Is It Any Wonder (Nantucket Love Story #2) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,35

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Get it together, Boggs.

He cleared his throat. “We’re really doing this?”

Louisa’s smile faded. Somehow he’d become the wet blanket in the room.

“Go over the logistics and come up with a plan,” Duncan said. “This is gonna be good.” He took out his phone and typed something as he walked out—a tweet, no doubt. One of McGreery’s other brilliant plans had been to start a Twitter account for their station.

Never mind that it was working. People were paying attention to the videos and tweets, and his master chief was increasing their visibility on the island. It was one of his strengths. It was not one of Cody’s.

“So how do we do this?” Cody asked.

Louisa shuffled some papers around, and a white envelope fell from the folder in her hand. It slipped across the desk, and he saw his mom’s name written in a frilly script. Louisa quickly stuffed it back inside the folder.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Louisa?”

“You know the whole time we were growing up, I don’t think you ever called me Louisa except . . .” Her voice trailed off.

He remembered.

It was the night of their first kiss. Their sixteenth birthday. Their parents had thrown them a party, and they’d snuck two extra pieces of cake and were eating them on the dock out back, their first moment alone.

They had a ritual of spending the last moments of each birthday together, eating cake and exchanging their birthday wishes. The wishes had to be written down—one of Louisa’s rules. Her other rule? They each got up to five wishes. He told her that was greedy. She said it wasn’t too much to ask since it had to last a whole twelve months.

She handed him a slip of pink paper, and he set down his slice of lemon cake with almond cream cheese frosting (Louisa’s favorite), then handed her his small piece of paper. She set down her slice of strawberry cake with homemade strawberry frosting (Cody’s favorite), and then she smiled at him.

That smile—it did him in. He had no doubt it could light up the midnight sky. He also had no doubt he was a goner. His little crush had become so much more, but telling her? It had been a dumb idea—misguided and foolish.

But it was too late, and he knew it. No way she was going to give his paper back to him now.

“Ready?” she asked.

He thought about all the previous years when they’d done this. His wishes had ranged from “Drive a dump truck” to “Visit Greece.” Hers had ranged from “See Justin Timberlake in concert” to “Live in Nantucket year-round.”

Every single one of her wishes was in a box in his closet, and he was pretty sure his were in that big old hope chest in her bedroom. And since they were always on Nantucket for their birthday, the wishes stayed here. As if that was where they belonged. It was their thing.

What if the words he’d written this year ruined that?

“Can I make one change to mine?” he asked.

“No way, Boggs,” she said. “Once it’s handed over, it’s a done deal.”

Louisa was his best friend. Was he making a terrible mistake?

“Here we go,” she said. “On the count of three.”

He nodded. She counted. On “three,” they both opened their papers. Cody’s was scrawled on a sheet of scratch paper he’d found by the phone in the entryway. Louisa’s was neatly typed and printed from the computer in her father’s office.

Louisa’s said:

Lou’s Wishes on the Day She Turns Sixteen

1. See the Rockettes at Christmastime

2. Convince my parents to get a dog

3. Buy a car

4. Tour Italy

5. Tell Cody how I really feel about him

Cody’s paper read:

Cody’s Big Dreams on the Day He Turns Sixteen

1. Get a car

2. Learn to play the guitar

3. Qualify for state in two swimming events

4. Take the sailing trip with my dad

5. Get up the nerve to kiss Lou

He reread her last wish. Tell Cody how I really feel about him. How did she feel about him? Slowly their eyes met. Something inside him shifted. Her baby blues were trained on him, and in that moment, everything changed.

“Louisa.” He’d whispered her name—not because he thought it was sexy, but because he was so nervous, his voice didn’t come out.

She smiled shyly, which wasn’t like her. It made his head spin.

“You don’t have to get up the nerve,” she said. “I’d love it if you kissed me.”

His heart flip-flopped. He’d only ever kissed one other girl, Sydney Markham, on a dare. It hadn’t