) and another year Oklahoma!

This particular year, they put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream .

Aunt Miranda only ever took a small part; she happened to be a real actress who had won an Academy Award when she was younger, and she didn’t want to distract from the other performers, according to Isobel.

Anyway, she rarely took roles anymore. She hated the fuss, she said; she just wanted to act.

Meredith didn’t understand—the nature of acting was that you were performing, and you could not perform without some awareness of the crowd that witnessed you, some interest in their approval, their adulation.

The attention went hand-in-hand with the acting, right?

They were inseparable. So whatever. That year, Meredith had begged Aunt Miranda to let her play Titania, but her aunt said she was too young.

Maybe next year. So Meredith played Peaseblossom instead.

Mike came up to her afterward and said she didn’t suck, which was high praise from Mike.

She was so drunk with all the applause, she couldn’t sleep.

She came downstairs for a glass of water and maybe a sneaky swig from the bottle of vodka Isobel kept in the icebox— just in case, Isobel always said, and Meredith always wondered, in case of what?

until she figured out that her mother meant just in case it’s five o’clock .

As Meredith passed the sunroom, she heard her name.

“—that’s exactly why I’m worried about her, Miranda. You’ve seen the way she lights up when their eyes are on her. And with her looks—I mean, look at her. You can see she’s going to be a beauty.”

Aunt Miranda said, “I wish her father would get more involved. That’s what she needs. If her father paid her more attention, she wouldn’t crave it from strangers.”

Meredith was so startled, she stepped backward on an especially creaky board and the conversation stopped dead.

She heard footsteps, the clink of ice. Uncle Joseph was upstairs reading bedtime stories to the younger two; Granny had gone to bed early with a headache from all the heat, she said.

(In fact, it was cancer, though they weren’t to realize that for a couple more months.)

Meredith felt sick. Crave attention from strangers, Aunt Miranda said, like Meredith had some kind of mental sickness.

What did she know? Meredith had worshipped Aunt Miranda, had wanted to be Aunt Miranda—adored and admired by the whole world, living in the south of France to work when she pleased, on her own terms. Aunt Miranda was not conventionally beautiful, as the magazines archly phrased it, but she had the kind of mesmerizing face from which you could not look away—a face that told a story by the angling of a single eyebrow.

That was what Meredith wanted to be able to do. Mesmerize people. Hold them spellbound.

But—crave attention from strangers? Meredith laid her arms over her rib cage.

Her mother’s voice resumed, a few degrees quieter so Meredith had to strain to hear it. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold her here, frankly. She’s itching to get off the island, I can see it. She’s going to latch onto the first man who’ll buy her a ticket to elsewhere.”

“So send her to college,” said Aunt Miranda.

Isobel snorted. “With what scholarship?”

“I’ll pay for her damn college, Isobel. It’s the least I can do.”

“You’ve done enough already,” Isobel snapped, and by now Meredith didn’t want to hear any more; she didn’t want to think about any of this.

Crave attention from strangers. What the hell? Meredith didn’t need to crave attention.

People just gave it to her, that’s all.

—

Meredith came first; Coop had drunk too much beer and required a little more effort. When he was done, he rested his forehead against the clapboard wall next to her ear and groaned, “ Fuck, that was beautiful.”

“It was okay,” she said.

He looked up in dismay. His chest still heaved; his eyes were glassy. Meredith laughed and squeezed his backside.

“Hey, careful. Don’t want an accident.” Coop eased himself out and shucked off the condom, which he tossed in the bushes nearby.

Meredith shimmied her underpants back up under her denim skirt and pulled her T-shirt back down.

They had walked down to the marina in Little Bay, where he’d moored his sailboat, and made out against the wall in the little alley behind the harbormaster’s office.

Once they started kissing, one thing led to another.

That was Meredith’s weakness—having started, she couldn’t seem to stop.

Hot blood, Mike called it admiringly. (They still had sex sometimes, once the autumn came and the crowds departed and there was nobody to sleep with except each other.) Over by the bushes, Coop was pissing out three pints of beer.

Meredith had to pee too, but she wasn’t going to do it in front of some boy she’d just met.

Coop zipped up and turned to her. The grin was back on his face. “So,” he said.

“So what?”

“So you want to come see my sailboat?”

“Seriously? I thought that was just a line.”

He held out his hand. “Seriously.”

Coop led her out on the docks. He was having trouble remembering which slip his boat occupied.

The moon was just a sliver behind a summer haze and it was hard to see, on top of the fact that he was hammered and Meredith was only a little less hammered.

Hand in hand they wandered from boat to boat until Coop said There you are!

and let go of Meredith’s fingers to swing himself aboard.

“Come on.”

Meredith took his hand and half leaped, half swung over the side. On landing, she staggered hard and Coop scooped her up from the floor.

“Oopsie-daisy,” he said.

Meredith jerked her hand away. “So what’s her name?”

“The Aeneid .”

“The what ?”

“My dad’s into ancient Rome and shit.”

Meredith rolled her eyes. “Aren’t they all.”

The moonlight spilled over the wood and the shining metal. She thought he had sailed over on a dinghy, like the other kids, but this was a real sloop. Spacious, immaculate. Coils of pale rope. “It’s bigger than I thought,” she said.

“Funny, that’s what you said a half hour ago.”

“Fuck you.”

“And that’s what you did —”

“Oh my God, Coop. You are such a douchebag.”

He grabbed her by the hips. “Come here, beautiful. I want to make love to you for real this time.”

“Make love ? Are you serious?”

“I mean naked. On a bed.”

“What bed?”

“In the cabin.”

“Oh, a cabin . Of course. Forgot about the cabin.” She looped her arms behind his neck and inhaled his beery, sweaty smell. “So I’m guessing the Walkers must be loaded.”

Coop lifted her T-shirt over her head. “Holy shit. Why don’t you wear a bra like the other girls, Meredith Fisher?”

“Because my boobs are too fantastic to buckle up.”

“Good answer, Meredith. These are one hundred percent the most fantastic pair of tits I’ve ever encountered.

” He laid a palm on each one and rubbed his thumbs against the nipples.

“I want to lay a diamond necklace from here to here. Better. I want to do a line of coke across your fantastic boobs, Meredith of the Winthrop Island Fishers.”

“Douchebag.” She took his hands and wrapped them around her waist. Wait until she told Mike about this. Do a line of coke across your boobs. Mike would laugh his head off.

“Come on. Let’s go below,” said Coop. “I’ve got everything we need.”

“Ooh, come with me into my lair,” Meredith said, mock voice.

“I mean it. Come on. It’ll be good, I swear. I have a surprise for you.”

“I don’t know, Coop. It’s past my bedtime and you’re such an asshole.”

He tugged her arm. “What are you, chicken?”

Meredith pulled her arm from his grasp and stepped back.

Coop’s eyes shone all wide and shimmery, reflecting the water and her.

His moon-silver hair flopped over his forehead.

Over his shoulder, she saw the open hatch to the cabin.

Like the one in her dad’s boat, probably—a small galley, a bed tucked under the bow deck.

Except her dad’s boat was older, lived-in, shabby around the edges.

This was new and unscarred, beauty in every line. Delights waiting to be discovered.

Coop was staring at her. “Jesus, you’re so fucking beautiful. You are, like, unreal . I want to have so much sex with you. I want to fuck every inch of you.”

In her head, she said, Douchebag . But she closed her eyes and thought of the way he had kissed her in the alley—how hot he had made her. The ropy goodness of his body. So fresh and unspoiled, like his boat, brimming with potential.

His hands slid around her rib cage. His lips moved against the skin of her neck. “I’m so hard, Meredith. Feel how hard I am.”

Meredith slipped her hand under the rim of his jeans and wrapped her fingers around his erection.

“All for you, babe,” he said.

Hot blood, Mike said in her head. Be the death of me, you know that? The death of you.

“All right,” she told him.